Chewie

Mneme and J said goodbye to their dear cat Chewie this morning.

Part of me thinks that it’s not my grief. It’s not my story, nor my place to tell it. But I remember that I loved him, too. My hurt differs greatly by degree but comes from the same place: he was here, he was loved, he is gone. He was family to me as sure as his human guardians are, and as sure as my own two Karamazovs are to me.

And surely there’s pain enough to go around, sadly. I’m sitting here crying about it, and all things considered I know there’s a lot of people out there who share Mneme and J’s loss right now.

I remember when Mneme brought him home. He was sleek and graceful and elegant and adorable. And loud! Who knew you could get so much noise out of such a tiny body? I hadn’t been around Siamese cats before, and this one was a surprise to me. Sixteen years ago. It doesn’t seem that long.

I remember when he met his Yoda – a tiny little white fluffball, not the least bit intimidated by the full-grown predator yelling at him. And I always thought it was funny how even though Yoda grew up to be a much bigger cat than Chewie, it was always clear who was the boss.

Goodbye, Chewie. Say “hi” to Gizmo for me.

For Melissa B

Life is short. We are an eyeblink, a light that slips through clouds

From high wide skies to cold hard earth.  A second hand scythes it,

And all that’s left sparks on waves over the silent deep.

But love is long: the sky that holds, the sun that gives,

The clouds that shape, texture, and color. Even the moonless night

Wears countless suns shining through countless skies:

Clouds over swelling seas, seas under rising clouds,

And eyes that open again to the sun on the waves.

The Weight of a Gold Glass Ball

As I get older, I find it easier to understand why the holiday season is so hard for so many people. Gizmo would have been 11 yesterday. There are people I should be with that I miss dearly every day. My friend Emmy lost her husband this month, and it’s been a year since the Bug left us. This will be my Mom’s first Christmas without a parent.

I don’t dare compare anything I feel for what my friends and my mother are going through. I have my problems,  but beside their grief mine fades as an inkspot beside the abyss. Yes, grief is a relative thing, and there’s no competition among mourners, but I want to keep perspective here.

In the cold of the lengthening nights, we seek warmth and light. In the season where life fades to a bleak struggle, we celebrate all that makes that struggle worthwhile. When the holidays call on us to make our love and faith more manifest, we feel more sharply the absence of those who have gone on.

Let’s all be kind to the people around us. We know some part of their burdens from knowing our own, from knowing that there are none of lucky enough to take every step lightly. Be sure those you love know it in their bones. Be sure you do, too.

Whatever rites give physical shape to your faith this season, observe them with cherished reverence. Share what gives your life meaning with the wider world. And no matter who you think the giver is, remember that every moment is a precious irreplaceable gift.

For T and for J

Yesterday was a hard day at work. One of us was killed the night before, and when the news spread through the office there was a lot of crying and anger and trying to understand why.

I didn’t really know T. She was a young woman with beautiful eyes and a warm smile. We’d exchanged pleasantries a time or two, but that was pretty much the extent of my interaction with her over the months since I started working here. She seemed nice. I’m sorry I won’t have the chance to get to know her better.

We’re not sure what happened yet. It seems that her boyfriend was taking her shooting the next morning, and either he was teaching her about gun safety or gun cleaning. The gun went off. T was gone before the ambulance arrived. At least that’s what we’ve heard.

I was the only member of management scheduled yesterday. I called my boss when I found out, and he came in for a while to help get a handle on things. He was pretty shaken up, too: T was his girlfriend’s best friend. I spent a lot of the day wandering the floor, talking to people, doing what little I could to help. We let them take more than their usual break time if they needed it. We let them go home if they needed to.

It was hard to watch these people I’ve come to care about grieve for their friend. I almost broke down a time or two myself. There was a lot of talk about how short life is. How you never know what can happen. How terrible it is when we lose someone so young. How no-one ever liked her boyfriend, and who cleans a gun at 2 AM, and how much she’s going to be missed.

I let it come. I tried to keep the angry speculation within reasonable limits. It’s not my place to tell them how to deal with their grief and hurt and anger, to force their grief into my mold. But I didn’t want too much anger and too much speculation to make things worse. Even on a good day, management is about balance. More so when your team is shocked and hurt and angry.

I’m off today and tomorrow. I hope everything goes well. I hope T’s loved ones find some peace after such an awful tragedy. I hope everyone can find the answers they need to cope with this.

EDIT: I just learned that a friend I trained with at my last job passed away unexpectedly this week. We weren’t close, but he was a good guy. He’d been through a lot lately, including a terrible car accident that he was lucky to have lived through and that he had to work like hell to recover from. I’ll miss him. RIP, Josh.

Changing the Sheets

I like changing the sheets on Sunday night. It’s nice to go to sleep in a fresh bed at the end of a relaxing weekend.

He always liked it, too. That was playtime for him. He liked me to try and make the bed with him on it. Sometimes I’d even trap him under the fitted sheet. He’d move around under there like some kind of big ridiculous worm. I’d let him try to grab my hand on top of the sheet. Eventually he’d find his way out and I’d finish making the bed while he settled down in the old sheets. They were his bed now, until I put them in the laundry.

I caught myself wondering where he was tonight when I tossed the old sheets aside. I sat on the edge of the bed and thought about how much I miss him, how much I loved him and enjoyed him. And then my  curiously psychic iPod shuffled up Sarah McLachlan’s “Angel”, which is one of my all-time favorite songs because it so consistently breaks my heart and comforts it. So I lost it. I just started crying. I’m still crying as I write this.

I’m not tortured by memories of that last night any more. I remember the good times, the fun, the love, the companionship. I’m not trying to tell myself he was “just a cat”. He was my friend, and I loved him no less for the fur and whiskers.

And I miss him very much. I don’t know that writing about it helps me deal with it. I think it helps me to feel a little less alone. I think it helps me be honest with myself and really deal with it. Maybe it doesn’t. Part of being a writer is not just the ability to express yourself, but the need to do it – to get what’s inside you outside in a way that speaks to other people.  The more you feel something, the more you need to write about it. At least that’s how it works for me.

I miss my little guy.