Life, Death and the Love of a Gray Tabby Cat

Our Kramer kitty left this earthly plane today. His frail body-- suffering the ravages of chronic kidney disease-- had grown too tired and weak for him to enjoy any remaining quality of life with us. And so, we said a tearful goodbye and allowed him to move on to the Great Big Beyond. His departure, even if a little unexpected, was a reminder that life is-- ultimately-- a one-way ticket.

Death is a strange thing.

I remember when my dad died... I was 18, and we were still living in Spain. My parents were divorced, and I was living with my mom. We got a phone call... he had died quietly in his sleep. He was only 60, and it was completely unexpected.

I remember my mom and I (they were still good friends) driving the 15 minutes to his house and seeing his lifeless body on the bed before the coroner allowed him to be taken away... in a dark green SEAT ambulance with a white cross on the side. It was the first time I had seen a dead person.

I remember my main feeling in the moment being that it felt strange that I would never speak to him again. I tried to muster some other kind of deeper feelings; some form of "dramatic sorrow" like you see in movies... but it would be months and years before I truly parsed his passing.

We went to Denmark, and he was laid to rest in the family plot in one of Copenhagen's largest cemeteries. I observed... and felt a strange sort of guilt at not feeling more; not feeling something. I have returned since then and stood by his grave... but all I ever experienced was a strange sensation of... lack of.

Many years later, my mother died. She was far away, in Spain... I was living in the US, in Port Townsend. Again, a phone call. She had passed away in hospital, after having spent a few months in a home for elderly folks with advanced dementia. I was 6000 miles away...

Her ashes were scattered by "other people" on a hillside near the village of Casares... I was too far away and too broke to do anything about it. I later went to the place where her ashes once went, but I felt only a strange emptiness. My last memory of my mother was a photo from a prior year's visit to her...

I went to a local park at the time of her memorial service and sat there for several hours...

I thought about how people die; how pets die... and "life simply goes on."

My mother was dead and I would never see her or talk to her again... and all around me, the world continued and people were going about their business and going to work; plumbers were unclogging backed up sewers; bakers were making fresh bread, couples were arguing and making up, and the UPS guy was delivering a television.

In between, I remember so many deaths... my Aunt Ulla who had a huge impact on my formative years and helped make me the person I am today; my stepfather, aunts and uncles... but also a host of furry creatures I have loved and shared space with.

They all have a place in my heart and my memories... but aside from that, they are but a long forgotten footnote in the greater history of life...

Today, a small furry creature left this plane of existence.

Aside from  a small handful of people who knew him, his passing was an insignificant event... a Facebook post that will be read for a day and then will vanish into the passing timelines of our existence.

Yet... to me he was important. More important than any timeline post... so much more than "just a cat." And I know that even 5... 10... 20 years from now, I will see a picture of him and feel echoes of the same mindnumbing sadness that lays heavy across my shoulders, as I sit here, writing these words.

Death is... indeed... a natural part of life. Whereas that old cliché may hold true, it doesn't make it any easier, and nothing truly prepares us for those moments when our loved ones-- be they human or animal-- suddenly are no longer part of our lives. All we experience is the residual emptiness; loss; a "lack of."

Looking back at my past experiences with my dad, and with my mom... and my many furry friends, I do understand the underlying reason for why people often say "You just need to get over it and move on!" after someone/something you dearly love dies. Whereas it may feel hurtful to us-- to me-- they weren't inside the experience; they were merely the figurative UPS Guy, delivering a television. As such, their perception lacks the depth we experience with ours.

What sets us off and reminds us of our grief shows up in odd ways. Kramer always used to push open the bathroom door and come in for some "toilet love," because he knew he had a captive audience. And so, I was in the bathroom and listened for the familiar "Thump... clickety-clickety-clickety-click" of him jumping down from the desk followed by claws against the hardwood floor...

... and then remembered I would never hear that sound again.

I don't know if animals feel love in the sense we know it... but I have had many cats (and dogs) in my life. This one was "different," somehow... we were bonded and "together" in some way I can't quite explain. I loved him, in a strangely deep and profound way. I'd like to think he loved me, in his own cat way...

And so I wept. For him... and for all the others...

Death... and Birth (redux)

Some weeks back, I contemplated "death," following the passing of my mother.

Typically, we associate death with the passing of a person, or perhaps of a beloved pet. But death can mean many things. Death of a company, death of an idea, death of a relationship, death of a habit, death of a paradigm, even death of an addiction. And death-- while often painful-- is not necessarily a bad thing.

In my family, the month of August was always a month of many birthdays. But it has also been a month of many deaths. This particular August has been a month of "deaths" for me.

As August ran out, time also ran out on my affiliation with a large web group I've been a part of, almost since its inception in 1996-- both as "just a member," and as "group management." On some level this symbolic "death" led me to a contemplation of exactly what this death was, and the circumstances surrounding "voluntary deaths." In a sense this was the death of a habit. In a different sense, it was the death of a pattern of not-growing; of not moving on. My point here being, that some things need to die, and should be allowed to die.

Sometimes we grow attached to things, in a not-so-healthy way. And we get stuck, and refuse to allow these things to "die." It could be the relationship we're in, going on year 18, even though the relationship "ended" five years ago, or it could be a habit we keep following, even though it is no longer relevant. Or, take therapy. The point of therapy is that we heal and move on, not that we remain in therapy, for 20 years.

Last night, I contemplated the issues of "moving on," compassion, and the hesitance we feel, when it comes to letting go. It led me to consider the problems we often face with patterns and habits, and how we keep doing the same toxic thing, over and over... somehow expecting a different result, next time around... driven, perhaps, by the belief that we can somehow find redemption "if only" it all works out. Often, there's a metaphorical process of running around in a circle going "The sky's gonna fall," while not actually doing anything to address the falling sky.

On a different level, we often stay in situations that involve others out of an alleged sense of compassion, for them, even though the issue at hand is actually about us. We "farm out" accountability for our stuckness by pointing out that were being "considerate" and "compassionate" towards someONE/someTHING outside ourselves. For me, it was often due to the fear of admitting that I simply wasn't able to make something "work." Each of us probably has a different "monster under the bed."

Pema Chödrön, one of my favorite spiritual Teachers, has written much on the topic of compassion. One of the misinterpretations of compassion seems to be that it somehow requires us to "blindly support" someone, in order to be "compassionate." We mistakenly believe that we must validate and underwrite every bad act and toxic habit, if we are to be truly compassionate. However, sometimes the most compassionate act requires us to be "the bad guy." We struggle with this, because how can it be "compassion," if someone gets hurt?

Sometimes a "house of cards" has to be allowed to fall. Perhaps the most compassionate act is to NOT protect someone from their self-destructive actions, but to allow them to actually fall into the black pit those patterns, so they will fully experience the consequences of their choices. Maybe it's a bit like parenting-- unless we actually take the training wheels OFF the bicycle, and thus expose the child to the possibility of falling, there can be no growth; they will never learn to ride the bike unassisted.

Perhaps part of what makes death (of the symbolic, rather than phsyical kind) "scary," is our tendency to forget that such deaths are more often "passages," than "endings." As one of my Teachers once pointed out: "When a door closes, you BY DEFINITION have stepped through, into a NEW space."

I'm by no means advocating that we should not respect, observe, remember and learn from the past... merely pointing out that sometimes we allow "mourning the old" to overshadow new opportunities to such a degree that we get stuck, unable to see and embrace the beauty and potential of what lies ahead.

Death... and Birth

My mother died, on Monday, August 3rd. She was 87 years old.

My father, who died when I was 18, would have celebrated his 91st birthday, today.

Perhaps it is in human nature to seek patterns in everything, and to attribute meaning and structure to random chaos, but it feels oddly symmetrical that mom "left" in time for dad's birthday.

Death is a funny thing. We experience it-- inwardly-- as massive upheaval; in some cases it feels like the world is coming to an end. And yet, when we look around, "nothing happened." We walk through the grocery, and nobody knows that our loved one dies. Bills arrive in the mail, regardless. We make dinner and eat, because life continues. Even when a great statesman or public figure passes, we observe "a minute of silence" and then go back to reading the paper, eating our hamburger or kissing our lover.

Although my mom had many "pink elephants" in the middle of her room, she had what seems like a surprising grasp on the relative "insignificance" of death. I realized this, as I was looking through old notes and journals, trying to get a sense of what "arrangements" should be made, after her death... and found notes from a conversation we had, in 2001:

"Promise me," she said (among other things), "that you won't have this big funeral and religious hooplah, with a bunch of people sitting around and moping. Don't waste time with a wake, and please, no flowers! If you want to have a gathering for me, for God's sake have one NOW, and invite me to it while I can be a participant. If you want to send flowers, send them to me NOW, when I am alive and can enjoy them."

Whereas I realize that funerals and "death rituals" are for the living, she did have a point. Celebrate life, while it is actually going ON, not after it's over.

Thinking about my mother's death, and my father's death... made me pause to consider what I expect, of my own death. And I realized that what's "important" to me is primarily that I am not a financial burden to, or imposition on, anyone. If you can, please do something useful with the biological container I left behind-- I suggest contacting the Life Legacy Foundation, and have them pick up the body. Beyond that? Do whatever you want! I'll be DEAD, for goodness' sake!