Grief

Tuesday 12/1/09

Grief is an . . . interesting process. It seems to be something that is somewhat unique in its expression by an individual the same as joy, hate, fear, other emotions.

This past week I've learned something about myself: that I grieve the same way I hate. I try to reconcile through understanding (because I am a logical adult capable of reasoning most of the time), then I erase.

My cat Annie finally hit that last quick slide into kidney disease and in the space of 4 days went from climbing into her favorite window to weakly holding onto life, asking for water and then refusing to drink it. So on Wednesday 11/25 at about 5pm I held her in my arms as she first succumbed to anesthesia (I requested it) and then euthanasia.

She'd been with me for 15 years--only slightly less than 1/2 my lifetime now--and with me through so many experiences and adventures. Even now, almost a full week later after her actual death (preceded by about 3 months of illness) I still miss her so much I can't talk about her without crying.

So much of this blog is just inane, insignificant chatter about my own life as told to myself; I don't often delve into the significant except for whatever can be pulled from my angry, frustrated rants. If ever there was a significant moment worth posting, putting Annie to sleep on Wednesday was one of them. In my mind that night I could only think of one thing to say, "Tonight I had to say the last goodbye to my beautiful, brilliant girl." But I couldn't bring myself to do it, to acknowledge something that was so final, so important.

Instead I spent a quick 30 minutes cleaning up her food dishes, throwing out her uneaten food, bundling all the towels used to keep her warm into a laundry pile along with the usual bedsheets and clothes. I tidied up the boxes I'd lined up next to the bed as a "ramp" she used when she had been strong enough to walk but too weak to jump. And I threw out her unused medicine from the refrigerator. Then I went to my mom's house for our family Thanksgiving as planned and allowed myself to be distracted for the rest of the evening.

When I finally got home, I just stood in the bedroom, looking for something else to change, something else to modify so I didn't have to see all the little traces of her, all her favorite places in that one room . . . her last place in that one room. I thought about sleeping at a hotel, but I didn't go. I took a bath, and cried myself to sleep.

In the last week I've bought a new feeding bowl set for Toby, I've shopped for new towels, and I've picked all the little black cat-hair pills off the bedsheets so that at every turn I'm not constantly thinking to myself "the last time I cleaned this Annie was alive."

Tonight is the last of it--washing the litter pan as I do every month when the litter is changed. The last time I did it, Annie was alive.

I only wish it were so easy to erase from my mind the sound of her particular "chirrup", or the soft angora-like feel of her coat (which always needed to be combed, but god help anyone who tried), how she would insist I follow her to bed if I was still up around 1am, or the barely-there purr of contentment when she'd settle in for the night next to me.

I guess some things should not be forgotten.