|
© 2004-2008 Linda Escaip
"I may be grumpy, but I like you."
|
The Suns and Moons of the Grumpiest Girl in the Room.
Welcome to my journal, sleepybuns.
Left Unseen 24-November-2005 11:10 p.m.
I think about death at least 400 times a day. Not in a macabre way or anything. Just death and what it means to me in various settings. I worry about "losing" those to whom I am closest. And I wonder if I have truly lost the ones who have already died.
I am here today, like yesterday, the day before and the day before that, watching over Sid, my cat who isn't feeling well. That sort of sounds like a possible title of one of those Lilian Jackson Braun books—The Cat Who Isn't Feeling Well. Like The Cat Who Ate Shakespeare or whatever it's called. I think there must be 300 titles by now? I don't know. I see them scattered about the book stores this time of year. I've noticed the Shakespeare one a million times. Must be a gooder. A few of the other many titles stand out and might be put back together a bit strangely in my memory, as most things are.
The Cat Who Nearly Died of Boredom One Night At A Dinner Party Where Everyone Was Talking Out of Their Butts About Politics
The Cat Who Got TiVo
The Cat Who Came Out of the Closet
The Cat Who Still Wonders Why Madonna and Britney Spears Don't Just Move Together Someplace Far, Far Away and Start A Commune for Talent-Challenged Mothers
The Cat Who Spoke to Dandelions
The Cat Who Bought the Wrong Butter
The Cat Who Used Masturbation as a Relaxation Technique and Subsequently Went Blind Because of It, But Who Was Super-Calm About the Whole Thing
The Cat Who Did Way More in the Kitchen Than All the Other Cats, Including Double-Sifting the Flour
I think we've all lived a few of those titles at various times in our lives. But today I am living the title The Cat Who Isn't Feeling Well. My beautiful, sweet girl is lingering under the weather, and I very much wish she would get right on top of it again. (Hover over the weather, always.) And this lingering in places unfortunate is giving me all the more reason to think about death.
I don't want my cat to die. She is one of the best friends I've ever had. She has lived with me for 16 years. No one has taught me more about patience than Sidney. When I cry, she wants to be as near to me as possible. When I have been sick in the bathroom from nausea, which has occurred more times than I care to guess, she has waited on the other side of the door for me. She nearly breaks into a jubilant jig when she first sees me in the morning. Everyone deserves to have someone be that happy to see them when they get out of bed.
I don't know if this is the end of her life here. I will have to wait and see. I have experienced the deaths of three of my cats; one of them just last year. I know how it works, I know how it goes. And it never gets any easier. It is strangely beautiful, though, what love does to grief. It is beyond powerful. Something grips your heart, squeezing out every sweet memory, every bitter word, every ounce of tenderness, and every last regret that ties you to that someone who has wandered off into the unknown. And when you surrender, you are pulled over the edge by all of it. The edge of what, I don't know. Yourself maybe? Everything you think you know about this life? Whatever that safe place you have molded for yourself, you are torn away from it for however long you are engulfed in this beautiful, inconsolable sadness. You wouldn't feel any of that if you did not love. Some would prefer not to feel the pain of loss, but then they wouldn't feel the love for those they have "lost" either. And what is life without love? Nothing. Blank, barren, bleak. Nothing.
So, I think about death. And love. I have loved so much in my life that I often wonder how I never run out of it. The core of who we are is love. I believe that. We are boundless. Endless. And I believe we are tied forever to those with whom we share a strong connection. Are they lost when they die? I think we are the ones who feel lost without them; displaced in our familiar settings. We live inside this heartrending dirge that plays constantly for a while until we slip back into what we know and what we recognize as real. I have a feeling that all we have lost of the "dearly departed" is what we are able to perceive with our five senses. How limited we can be by those five when we rely upon them solely for our experience of this place.
Quote From My World
"There was a sign at the salad bar in Whole Foods stating 'We no longer carry bean sprouts and alfalfa sprouts due to the danger.'"
"What kind of danger?"
"Any, apparently."
"Really large and possibly spiky hail?"
"Undoubtedly."
Well, I'm off to give myself a chocolate cake enema. When something is omitted from your possible food choices, you should really consider shoving it up your butt. (Don't ask me. I just sit here and channel this valuable information from my guru in the spirit world who likes to be called Uncle Hammie.)
Happy Thanksgiving. Free the turkeys! Thanks for reading.
Linda
|
|
