I took my frail old-girl kitty to the vet’s this morning for scheduled dental x-rays I somehow knew in my gut would be ugly in their revelations. And they were, even more than I had bargained for, absolutely crushing: a mass growing fast up near one eye. I thought she would at least be going home with me today, for a few more coveted months, weeks, days. But I didn’t get a vote. Roads run out when they will, with we sorry travelers standing there at the end, shaking with aching empty arms, up against a closed horizon.
And they were, even more than I had bargained for, absolutely crushing: a mass growing fast up near one eye. I thought she would at least be going home with me today, for a few more coveted months, weeks, days. But I didn’t get a vote. Roads run out when they will, with we sorry travelers standing there at the end, shaking with aching empty arms, up against a closed horizon.
They came into the room with the fading-out drugs and the attempts at compassion in the face of a full-grown wreck of grief, and that was that, with my little treasure slipping out of life clutched desperately in my arms. And I wept then, like a howling wind. Like the lack of tomorrow.
This has been a brutal couple of months for me. A little over an hour ago I buried the second of my most-beloved four-legged companions. The old girl looked so heartbreakingly sweet folded gently there on the grass in the back yard of my old boyhood home, but for the warming light gone out of her lovely flecked green eyes, which used to melt me in my tracks when they would peer up at me.
I am such a sap, I am well aware, and am ultimately thankful for it. I hope for everyone that they can ever know a fraction of the profound love and devotion that this remarkable old animal, and the one who passed so recently just before her, gave to me, for what has turned out to be too few years. Too goddamn too few years.
As I said, all too recently before now: My life has been so very much bigger — and yes, for this awful moment, again, so very much smaller — for having known these phenomenal creatures. Were it only that I could buy a few more hours to dote on them a little bit more before no more …
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