09/06/2026
Eeyore: “Pooh… does it ever surprise you that someone can be gone for so long and your heart still expects them to come back?”
Pooh: “I think hearts are rather slow at understanding goodbyes.”
Eeyore: “Mine seems particularly slow.”
Pooh: “Perhaps that’s because it loved them particularly much.”
Eeyore looked down and sighed.
Eeyore: “It happens so many times every day.”
Pooh: “What happens?”
Eeyore: “For just a moment, I forget.”
Pooh: “And then?”
Eeyore: “Then I think of something I want to tell them. Or I see something they would have liked. And before I remember, my heart says, ‘I must tell them about this.’”
Pooh: “And then your heart remembers they’re gone.”
Eeyore: “Yes. And somehow I lose them all over again.”
Pooh moved a little closer.
Pooh: “That must be a very difficult kind of remembering.”
Eeyore: “It is. Sometimes I still can’t believe it happened. The world carried on so normally afterward.”
Pooh: “But your world didn’t.”
Eeyore: “No. Mine became quieter.”
Pooh: “Because a voice you loved was missing from it?”
Eeyore: “Exactly.”
There was a long silence between them.
Eeyore: “Do you think it’s strange that I still talk to them sometimes?”
Pooh: “Not at all.”
Eeyore: “Even though they cannot answer?”
Pooh: “Some conversations happen in the heart, Eeyore. They don’t always need answers.”
Eeyore: “I tell them that I miss them.”
Pooh: “What else?”
Eeyore: “That I hope they knew how much I loved them. That I’m trying to keep going. And that some days I’m better at it than others.”
Pooh: “I think that sounds like something worth saying.”
Eeyore: “Will there ever come a day when I stop thinking, ‘I can’t believe you’re gone’?”
Pooh thought carefully.
Pooh: “Perhaps one day those words will change.”
Eeyore: “Into what?”
Pooh: “Maybe instead of saying, ‘I can’t believe you’re gone,’ your heart will quietly say, ‘I’m so grateful you were here.’”
Eeyore’s eyes softened.
Eeyore: “Do you think both can be true?”
Pooh: “I think the deepest sadness and the deepest gratitude often live very close together.”
Eeyore: “Then sit with me for a while, Pooh.”
Pooh: “I was hoping you’d ask.”
And so they sat together, remembering someone who was no longer there to be seen, but who remained in a thousand little places inside the heart.
Because sometimes grief is remembering, again and again, that someone is gone—and love is remembering, just as often, how lucky we were that they were ever here.
— Original dialogue inspired by the gentle spirit of A. A. Milne’s Pooh stories
