Chapter Three: A WEEK AGO TODAY

In any loss there is that minuscule moment in wake time when you are not sure whether you are still dreaming or that everything will be in its place and as it should be once you do finally and fully awake. It's toward the end of that minuscule moment - milliseconds more likely - when you become painfully aware you are indeed not dreaming and, indeed, nothing is in its place or as it should be. The pain with which you fell asleep rises up again like a giant tidal wave to crash over your body, drowning your heart and crushing your will to lift yourself from the bed. As aimless, drifting flotsam you manage to place your feet upon what surely feels like sifting sand awash with a tide pool of tearful memories when happier, more welcome mornings were brightened with the secure and loving caress of soft fur gently brushing your bare ankle. And you ask yourself: "Is this really worth it then?"

Oddly and almost sadistically, this was the first morning I did not experience that gap nor those doubts or ask myself that question. It was odd and sadistic because it was exactly a week ago today we loss our little Sandy. A week ago today that we had scheduled the vet to come in the afternoon to help us. Help us? Help us say goodbye to our baby girl.

It wasn't until I was halfway along the seemingly endless journey from the bedroom to the kitchen that the ton of bricks came crashing onto me. It was Friday. Again. By this time last week we'd been arranging the area where we would sit with Sandy. It was also around this time last Friday my husband, Jim, and I sat cross legged on the floor, each holding a favorite brush of hers with Sandy going from one loving stroke to another. She was in Heaven. She would be in Heaven. And that's all I could think of as I spoke gently to her through tears I didn't want her to see or sobs I didn't want her to hear for fear she'd begin to stress out. Always sensitive to our every mood, our pets pick up on our happiness, anger and our sadness. All I wanted Sandy to feel from us then was Love. Eternal Love.

I would occasionally glance at the clock to check the time. I remember feeling like a condemned prisoner waiting for a call from the warden or the governor for a reprieve. The vet was due to call half an hour before he arrived, which was around 3:00pm. Twice the phone rang before that and twice we both scrambled to get it and twice it was a recorded political announcements. Normally these would be calls I'd find annoying. Now they were that sort of 'reprieve' I spoke of. The minutes ticked by like hours. The hours went by like minutes. We wanted her with us for just one more second. She was herself. She was seemingly happy. Yet when she'd stop again and again to lick at her wounds and ulcerated tumors on her belly and chest and I could see the patches of skin hanging and the black horrible tumors beneath or notice the drops of blood that stained the carpet or blanket where she'd been laying....I knew that each second brought her closer to more discomfort, more bleeding, more ulcerations, more tumors and eventual pain and leave only a distorted, shadow of her real self and definitely not a happy self. I knew it was the right thing we were doing, yet my heart ached with that knowledge.

Today is that 'anniversary'. I have not yet gone out to see the grave my husband dug for her in the backyard next to our Tyler. I was with him, of course, when we buried her. But could not remain while he finished. Besides, I think he wanted to cry by himself as he paid homage to her by neatening everything and extending the little fence that had formerly surrounded just Tyler's grave and now included hers. I'd asked him to place a similar stone cat upon the center of her her grave as we'd done on Tyler's site. I didn't see him do it, but he told me he did.

Perhaps this afternoon I will go out there for the first time. Perhaps. I do know I don't think I could stand to hear that phone ring.

I sit here, the blinking cursor my only 'companion' for it now has become the conduit of my thoughts, feelings, words and ultimate emptiness. I sit here late into the afternoon still in my robe, unable to eat or do much of anything else. The minutes tick by and the hour approaches. It's 3:15. It's 3:30 and now it's nearly 4:00pm. It was 4:00pm last Friday when my heart broke and my baby was gone.

I want to melt into the floor. I want to drown in pools of tears till I sleep. But no. What I really want is just to hold her in my lap. It would be about that time in the afternoon when she would come find me for "lappies". I think cats wear watches under their fur. And yet every time she'd shove her paw in my hand or raise it to rest on my chest as we sat together for our afternoon lappies, I could never feel anything other than the softness of that fur or the gripping of her pads on my finger.

My heart is so full. But maybe, just maybe, it's not so much filled with tears or ache as it is filled with her. For that's where she'll forever live and for as long as I can't tell the difference between my beating heart and her purrs.