G is for Greif

                 

Received a call last night as I was getting the baby ready for bed.  Preita answered and immediately went out to the cigar room.  When my brother came back in with his kind, sad eyes, I knew it was bad. My heart was skipping thinking oh god, what if something happened to Erich.

My cat died.

She was curled up in front of the entry door, waiting for me to come home. The threads of her life growing thinner and thinner until the finally snapped and she was gone. Dead. Waiting by the front door.

I know this grief. It was worse when our first dog died while I was in high-school. I was younger, less attune to the harsher angles of life and thus Rusty’s death cut deep.

With Rosie I feel different. I cry, I mourn, but this time there is a harrowing sense of guilt, of shame.  I let her down. She was passed to my care after I married and truly moved out on my own. These last two months I didn’t see her, I wasn’t there. I didn’t fulfill my obligation to love and care as she full-filled hers to be warm and purring when I needed it. To the end she was there, waiting for me.

But I am here, 7 hours and 400 miles away. No last caress or goodbyes, no closure or endings. I have to stay here and grieve from a far, trusting that my husband will follow my wishes for her last resting place.  I at least owe her that right?

And so that is it. I feel a piece of my heart shatter and break, causing my tears and pain.  I grieve for my cat because she was more than that. She was my friend. Everything I ever had to deal with, she was there.

My chest aches and my eyes feel gritty and dry from the tears. I am just so sorry that I wasn’t there. So sorry, but I have to say goodbye, because I loved her and she led a good life.

The wind was blowing hard last night.  Maybe it carried a little of her soul over to me so I could say one last goodbye. One last goodbye because I couldn’t be there to burry her. One last goodbye.  I know that she rests in a flowered hat box, buried somewhere in the Arizona desert.  Goodbye, goodbye.

(This is just how I feel.  Please don’t tell me not to feel this way because I just can’t help it.  In the end I know that she led a good life, that she was happy.  I’m not beating myself up, it’s just how I work.  I’m a fixer and I can’t fix this so it leaves me really sad.)