What’s in a chocolate?
Love, they say. And grief, I add. Chocolate is a paradox — sweetness that melts away too soon, leaving behind the ache of what’s gone. It carries joy in its softness, it carries memories, too — some too tender to touch, some a little rough around the edges.
No one should leave this world without tasting chocolate. It’s such a small mercy, a fleeting kindness to soften the edges of goodbye. I believe this with everything in me.
Her name was Otter, and she was my heart in another form — soft fur, bright eyes, and a tail that wagged like it could shake the sadness from the world. I carried her to the vet on one of the hardest days of my life, clutching hope so tightly it bruised my hands. “It’s time to give her chocolate,” the vet said. A quiet sentence, so pure, so gentle, it puts a thousand prayers to shame.
There was a jar on the counter. Hershey’s Kisses, the label cruelly tender: goodbye kisses.
I unwrapped the foil with trembling hands, my tears blurring the edges of the world. It was her first taste of chocolate, something forbidden her whole tiny life. I placed it on her tongue, and she took it, her soft tongue curling around it, savoring it as if she understood. Sweetness, just before the end. And as she took her last breath in my arms, the chocolate wrapper lay crumpled in my hand, as empty as I felt. The world tilted, quieter now, lonelier.
I thought I understood grief then, but I didn’t — not fully. Not until Sky and Lyla. They didn’t leave me in the slow, painful way Otter did. They left suddenly, together, without warning. No time to hold them, no time to whisper all the things I wanted them to know. No chocolates for Sky. No goodbye kisses for Lyla. No time to give them the sweetness I had promised myself I’d never withhold again.
But sometimes, when the night is still and their absence feels unbearably close, I let myself imagine. I picture them somewhere far beyond my reach, running together in sunlit fields that stretch forever. And Otter is there, too, her tail wagging as she shares her chocolate with them. I like to think they’ve had their taste of sweetness, somewhere beyond grief, beyond loss, beyond me.
But here, in this world, chocolate remains bitter on my tongue. I can’t eat it without feeling it catch in my throat, without remembering that jar of goodbye kisses, without thinking of Sky and Lyla, who never got theirs. It’s a memory, a regret, a promise unkept.
What’s in a chocolate? Love, grief, and the hope that sweetness can reach the ones I’ve lost, even if I couldn’t give it to them myself. It is a taste I may never truly savor again, but I hold on to the thought that they have. Somewhere, somehow, they’ve had their goodbye kisses, and maybe, just maybe a hello.
