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The phone started ringing at about the same time the floorboards caught fire. There was smoke and voices, and I was walking into the bedroom and suddenly someone was telling me that my mother was dead. I’m not really sure what happened after that: Presumably, the plumber put out the fire he’d started while working on our pipes in the crawlspace. Presumably, I said some things, like, “When did it happen?” and “How can I help?” I do recall thinking that ordinarily, I would not have picked up a call at that hour. Any other week, I would have been on the phone with my friend in Chicago, chatting as we do every Friday. But I was sick, and my throat was sore, so I’d cancelled the call.
But of course, the hour didn’t matter. My mom had died in the morning, hours earlier, and whatever it was I should have felt at that moment — a sudden rushing of light and sound out of the world, a seismic shift in my soul — I didn’t feel it. I didn’t know. I should have known.
Since then, I’ve been reading a lot of books that deal with the death of loved ones, and in every one, the main character reacts sharply and immediately. She screams or falls to the floor. Something fragile is often dropped precipitously. For me, it’s like reading about other people visiting a country to which I have never been. They might talk about the scenery, the contours of the sand dunes, the bustling marketplace, and all I can think is: None of this relates to me. It is not at all like my own experience with grief. They are in Lichtenstein or Lebanon, someplace with a flag I would never recognize, and I am in my home, only something very subtle has changed. Were the sheets always that color? Didn’t we use to have curtains there?
Grief has been like stumbling through a fog. I’ll see something on TV and think, “I should tell Mom about that” at exactly the same moment I also think, “There is no Mom to tell.” I start crying at church, my nose running into my mask. I keep expecting something to happen (just as I did when my father died) — that she will come to me in my dreams with a message or appear to me in the form of a faun outside my window. But nothing like that happens. She’s just gone.
People say a lot of comforting things when they find out your mother has died. But my father-in-law said the best thing: “The hardest part of growing older is the loss of those you love.” That felt real to me. I want to believe (do, in fact, believe) the comforting phrases about where my mother is right now and how she is at peace, but it’s hard when the only empirical evidence I have is a void. Empty space. Trinkets: her patent leather purse, her jet earrings, a sweater that does not fit. Like me, my mother hated taking photos, so I only have a few. Not nearly enough.
I have her letters, written to me throughout my life, though I can’t bear to read them. Some day I will. But when I try to imagine the woman who will do this, she does not look anything like me. She looks like my mom. And that’s someone I’ll never be, or I wouldn’t miss her half so much.
We lost our boy. Jaspurr was nineteen — that’s a long time to know a person, much less a cat (which is what Jassy was). His name (pronounced Jasper) stemmed from his loud and enthusiastic motor. He was a lover, a cuddler, a lap kitty. He was, as our dear pet sitter described him (and like Frankie whom I wrote about last week), the matriarch of the family: It was because of Jaspurr’s loving instincts that we were able to have eleven cats in our home at one time. He took care of everybody. Now he is gone, along with the rest of his adopted kin. He was, as my mother would say, the last of the Mohicans.
Sometimes terrible doubts grasp me: What if there is no heaven? It’s not fear for myself that motivates me — the idea of oblivion is terrifying, of course, but I don’t mind so much for myself as for Jaspurr and our other lost pets. Surely there must be a forever place for him? He did nothing but love with his whole heart every day of his life.
I find myself arguing transitive qualities, like a proof in geometry: If I love Jaspurr and God loves me, then…. But it’s useless trying to wrap my brain around it. Jaspurr was good, and if good survives beyond this life, then surely he does, too.
There is only one way to deal with this grief and it is to walk through it. I have to imagine Jaspurr in paradise, a paradise he understands, filled with dishes of cereal milk and all his friends. Here’s a haiku to celebrate:
A pause in heaven —
gentle tiger-striped rumblings —
a cat has come home.
Done in by the heat of setting up for the parish’s Cinqo de Mayo dinner, we sank gratefully into folding chairs. We talked about work — at 64, she figured she’d work “three more years. No, maybe five.” Then she laughed. “I like my job.” On the following Thursday, she showed up for the year-end banquet of the altar society (the same altar society she’d confessed to me she’d avoided joining for years because she felt she “wasn’t old enough!”), posing in a photo with all the other ladies. On Sunday, Mother’s Day, she was dead.
I tell this story not to cause panic, but to induce thought. None of us knows the day or hour of our death. So live big. Love hard. Don’t let things ride. Deal with your inner demons. Choose joy. Phone a friend.
We haven’t got time to dilly-dally, so let’s concentrate on loving one another. Okay?
I lost another friend this week. Her name was Banshee, and she earned the name from birth: Her mother was a stray cat we’d taken in, heavily pregnant, and when her kittens were born (Caesarean, on Mother’s Day), one of them yowled loudly into the face of our vet. With that, Banshee announced herself to the world. And she never stopped. She was a princess from the get-go, demanding attention, treats, toys. But she was also my companion. Most cats have their own agendas; Banshee’s agenda was mine. Wherever I was, she was. Whatever I was doing could only be enhanced (in her mind) by her presence.
All of my cats have been companions to one degree or another. Bella and Gwen liked to sit on my lap while I wrote. My gal pal Smudge always felt the need to use her box (located in the bathroom) whenever I needed to use the facilities. Mr. Beaumont would come running whenever I sang, no matter how off-key. Honkee (who we joked was part velociraptor, due to his scimitar-like claws) would have defended me to the death, had the need ever arisen. I miss them all acutely.
What are we to learn from grief? Maybe that life — all life — is worth something and capable of being mourned. Maybe that God reaches out to us constantly, sometimes in unlikely and furry ways. Or maybe it’s a chance to remind us that, even as we long for the world beyond this one, the physicality of our world, the warmth of a purring body, the texture of fur, are things to savor.
As I walk through this very vibrant — and sometimes dark — Lenten season, I am aware of the shadow of death and the stark contrast it provides to life.
Stand in sunlight,
but do not fear the dark.
There are nameless things there, sure,
but also the shades of things corporeal
and loved: a coat on a hook, a shoe,
a book. Nothing turns to dust. It only
transmutes: evaporation, rainfall, cycle
after cycle washing pure the air.
Holes in hearts are not mended.
Rather, the heart remolds itself,
taking in matter from daffodils, perhaps,
or the smell of a wet dog. It ceases beating,
then resumes. There is no death.
When we are in the midst of trouble, whether it is illness or the death of a friend, it can be hard not to focus on our agony and our worries. I tend to hold my pain close, too close to focus on it but also not letting it go. Fortunately, my husband is better at looking into the distance.
My friend died last Friday and although we had plans to go eagle watching, I wanted to cancel. Wouldn’t it be disrespectful? Staying home sounded really good.
My husband took me along when we dropped our son off at his friend’s, but we didn’t turn toward home. Instead, we drove through the bottoms and between the rivers. We ended up at a historic fort for . . . can you guess? . . . eagle watching.
We stood on the bluff top in the icy wind and gazed up and down the river. Geese. A duck. Song birds. Conservation agents with spotting scopes peered up and down the nearby riverbank.
Then my husband squinted into the distance. He’d caught sight of long, dark wings. He looked through our binoculars. An eagle! It perched in a tree, all but disappearing from sight. We watched the eagle for an hour, periodically scanning the trees for other telltale signs – white heads and flashes of white tails. Each time we looked back, there was our eagle, perched in the distance.
When we went to the wake, we looked at the pictures of our friend rafting, hiking, and at the Grand Canyon. Out in God’s world, sharing what she loved with those she loved.
Finding God and what is good when times are tough can be tricky. Close at hand, you may not be able to see anything but heartache. But He is it out there, in the distance. All you have to do is spot Him.
–SueBE
I’m not going to lie: January 2016 has been — pardon my French — a crapfest. My last surviving uncle was laid to rest, my friend Mary passed away, my best friend’s brother died — suddenly and without warning — and two of my cats are sick, one near death. My father-in-law has been unwell and in the hospital, and I have cellulitis, a staph infection of the skin and tissue, but neither the doctor nor I know why. Bills are mounting; emergencies continue to emerge. What’d I tell you? Crapfest.
Once, many years ago, I was walking through a “haunted house,” staged for Halloween. Some dim bulb decided to paper over the staircase, and I slipped walking down it. Fortunately, the walls were also lined with paper, with hands groping through cut-out holes, in an attempt to scare people. One of these kindly disembodied hands caught me as I fell and held me up. It was a lesson in an unlikely place.
It is hard, when one is in the dark, to imagine light. And yet I believe that February will turn this impending trainwreck of a year around. Or, more precisely, I believe that God will. In any case, I am moving forward.
What lies ahead may be
a pebble or a boulder,
slope or sheer drop.
It is not for me to know.
Faith whispers only this:
put one foot out at a time,
test the air,
put it down. Repeat.
The light will find you.
The floor will hold you.
The roof will not collapse.
There is a hand
waiting in the dark,
fingers tensing for your touch.
Find it.
Our Gus died this week. He was a common-looking tabby with uncommonly sweet green eyes, filled with the same uncomplaining gratitude as his mother’s, a stray named Elsa whom we also adopted and lost too soon. But I suppose all death feels too soon; Gus was a senior citizen by kitty standards. Still, we were not prepared for the tumor that quickly overtook his lymph node, growing monstrously in a week, and slowly choking him to death.
Gus was unbelievably kind-natured. He could not sleep alone; he had to be snuggled up against at least one other member of our household, and preferably several. He liked nothing better than to be petted, to bump his striped head against a person, or if necessary, any random soft thing. They say cats are loners. Gussie was proof positive that people say a lot of wrong-headed things about cats.
Although I love autumn — as do so many of us — I find that quite a bit of mourning is associated with this time. So many people I know have lost someone dear to them during these months, and the falling of the leaves, the dying of the light, all remind them of this loss. My friends Alice and Gina lost their mothers in the autumn. I lost my father, as did my friend Maureen.
Some say animals don’t belong in heaven; they have no souls. I cannot countenance such remarks. I think animals know God in a different way than we do, perhaps a more primal way — which is not to say a lesser way. In fact, they may know God more intimately than we can ever hope to. And I cannot believe in a heaven that does not include our pet friends. The day after Gus died, my husband wrote me the following message: “I like to think that when Gus-Gus isn’t teaching “Headbutting With Love” seminars and chasing featherstrings for hours without getting winded, he is snuggled in the middle of the biggest catpile ever.” It helped. But nothing can take away the pain right now. And nothing should. Every life should be mourned, however small, however furry.
Gus taught me that to be loving is a life’s work. And a darned good one, at that. I just hope that his passage was quick and painless, that in an instant, he found himself in that great catpile in the sky. In this season of death, sweet whiskered friend, I pray you found safe passage.
On the day before, he’d felt that his life wasn’t going the way he’d hoped. He might have thought of getting his GED or enrolling in trade school.
On the day before, he was just another kid with an ill-advised haircut. Most of his free time was spent surfing the net, looking for something he couldn’t quite name.
In another version of this day, he might have found a supportive mentor. A teacher from his youth who suggested a project to help the community, or a friend who offered him a job.
But on this day, his life took a terribly wrong turn. Dylann Roof brought a gun into a church and killed nine cherished children of God at a prayer meeting. The whole world cried out in pain upon hearing of this senseless tragedy.
What happened next was astounding. On the very next day, victims’ family members addressed him directly and said they’d forgiven him and were praying for him.
Now he’s entered into the public consciousness as a perpetrator instead of a person. It’s possible that with education and encouragement, he might have gone down a different path, using his own sense of disenfranchisement to help others in similar situations.
If only he had felt that his life had meaning on the day before. If only he’d known that no one else stands in the way of the life he’d hoped to achieve. If only he’d known that God’s grace extends into the hardest of hearts on the darkest of days.
Now, on this day, may we take comfort in the words of this wise sage, and come together to heal as a nation.
“We ask questions, Lord, we ask why… But even as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death….we can look through the windows of our faith and see hope and light, and we can hear your voice Lord, saying, I’m with you.”
Rev. John H. Gillison, Emanuel AME Church
Today, I noticed a husky trotting around the outside of my house to the fence in the side yard. It took me a second to realize that it was a neighbor’s dog named Karma. Many years ago, whenever he got out of his yard, he would cheerfully bound over to our fence and gaze lovingly at my dog, Sheena. Her tail would wag and they would “play-bow” to each other on opposite sides of the fence. After a few minutes of this sweet interaction, Karma would trot off, heading happily toward home. Sheena would watch him wistfully, never taking her eyes off of him until he was well down the road out of sight.
My Sheena has been gone for four years now, and I have to admit, seeing Karma again brought a tear to my eye. That’s Sheena, in the backyard in the picture, above.
Still, it made me happy that someone else remembers my girldog and thinks of her as fondly as I do, even all these years later. I said to my son, this sounds like the opening line of a novel: that was the morning that Karma came back.
And of course, it made me think of how we remember the people and pets we love after they’re gone. I’ve often felt that I didn’t fully appreciate them while they were here. But in the moment, with all the obligations and family-raising and bills to pay, we did the best we could.
The visit from an old four-legged friend reminded me not to grieve anew every time I think of those I’ve lost, but to remember the warm, fuzzy things: Sheena’s playful spirit and unconditional love (for me and for muffins!)
The way my father used to stand outside the garage of their house when I was coming over for a visit, where I’d pull up my car. I used to think it was his way of chiding, “You’re late!” but it was really his way of saying, “You’re the highlight of our day! Couldn’t wait for you to get here.”
My mother, quoting a favorite funny line from an old sitcom I’d never seen (“Azusa, Anaheim and Cucamonga!”) She’d also ask me every single time I’d visit, “Hey Ruth, have you got gas?” She meant in the car but I’d always punch my stomach and say, “Just a bit of agita, Mom.” She’d pretend to be exasperated with me, but she was smiling.
My cousin, Elaine, who even at our age (well into our “cougar” years) had a crush on actor Jason Momoa, and would send me email updates about his latest projects as if I was his biggest fan. I still wasn’t sure who he was until he had a role on Game of Thrones.
It was a crystal clear spring day when Karma came back. Everything was still and cool. There was no particular seismic shift in the planet. Just a small, sweet poke from Providence to be thankful for the people and pets I’ve loved and lost. Even though I don’t have a photographic memory, today, I was blessed with a photogenic memory. Beautiful times were all I could remember.
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