The strange thing about grief is that it hides in the smallest details.

A corner of the house that suddenly feels different.

A habit that no longer happens.

A sound you heard every day without noticing, until one day it disappears.

In our home, it is the sound of a small bell.

For a long time, that tiny bell followed Reem everywhere. It hung from the collar around her neck, chiming softly as she moved from one room to another. It was never loud or demanding, just a quiet reminder that she was somewhere nearby.

You don’t realise how much comfort such small things carry until they are gone.

I still remember the day we first made her wear that collar.

She absolutely refused to accept it.

The moment it went around her neck, she started running around the house in complete confusion, shaking her head, jumping, twisting, trying to catch the bell as if it were some strange creature that had suddenly attached itself to her. She looked completely ridiculous and unbelievably funny, darting through the rooms as though she had entered some personal battle with the tiny ringing thing.

And in the early days, she often won.

More than once we would find the collar mysteriously lying somewhere in the house. Somehow she had managed to remove it again, leaving us wondering how a small cat had quietly staged another successful rebellion.

A rebel in the gentlest sense of the word. She never accepted things easily or without questioning them. If something appeared in her life, a collar, a closed cupboard, a rule someone tried to enforce, she treated it like a puzzle meant to be challenged.

And yet, despite that........

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