Bear Bear, my spirit companion in a Siamese male, is dead. He has been since February. There have been other deaths, too: my last techie business (Bizmile), a relationship (or two.) I have been too empty to write until now...
I am weaving together a new life: chaplaincy school and this strange little gift called Lyft (the pink mustache people which I will be focusing on in later posts.) I am in the renewal phase of this ebb and flow tango in form; I am ready to get naked and write again as the technology refugee that I am.
This blog has been waiting, patiently for me to be ready. Bear's death has, at last, made me ready.
To catch you up (the random reader of this blog) I have had a lot of death in my life for non wartime. But the death of my cat of 18 years is the most tender and dear. He accompanied me
through most of the deaths I have racked up: my mother, brother, father, grandmother, businesses, relationships, a divorce, a bankruptcy. It has been a turbulent two decades "in the arena" and my personal life.
Bear was my devoted and protective companion since he climbed
up into my lap at 3 weeks old. He
was both tiny and fierce in his claiming of me; his needle claws just barely
registering on my pain threshold as he scaled my bare leg. This fluffy being plopped into my lap
as if he had just done Mt. Everest.
As clearly as if he was speaking English, he said, “You’re mine.” And I was. He owned me. He was my companion in form and made numerous drop-in visits to my dreams as well.
Now that he is gone, I am faced with a deeper form of
self-ownership.
Having cared for my mother for eleven years while she suffered from
Dementia, her death in hospice, just under two years ago, was barely endurable and I was
merely a witness. However with Bear, I am haunted with the choice to intervene and ease his death to be sooner
rather than later. Once the
decision was made with an x-ray that confirmed his continued suffering and
eventual asphyxiation from fluid in his chest, I called the mobile Vet.
It could not have been gentler death but still does not give me peace. As I lay there with
Bear in my embrace, the vet came in and ministered the first shot to put him in
a deep sleep. He went under
purring - laying on my chest - me rubbing his neck in just the right place, in just he right way, noticing but not caring about that stranger in the room. My face was so close, I could hear his
breathing change from labored to short.
With the second shot to stop his heart, he was instantly gone.
In that moment, the memory of my first death as witness, many, many
years before re-focused me. How one
minute the spirit is there, the body inhabited and animated, then the next
there was an emptiness – a shell.
It was the ‘right” thing; it still feels wrong. Bear did not want it, I did not want it
but it was kind. I also freely admit the selfishness of not wanting to see him
suffer.
At this point, Bear’s death is more like an incremental piece of my own. With the his passing, a
part of me has most certainly died. I have no
thoughts of immortality, I simply hope that I can fully live the lessons of my Bear
cat.
1. to play (and
purr) anytime I get the notion
2. to take my time
(and treat time like the illusion it is.)
3. To fiercely do what is mine to do - i.e. to live my own life not someone else’s
An old Italian friend (who also cared for his mother until her death so
he knows something about the front lines of love,) wrote to me upon my mother’s
passing. “The sands of time keep
slipping past flowing through our fingers. It feels so deliciously good, would
we stop it if we could?”
Death is the
thing that keeps us honestly living the life we most want (or cowering censoriously muttering in the corner.)
Death is the time keeper and it is our time to dance – right
now.
