The power of a cat…

This morning was quiet. Far too quiet. For the last eight years, I’ve been awakened by a soft insistent “meow” delivered gently to my face by my sweet cat. Not this morning. We said good-bye to Pixie yesterday. She’d been battling kidney and bladder issues for a good long while (urine the color of cranberry juice for the last two years) and the medical problems finally became too much. She will be missed greatly.

She was a rescue kitty, as all of our pets have been. We were told she was one-year-old when we got her. Someone had declawed her then dumped her – when she was found hanging around a 7-11 dumpster in fall of 2010, she weighed all of four pounds. We don’t know how long she had been starved of love and food. We don’t know how someone can declaw a cat and then let it go. The suburbs of Chicago are unforgiving places for house cats without a home, especially when they are declawed.

The sweetest thing ever… 

My sister, who ran a hyper-local news site, first told me about her. The rescue organization was going to post a notice in my sister’s news site about her after Halloween. She was a black cat and the organization did not like posting notices for black cats in October. I guess people do weird and violent things to black cats as part of their celebration of Halloween.

We had just lost Moses, our 18-year-old orange tabby cat earlier in the year. Moses was a beloved member of our family but he had a tumor pressing against his eye and in May 2010 we said good-bye to him. In the fall of 2010, we were still adjusting to life without any pets when my sister told me I should look at this cat that was seeking a family. I was not sure. It’s hard to say good-bye to our pets. I was working a demanding job and wasn’t sure I could take on the responsibility of a new pet.

But I knew I missed having a pet around. This one needed a good home. So in early November 2010, we made an appointment for me and my children to meet this cat, who at the time was being called Ashes, at the foster home.

We were told she was shy. My son lay down on the floor and the shy kitty came over and started purring. We knew she’d made her choice. We were hers. And we were so happy. We did not like the name “Ashes,” so we renamed her Pixie. It was, in our opinion, the perfect name.

After moving in with us, she hid under our bed for the first month, emerging only to eat, pee and poop. We were patient. And our patience was rewarded. She would emerge, realize that she was fine and the time she spent with us grew longer and longer. After the first month, she owned the home and our hearts. We would let her come out to our screened in porch and we would witness her become a wild creature as she watched the birds in our back yard. We were always slightly afraid she’d make a move to bust through the screen, though she never did.

In the summer of 2011, she made the cross-country trek with us from Illinois to North Carolina. She was not happy about the move. She pooped in her cage as we drove down our street away from our house for the last time, an appropriate beginning to a very long journey to our new life in the South. We moved into a rental house that was dark and full of mold. Everything was different. Everything.

When we got a puppy in the winter of 2012, Pixie was not happy about the new addition to the family. But she let him know his status (beneath hers) in the home. And he always knew she was the queen.

She knew how to command the best sunspots in the house… 

When we moved to our current home, Pixie thrived. She loved the sun. She even grew to appreciate the dog (we think.)

She knew how to lounge very well…

I don’t know when humans began to live with animals as pets. I know that I’ve spent nearly all of my adult life with animals. They fill the home with love and their presence. We don’t “need” pets but they seize our hearts and we grieve them when they die.

Pixie was truly the sweetest little thing. I wish our time together had been longer. She will be missed.

I close with Rudyard Kipling’s tribute to “The Power of a Dog” – but hope you change the words to know I am thinking about the power of a small, once-abandoned cat to tear my heart…

The Power of a Dog by Rudyard Kipling

THERE is sorrow enough in the natural way
From men and women to fill our day;
And when we are certain of sorrow in store,
Why do we always arrange for more?
Brothers and sisters, I bid you beware
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.

Buy a pup and your money will buy
Love unflinching that cannot lie
Perfect passion and worship fed
By a kick in the ribs or a pat on the head.
Nevertheless it is hardly fair
To risk your heart for a dog to tear.

When the fourteen years which Nature permits
Are closing in asthma, or tumour, or fits,
And the vet’s unspoken prescription runs
To lethal chambers or loaded guns,
Then you will find – it’s your own affair, –
But … you’ve given your heart to a dog to tear.

When the body that lived at your single will,
With its whimper of welcome, is stilled (how still!),
When the spirit that answered your every mood
Is gone – wherever it goes – for good,
You will discover how much you care,
And will give your heart to a dog to tear!

We’ve sorrow enough in the natural way,
When it comes to burying Christian clay.
Our loves are not given, but only lent,
At compound interest of cent per cent,
Though it is not always the case, I believe,
That the longer we’ve kept ’em, the more do we grieve;
For, when debts are payable, right or wrong,
A short-time loan is as bad as a long –
So why in – Heaven (before we are there)
Should we give our hearts to a dog to tear?

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Milestones and memories…

Next week, we have two important milestones – my oldest graduates from high school and my youngest two graduate from 8th grade. These milestones have created for me a tumult of memory.

I remember vividly putting my son on the bus for the first time. He was happy and proud and excited and puzzled at my tears. I did not plan to cry. But the tears flowed none-the-less. I remember when my girls “graduated” from Montessori. I most certainly did not plan for tears, but the tears came none-the-less.

I was shocked at the quiet that came when I put all three of my children on the bus for the first time. And that’s when I realized for the first time, nearly 10 years after becoming a mother, that motherhood is so much about letting go….

First day of school for the girls… could they be any cuter, these three?!

Next week also marks the umpteenth anniversary of my mother’s death – she has been dead for more years than she was alive. Her time here was finite and short; the time without her has been infinitely long and grows longer with every passing year. She saw none of her children graduate from anything – not grammar school, not high school, not college.

I am the oldest girl in a family of three girls and my mother had been dead a year when I graduated from 8th grade. After my mother’s death, we had hired a housekeeper – today, she’d be known as our nanny. Her children lived with us during the summer. It was a chaotic time, but what I loved about that first housekeeper was that she expanded our family with her family just as ours shrank incredibly. My mother’s side of the family endured significant losses in the next few years – both of her parents died two years after my mother; her sister, my beloved Auntie Ronnie, died eight years later, also of cancer (like my mother). Ronnie, like my mother, left three small children behind. My adolescence was a time of chaos and loss and grief and discovery.

Our housekeeper had heard stories of how my mother had made my baptism and first communion gowns. She volunteered, for whatever reason, to make my graduation dress. I thought it was pretty.

8th grade graduation – clearly I had entered “the awkward phase” of adolescence…

During the ceremony, a classmate leaned over and suggested that the sleeves were ripped. They weren’t ripped – they were loose as per the pattern. I was annoyed and embarrassed. I don’t know what possessed this classmate to point out a perceived flaw of my dress during the ceremony. But my middle school experience was full awkward moments so it’s no surprise that the ending of it contained one was well.

And next week, I witness all three of my children celebrate these milestones. My son is very much done with high school. My girls are so ready for high school. And I’m not ready to let go yet.

But let go, I must. It’s all part of the job.

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A death in the family

We just got word that my Uncle Tim died today – he was elderly; he had been ill; his death was not unexpected.

He was married to my mother’s sister – both my mother and her sister died of cancer in their 40s many, many years ago. My Uncle Tim was the repository of stories about my mother’s family. I had wanted him to meet my children but he never did. I had some of the most hilariously funny times at his house when we visited him in Ireland over the years. But I have not been back in a long time.

My parents and all my aunts and uncles and their spouses are dead now. Tim was the only one alive for many years. It’s inevitable but sad all the same. The immigrant’s ties to the family back home are loosened by distance but the ties with Tim remained strong just the same. I was lucky to have Tim welcome us into his home every time we showed up with questions about the family we lost when we were so very young.

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Reflections on a wedding gift…

My husband and I are fast approaching our 20th anniversary – I look at my plates, my silverware; all those things that were a part of my bridal registry and cannot believe they are all 20 years old right now.

But my oldest wedding gift was one bought long before I ever married. It is a pair of candelabra my mother bought for me (and a pair for each of my two sisters) to be given to each of us at our wedding.

I was 12 years old when she bought this wedding gift for me. She was three months away from dying. She knew she was dying and she knew she would never see her daughters marry. But she bought us each a present.

The plan, of course, was that my father would present the gift to us on our wedding day. But he, too, died before any of us married.

I brought out the candelabra last night – they had been packed away for many, many (too many) years. They are ornate and fancy. We are informal and casual. But I was thinking about my wedding anniversary and the many gifts we received and how much enjoyment we’ve gotten from them and I realized it was time to bring out the candelabra my mother had gotten for me. She was so very ill when she embarked on that particular shopping trip. I have no idea what she was thinking when she was looking through the silver section of Marshall Fields. I cannot begin to imagine what it would be like for my mother to go wedding-gift shopping for three small girls, the eldest being just 12, knowing that she would never see us grow up and marry.

There is so much emotional weight in that choice she made to purchase these gifts.

So last night, in celebration of my birthday, I put out the gift my mother had bought for me so many years ago, the wedding gift bought years before my wedding. It is a beautiful gift. Solid, strong, decorative. And when I light those candles, I think of my mother and how much she missed and how loss never leaves you. But the mementos stay and remind us of the love that went into the gifts we have received from those we’ve lost.

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This is life…

I was on the phone the other day, talking with a friend of mine. My husband was out on a bike ride, so I was on the phone while alone in the house with children.

(Can you see where this is going?!)

I’m at the stage where chatting on the phone with friends is as rare in my life as large diamonds, but my friend and I were chatting about a dear friend who had died last weekend. We were both overwhelmed with the news and, frankly, we were both a little teary.

Clearly, this was an important conversation.

Then, suddenly, all hell starts breaking loose upstairs, where my children have been sent to get ready for bed.

It is difficult in my house for my children to get ready for bed without proper supervision. There are all sorts of battles that can erupt – over who gets the toothpaste first; who stands where at the sink; who gets to use the toilet first, etc. and so on.

From the sound of it, there was a major war going on upstairs. And I am rather irritated because I am alone without the hubby to help and I want to be talking on the phone with my friend about my dear friend and all hell is breaking loose and from the sound of it, if I don’t go upstairs to stop the war, there may be casualties.

Then my son comes down, giggling hysterically. “Mom,” he says, ” they’re fighting about who farted the loudest!”

My two six-year-old girls, dainty flowers that they are, were at war over the sounds of their farts. Not sure if the louder fart was the winner or loser in that battle, but there you go. A new battlefield had been established. And there was a sound and fury to the war that had grown exponentially in just moments.

I decided to plunge into the fray. I explained the situation to my friend, who was astonished to have our conversation about grief interrupted by a story about farts. I went up into the battle zone with the phone so she could hear.

When I entered the bedroom, it was obvious the battle had shifted from farts to beds. One girl had pulled down the covers of the other girl’s bed. Both were screeching at the top of their lungs.

I held the phone up so my friend could hear it all. And she heard my girls screeching the exact same thing to me. “Stop looking at me!” “Stop LOOKING at me!”

And because they are identical twins, the tone and sound of the statement sounded exactly the same – as if one person was fighting with herself.

My friend and I couldn’t help it. We both burst out laughing. And we both knew that our dear friend who died last weekend would have laughed the loudest. In this moment of grief and loss, laughter rang out, and I was reminded once again that life is complex. Emotional. Contradictory. Life is war and anger and love and grief in one room. And life is laughter. Never forget the laughter.

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Friends, Facebook and the Absence of Memory

I posted pix on FB recently – and a friend from HS, who I’ve reconnected with thanks to FB, made a comment that my son looks like my dad.

It was an innocuous comment that caught me off guard.

Yes, my son looks very much like my dad. But my father died more than a quarter century ago – and there are very few people I see in my day-to-day life who have any memory at all of my father. He simply does not exist for anyone I’ve met since 1984.

So to have someone note the resemblance my son has to my father is highly unusual. And it made me sad. My son is so very much like my father – but he’ll never really know that because he never got to know my father.

Memory matters. Our memories of people are very powerful. When you lose someone you love, you lose the ability to introduce that person to all the new people who enter into your life as time passes on. My friend’s comment on FB made me realize that my parents, so important to me, are completely absent in the lives and memories of most people I see everyday.

And I realized yet again that the tentacles of loss are very long.

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Death in the Afternoon…

Yesterday, at about 1:30 p.m., a woman named Deana Reynolds slipped free of “the surly bonds” of earth and breathed her last breath. Less than a year ago, she was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer called Burkitt’s Lymphoma. Yesterday, the disease killed her.

Deana fought very very hard against an invidious invader. The pain she described since her diagnosis seemed unimaginable. Yet she held on, signing up for aggressive treatment at a hospital far from home. Her goal, always, was to live for her family. Even as the cancer got bolder, she never gave up hope that she would rise above it in the end.

Deana left behind a husband and two small boys. Two boys who are too young really to have memories of their mother. And she left behind her parents who never expected to bury their child.

Cancer is a terrible foe. A most terrible foe. It steals too much from us. I’m glad I participated in a fundraiser for cancer last week. The task – the open water swim – was difficult, but I had been inspired by Deana’s fight – her strength – her courage. She reminded me that giving up is never an option.

Deana also set a powerful example of what it is like to face a terrible challenge with extraordinary grace and strength. And I’ll never forget the sage advice from Deana’s husband, Jack: hug your family today. Deana’s death reminds me that we won’t always have the option.

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It’s Mourning in America…

Ticket sales were awesome. (And scalpers made a fortune.)

The venue was packed.

The show was filled with high-profile talent, including Mariah, Usher and Brooke Shields.

The audience was appreciative.

The gold coffin, front and center, cost $25,000.

Yes, I’m talking about Michael Jackson’s funeral/memorial/well-rehearsed “farewell to the superstar” performance at the Staples venue in LA. And all right, I admit it. I’m utterly mystified by the relentless coverage of the Michael Jackson death – and I’m equally bewildered by the outpouring of grief millions of people seem to be feeling for this performer.

Whatever you want to call it, the mourning for MJ is big, bold and a rather bizarre spectacle. He was a man graced with exceptional talent, a huge bankbook and the love of family, friends and fans. But a look at the mutilation he inflicted on his face is powerful evidence of a strange misery he endured, despite fame, fortune and a whole lotta love, if we’re to believe the people who spoke at yesterday’s memorial.

And I find it all rather sad that a man whose family thrust him too early into the spotlight decided to say farewell to him also in the spotlight. I don’t really understand taking one’s grief and making it public like this. I also don’t understand the visceral reaction millions of people, strangers to Michael, had at the news of his death.

Perhaps I’ve lost too many loved ones of my own to get wrapped up in grief for someone I’ve never met.

In the end, what really matters is that three small children are now orphans. Orphans that have a voracious public eager for a glimpse of them. I hope they can grow a few more years without the glare of attention focused so hotly on them. Because having lost my mother at a young age, I know how devastating the loss of a parent can be for a child. No one should have to recover from grief with a powerful media focus shining on their every move.

In the end, when you strip away the sparkly gloves, the spangled uniforms, the skin peels, the surgeries, the rumors, the slumber parties, the hype, the hysteria, what you’re left with is a father who left his children far too early. Michael’s beautiful daughter Paris pulled the curtain away from all the wizardry. Her heartfelt tribute revealed the man behind the mirror to be a beloved daddy, who will by missed by his children.

My sympathies go out to the superstar’s three children.

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“Behold the Circle of Life!”

When my son was a wee little guy, we discovered The Lion King, the G-rated film that showcases the life of Simba, whose father dies a brutal death (knocked off a cliff by his brother, to fall to his death in slo-mo – which always impressed me as a rather visceral scene for a G-rated movie.)

I digress.

Despite the violence and hatred shown by Scar, Simba’s uncle, I love this movie. And for years – for years! – whenever I heard the opening track, I’d tear up like the moody mother that I am.

That first song is called The Circle of Life – and it’s just a fabulous song, with fabulous lyrics, lyrics so popular that our priest used them when he baptized all three of our children. He held up the babies for all in the church to see and said, “Behold the Circle of Life!”

I was a weepy mess for that part of the ceremony.

Again, I digress. I digress because this story is about Mother’s Day, a day that for me, a person who lost my mother when I was 12, has always been a rather gloomy and sorrowful day. Mother’s Day is a heavily marketed event, a day that celebrates all the joy and wisdom mothers bring to their families, a day that if you have no mother to celebrate, you tend to feel left out and alienated.

Years ago, well before I became a mother, I decided to take back this day – I used Mother’s Day to mark the day my planting season would begin. So for years on Mother’s Day, I would be found in the garden, planting herbs and flowers as my tribute to my mother, a woman who loved gardening herself.

But still, planting flowers didn’t really take away the sense of loss I would feel on that day.

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Lessons of Spring

My mother died when I was 12. It was spring, a lovely day, sunny, warm, a bright day, filled with promise and renewal, the day she died.

It was gray, blustery, stormy, the day we buried her. Terribly windy. Rain came before the priest stopped talking at the grave. We rushed to our cars. I remember the slap slap slap of the windshield wipers as the black limo headed out on the long drive home.

The rain made it feel as if God was prolonging the joke. The joke that had been my mother’s death by cancer. The leeching of her energy, her beauty, her life over time, which is what cancer does.

Of course a storm would rage when we buried her. That’s how we felt, standing there at the grave, looking at her casket, raging with grief, wondering what life would hold for us.

The day I returned to school after her death, I remember sitting in the locker room. I was in 7th grade. All of us were shucking the blue bloomers we were forced to wear for gym, changing back into our school clothes. I remember Ellen S. – the girl voted “most likely to succeed” – a sweet, beautiful girl (the kind you’d want to be if you were stuck back in 7th grade again) – staring at me, tears in her eyes.

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