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I lost my kitty three months ago….my sweet boy…my Theo. He was eleven…too young…too soon…lost years I was due because life has already taken so much. He was beautiful…Life was so gracious in how he was brought to me. And now Life seems cruel for taking him so soon…just nine years after I got him…and on the same day I lost my mom. The last phone call with my mom was actually about Theo…he had had surgery that day and I was worried about the anesthesia. Such relief to bring him home, groggy but whole…to only get the phone call three hours later that would shatter my world in a way unexpected. Like Loss and Grief had slipped in anyway…through a window while I was guarding the door. Partners in crime, Loss is the snatch-and-grab thief whereas Grief is the squatter…the one that comes to live in the subsequent void.

So here it is again - Grief…this shadowy mist that just hangs over every valley in my heart…that breaks and rolls to allow rays of sunshine before it closes in and envelopes all like it has actually become a part of me.

I know this territory…my own internal landscape…so I can continue to navigate the terrain of my life even in this mist. I also know well this shape-shifter cloud of Grief itself…that it will move and form, each day different from the prior. And I also know it will be but a season…that even Grief dies its own death, to then be rebirthed into Love once again. That the two are so interchangeable they cannot ever be truly separated.

And yet still, it is Grief…and it must live its life as I live mine…even we are so intertwined as to be interchangeable. This is simply the cloak it is wearing today. Like the mist it will eventually lift and roll out; and it will return again, dressed in different attire.

Yet even though I know this dance, try to give myself over to the music of Life, it hurts when Grief cuts in to lead, and when it seemingly missteps so squarely on my toes. I am no longer dancing but being pulled through the music, swirled and spun now from having lost the beat some three steps ago. I know that I will eventually find the music again…but for the moment I have no choice but to let Grief lead.

So here it is again this morning…up early and screaming to be fed - same as the other cat that remains. The wrong cat - if there can be such a thing. The sweet and unique cat that would not possibly be the wrong cat in a different situation. But in this one, she always was…she was to be Theo’s companion not mine - for my heart was already full. And now we are left with each other…each with a void that neither can fill. It’s awkward and I honestly don’t know if it will ever change; the void must shape-shift as well.

I really miss him. It’s so strange to feel the ache in my heart and to realize how much I loved him - even more now than when he was here. Presence brings width and Grief brings depth. And soon enough the great divide of Time and Space will be irrelevant. Only Love exists any way…and Grief is just one component of that great Love.

Until then my sweet boy…until then. ❤️

So sorry for your loss.

I so sorry. About your losses.

These creatures that come into our lives can make an impact that we could have never expected.

I hope you are a little bit wrong. I hope that somehow you all will grow / learn to help each other. (You and your other cat.)

And I am so very about the loss of your mom.

[This message edited by WhatsRight at 2:51 PM, Sunday, May 21st]

oh truthsetmefree, how beautifully you describe this dance we go through in life!!!

I lost my sweet boy 3 days after we lost my dear brother, and honestly it was and still is hard to untangle these losses. What you created here is profound. I am going to print it off and save it to reflect on (privately, I don't use FB and media like that). You have the beginning of a classic, there...

And for some consolation, I felt exactly as you describe about your 'wrong cat' towards our girl dog, the one we got to be just like our boy - except she could never be just like him. After we lost him, I was faced with her neediness and our own losses. I knew it was time to grow in Love, so I made extra efforts to console her. It was sort of an automatic action, not backed up with depth of feeling. But soon, she responded to the new attention by rralizing we do love her, just for herself. It took a few months. Today she acts like the sun rises and sets on whatever Mommy is doing. She really wasn't like that, before. I believe it's because I shifted my feelings more towards her. But once I did, she has grown in my heart and now I see the treasure we still have. Just in time, before our new puppy arrives next week.

((((Truth))))

Xxxx

What a great tribute. I lost my 5 year old girl, who came to me as an adult stray 3.5 yr old 2 months before DDAY. She died 3 days after I buried my dad 1.5 years later. Like yours, she was too young. I was CRUSHED. It put me back in therapy.

I am so so sorry for your grief. I hope you find peace with your other kitty and with the thought that Leo is purring with your mom in whatever comes after this life.

Truth,

I am sorry for your loss.

PP

Ohh so sorry for your loss, sending you love & support 🙏

Thank you all for the support, for the sharing of your own sweet babies…and for giving me a safe place to pour out my heart. It’s strange the places where grief digs in…that can seem confusing when comparing the losses (or why we are even prone to do that!). I do wonder if the purity of the love we receive from our pets causes our grief to be at a different level - one that is not socially acceptable to compare so therefore it has to be socially minimized.

It’s also somewhat strange to me to be in such well-mapped waters and yet simultaneously feel uncharted. I feel this grief in my heart - physically…to lay awake some nights and literally just feel my heart ache, the different losses washing in and out like waves…is this my mom, my dad, my marriage, my cat? Yet they are indistinguishable…like Grief is its own entity and those others just the skin it wears at the moment. And the ache also feels eerily familiar…much like Love can swell up in your heart at certain really happy moments and cause that same ache.

And then it is gone…leaving a confusing mix of relief and an almost desperate longing for it to return. Like all the water has receded and now the internal sands are barren and dry…there is just the dull void…and the fear that maybe you really are over it…that maybe it won’t return again….that it has all become insignificant. And I’m caught between the desires - do I wish my heart to sleep, to go quiet…or do I wish for it to dream, to remember - or even to wail if that’s what it wishes to do. Am I in or am I out on this thing called life? I really don’t know.