During the month of October in 2016, my dear beloved Mason (I also have the usually a pleasure of residing with Bastion, his black tabby brother), went through a rather terrifying series of events resulting from an error in medication that essentially poisoned him and nearly killed him. (So far, he’s still with us!)
There have been many new experiences and some new thoughts through all this. I had a few realizations, and at least a few I would like to share, from when Mason was staying at the kitty hospital:
When he passes from me, when my heart breaks, tomorrow or years from now, it doesn’t matter, I will be at some base level okay with it. Because he knows that I love him. I may get angry or frustrated and I’m not always a great companion but I love him and them, so completely.
It is always in my heart and sometimes I wonder if they do know it’s always there, if he wonders why I torture him so with this vet. And then I truly see him, just as he is. He knows I love him. And that I take his love into me, deeply and completely.
And he forgives me when I fail to take his offering of love in the moment, preferring to do whatever it is before my eyes.
And I forgive him and them for when they want nothing to do with me.
None of us are perfect, but we love, deeply, wholly, completely. And so I fear, and one day I will grieve, and I will still know myself blessed and without regret, because he knows I love him, just as deeply as I know he loves me. (And I hope he forgives me the vet trip [naturally he does, all turns out fine]. I miss him and I want to hold him. And hopefully get to bask in his love again {please forgive me for the indignities!}). He lives, we continue, we love and will love. I could really use a period of easy, calm day-to-day normalness though.
I am oddly proud of how I have handled it all. I stayed with the moment, all the moments. I have stayed with my feelings. I did not anticipate the potential depth of problems (much), iotw I didn’t pre-worry about what might happen; I stayed with what was actually happening. I was present, fully and completely, for him (and his brother). I did what I needed to do to look after them first, our home second, me third (with the total exception to the above for the necessary basics to keep me going: work, food, sleep). And I stayed connected to them both, as much as possible, in each moment as they came.
Tonight precursors the future. It is myself and one brother cat. The other isn’t here. One day this will happen. Unless by some bizarre circumstance both of them go at the same time, there will be a day when this is the reality. One cat. Brother gone. Just two of us (plus snakes shhhh). We will go from 3 to 2. (And then 1 but shhhh on that too, we really needn’t talk of it now, eh?). My heart will break. But only because it has been so completely filled.