And Then There Was One

Part 1

If you see my facebook posts, you'll know that I'm the last survivor of the small family my husband and I created with our two cats, who came to us as youngsters of seven months old in July 1998. 

Now, seventeen years later, my cat Levi had a sudden and rapid decline in health, and on Friday last he was put to sleep.  The same thing happened to his sister Freya eleven months previously. And her demise was only two years after my husband departed this plane.

For his last eleven months, Levi and I developed a very intense relationship. He was a cat of very intense feelings altogether. My late husband was the great love of his life, and it took him many long months to come to terms with that loss. Andrew adored him too; he was the favourite cat. That was OK, because Freya was my favourite and I was hers. Oh, don't get me wrong; the love went all ways between all four of us. It's just that there were these preferences, which we all knew and accepted.

After Freya, too, left us, I devoted myself to Levi. She had always been in his life. They had sibling rivalry, jealousy and little spats, but they loved each other dearly too and were good companions. I was afraid he would go into deep sadness at her death, as he had after Andrew's. I missed my little girl – my familiar – but I'd had some months to prepare myself for losing her, since her diagnosis of cancer, its remission and return. After she'd gone, I put all my energy into keeping Levi feeling loved and happy.

She was always the spokesperson for the two of them. When she wasn't there any more, he had to learn to speak up for himself. He had a funny little chirruping miaow which he had hardly used. He learned that with me this was not always sufficient. If I was at the computer working on a piece of writing, he would miaow at me and I would tell him, 'Yes, in a minute,' but sometimes it got to be a long minute. Levi learned that when I was at the computer, he needed to yell!

I had only just remarked that we had evolved new routines and established new habits pertaining only to the two of us, when all at once he was gone too. They seem to be quite good routines and habits which serve me well for myself, so at present I keep them.

If I was too late getting to bed, Levi would come and nag me. (As Freya was my familiar, he was my guardian.) After getting shingles three times this winter – an immune system issue – I conceded he was right and I must take better care of myself. Getting to bed at a decent hour is now incorporated into my routines, after a long life of being a night owl. I even added a brief afternoon nap in the spare room, where he occupied one bed, me the other; and that continues too – after a lifetime in which daytime naps were a great rarity. It's comforting, now, to close my eyes and imagine him still there on the other bed.

I miss my 'supervisor' checking out everything that was going on in the house to make sure it met with his approval.

I miss him coming in through his cat door, straight to wherever I might be, telling me vociferously all about his latest adventures outdoors.

He liked to come and sit beside me on the couch when I watched TV of an evening. This was smooching time – lots of pats, stroking and scratching behind his ears, telling him how beautiful he was and how much I loved him, while he purred and rubbed his nose against me, patted me with his paws, and tried to groom me as if I was another cat. On nights when I didn't watch TV, he would lie near my office chair or under my desk at my feet.

Bedtimes are hard now. So are waking up times. They were major cuddle times. When I started getting ready for bed, he would hang about, watching, until I was actually in bed. I'd be propped up against big pillows, with a cup of cocoa and something to read, and he'd join me on the bed and cuddle up, purring, for more of the same treatment as on the couch. Eventually he'd settle down beside me and go to sleep – until I put the light out.

Occasionally he would stay all night with me, but mostly, after I went to sleep, he'd find a spot elsewhere – by the heater on cold nights, or on my office chair, or even outside somewhere. He'd be back on the bed to help me wake up in the morning, and that was another big cuddle time. 

He liked to butt my forehead with his. I read somewhere that when cats do this they are laying claim to you. So I would do it to him too, telling him (a la Game of Thrones) 'You are mine and I am yours.'

The top step, at the front door, was a favourite spot. He enjoyed lying in the sun there. Even if he was inside the house when I went out, he would be on the top step waiting for me when I drove in, and would come padding down to meet the car. I was always scared he'd get under the wheels, but he never did.

That was not a new thing; it happened when Freya was alive, too. She preferred to enjoy the sun in the back yard, where she had her own special spot on the old blanket covering my mini-trampoline. When I arrived home, she would come from around the side of the house to greet me, picking her way daintily across the lawn while Levi majestically descended the front steps. They"d reach me together. But for the last 11 months it was only Levi. He seemed more intent and purposeful than ever in waiting to welcome me home. 

Simultaneously, now, I see in my mind his black shape waiting, rising and stretching, coming down the steps ... and I see the bare steps, and his absence.

A Dear Ghost

I looked at the date and saw it was his birthday, again. I smiled at my dear ghost and wrote him a little poem about remembering his eyes — his eyes which I always likened to the summer ocean. He was all sun, it seemed to me: light and warmth, shining. Yet in truth he had little warmth or light in his young life, my 24-year-old love who did not live to be 25, choosing to leave eight days earlier.

That was in 1982. This year, 2010, was the first of all the years since then that I missed noticing the anniversary of his death. But my body remembered and gave me a cold. My psyche remembered and gave me a sudden loss of delight. From one moment to the next, the world was drained of all colour, all meaning. I should have remembered then.

After he died I got my ears pierced. Before, I had always thought of that as self-mutilation; afterwards I wanted some visible, permanent sign that everything was irrevocably changed. This time, not consciously, not on purpose, I got my hair cut very short — too short. It will grow again, of course. As for the earrings, they long ago became personal adornment, not a symbol of grief.

On Friday I saw the psychologist. I told her about my present love, my 81-year-old love, coming close to death in the last two months and slowly recovering. I relived my distress and fear. It seemed more than enough to account for my symptoms. I cried in her office for most of the hour and walked out with a new lightness.

Then I was able to recall the recent anniversary: the death that did happen, after which nothing was ever the same again. I was able to see that these two occasions of pain, these two far-apart winters, had become emotionally entwined.

He came to me several times after he died. At first he contacted a psychic friend who would get in touch and tell me the messages; then I began using this friend as a medium, asking questions over a cuppa and receiving what answers there were. Finally I could see and hear him myself, without needing a third party. I was not reconciled to what had happened, but I understood it better. I still took many months to move through the stages of grief, even though I set out to experience them fully. I thought that plunging right in would get me out the other side quicker, and I’m still certain I was right. But it wasn't very quick.

I went for long walks alone, talking to him in my head. My psychic friend told me that our grief keeps the souls of the dead from moving on immediately. ‘Too bad,’ I told my dead love, talking to him in my head as I walked. ‘You chose to go; you owe me my grief.’ I walked through one of the longest, hottest summers on record. I barely noticed the heat.

One day, next autumn, the world regained its radiance. I saw life shining in grass and leaf; the sun and sky had colour. Not that I didn’t still mourn, but I could be in life again; I was back.

For many years it was as others too have described their own situations: not a day went by that I didn’t think of him. Even now, it still happens often. The emotion accompanying the thoughts gradually changed. It’s always love, that doesn’t change; but now I can think of him with happiness. My husband’s recent danger brought back the old pain; I know too well already what it’s like to lose the most important person in my life. Perhaps it’s good that I’ve had a little preview. Last time the death was a shock as well as a sorrow. I sat down with a cup of coffee one Saturday afternoon and opened a newspaper, and there was the headline. (No-one knew that I was someone who might need to have it broken to me ... but there, how do you break such news anyway?) Next time — if I don‘t go first — well, I have been prepared.

Meanwhile, about to go to bed just after midnight last night, I noticed today’s date: his birthday. I’ve come out the other side of grief yet again. I smiled at my dear ghost and wrote him a loving poem, a birthday gift. Did my thoughts call him to me this time too, or was it simply a memory? No matter. Love never dies.

What if you can’t feel?

Reposted from my DragonStar Rose mentoring site on MySpace:

'I'm just numb,' wailed my friend. 'Ten years, and now the relationship's ended! And I can't cry, no matter how hard I try, even though I know there are lots of tears there.' She thought maybe she was subconsciously afraid to let go in case she never stopped!

'Try looking for other things to cry about,' I suggested. 'If there are tears waiting to be shed, it doesn't matter what you attach them to, it only matters that they get released. That way, you can do it bit by bit and you won't get overwhelmed.'

I know that one. I haven't yet shed tears over the recent confirmation that my youngest and I are poles apart and – the way it looks now – may never be able to maintain any kind of relationship. I too am fairly numb, still, on that aspect of recent events, though I am feeling other things. Joyous relief at the fact that I so nearly lost my marriage to Andrew, and didn't. Heightened appreciation of my life and all the good things in it. And quite a deal of anger towards the said youngest, mixed with pity for him (which he would repudiate furiously) because I think he has focused on his mind at the expense of his heart. I do know there is grief there, but, like my friend quoted above, I simply can't find the tears.

Except ... I have been finding in my own life the confirmation of my advice to my friend. Not that I went looking for occasions to weep, but life is life and they do come.

My husband unwittingly joined a gambling site online, thinking it was a straight auction, and was inveigled out of $25 more than he meant to spend, but had so much trouble working the system that he never got to use the bids he had bought anyway. It's OK, I sorted it and we'll get a refund, but I cried and screamed out of all proportion to what had happened. I do have a horror of gambling, due to a brief early marriage to a compulsive gambler, and a long second marriage to a man who gambled in business instead and eventually sent us bankrupt after a number of near-thing dramas. Even so, that was long ago now, I have done a lot of working through it since, and this was a mere $25 which we are going to get back.

Then last night I suffered sudden excruciating ear pain and temporary deafness - which at the time I didn't know was temporary - and again cried out of all proportion, even for such pain and fear. (Turned out to be a middle ear infection, and I'm already heaps better after getting treatment.)

I said to Andrew, 'I think my grief about S is leaking through. I haven't been able to express it directly yet.'

It's not that these situations weren't distressing. That's the point, I think. There has to be a genuine cause for tears, so that they will happen – then, if they go on a lot longer and seem even more anguished than the presenting situation warrants, they're probably doing double duty. And a good thing too! We don't want our emotions festering away inside us, where if they stay long enough they can make us physically ill.

Case in point – my middle ear infection is associated with a cold I've been fighting off for a couple of weeks. Metaphysically, a cold can be giving yourself permission to take time out, but I haven't done that for many years as these days I give myself conscious permission. So that leaves the other option – suppressed grief. Well, well, well! (And the right ear? What is it, I wonder, that I am trying not to hear consciously? Could be various things, and I do have ways to find out in the very near future.)

It is the same with anger. If you think you've got some of that festering away and that it'd be better out than in, but you have trouble releasing it, look for other causes of anger. You won't have to look far; there are plenty in the big wide world, if not in your immediate space. The Government is usually doing SOMETHING that annoys you at least some of the time. And we still have wars, poverty, disasters and incompetence on a grand scale. You'll find something!

Sometimes it helps to just start going through the motions of releasing. The release may well build! I am thinking of a time when a long friendship ended nastily. I regarded it as a betrayal of trust and even outright cruelty by the other person. (Still do, actually.) I was also in some shock about that. As soon as I extricated myself from the situation and found some breathing space, I took the advice I dish out to others – I bashed a pillow. This hurts neither oneself nor the other person.

It amazed me what happened. At first it felt a bit contrived, but not for long. The momentum built rapidly. I not only punched the pillow, I ended up kicking it and bashing it repeatedly against the wall. I not only sobbed but snarled and yelled. We're talking absolute, ferocious rage. It went on for ages.

Well – better all THAT out than in! Better than contracting any of the major illnesses in which suppressed rage is a factor.

I still have the same opinions about that person, but have long felt calm indifference to the whole matter.