Tag Archives: Grief

Saying Goodbye to Our Family Pet

16 winters ago, on a Friday evening just before a looming ice storm set in on the cold Kansas prairie, my 7 year old little girl was pulling beach towels out of closets to make a “temporary home” in a cardboard box just outside our kitchen door for a stray kitty. She had already named the cat “Katy,” so we knew she was probably going to become a permanent fixture on our 34 acres out in the country.

Our country home under construction. We moved in and suddenly my children’s lives were filled with “creature wonder.” Momma deer with babies, wild turkey, tortoises, scorpions, snakes, stray cats, dogs and sometimes horses were all frequent visitors and uninvited guests.

The following spring, Katy unexpectedly (to us “city pups,” unfamiliar with the ways of country life) gave birth to a litter of adorable kittens. For months, Isa and Mario’s entertainment focused around playing with the kittens. Vanilla ended up being the only one of the litter that survived. Katy was viciously killed by a couple of stray dogs while defending her kittens. To say we were shocked by the harsh realities of country animal life would be an understatement. The best we could do was adopt Vanilla (whom previously my husband had insisted would remain a garage cat) and bring him indoors to complete our family. And that is where he has stayed for 15 1/2 years.

These past couple of weeks, Vanilla slowly tapered off his eating until quitting completely the last 5 days of his life. We all had our chances to say goodbye, but the hardest was with his Mommy, Isa, via FaceTime from her work retreat. It’s so hard doing the compassionate thing when you’ve grown up with a pet. Isa used to come home from 2nd grade and stand on our back deck calling Vanilla’s name. Before long, he’d come running up from the wooded canyon behind our house, following the sound of her sweet voice. He was half wild (feral!) kitty and half domesticated pet and that’s how he lived until his last breath.

This morning was extremely bittersweet. We watched him stumble to the back door for a breath of fresh air after carrying him down from his last night in our bed. He bathed in the sunlight of our floor to ceiling windows in the den one last time. And if he could have mustered the strength, I know he would have loved to have hissed at Pudgey, the innocent but vacuous cocker spaniel. We loved him well. I can only hope he is on my Dad’s lap in heaven right now hearing about what a “Good Ole’ Good Boy” he is.

Bitter With The Sweet

I am ashamed to admit it, but I am outrageously jealous of my friends who are enjoying the companionship of vibrant and involved octogenarian parents.   This is such a selfish and unfair statement, I know.  I had great parents (Mom is still living) and they were there for me when I needed them.  So many people can’t even say the same.

So many of my friends did not have the joy of being given away by their Fathers.  I did.

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So why am I feeling sorry for myself that my parents weren’t the “take the family on a trip to celebrate our 50th Anniversary” type?  For many years, whenever we were together, Mom and Dad took the family to their favorite Italian restaurant in South St. Louis, Missouri, Giuseppe’s.

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My parents cooing with my nephew and one of the family’s closest friends over amazing Italian cuisine in South St. Louis.  GREAT memories.

I can’t help but feel a pang of jealousy, though, when I hear a friend tell me she spent the afternoon shopping with her Mom and then out to dinner with both parents – and they are in their eighties and enjoying active lives.  Like the famous Carole King song, I know I need to do a better job at taking the bitter with the sweet:

“A friend of mine once told me

and I know he  knows all about feelin’

down

He said, “Everything good in life you’ve

got to pay for

But feeling’ good is what you’re paving the way for”

But you can’t enjoy the sweet without “paying for it” with the bitter, right?  That’s the deal.  Sometimes it stinks!

The morning my Dad passed away and I called my husband to share the expected but dreadful news, a feeling washed over me I had really never felt before and I told him through my tears, “I wasn’t done with him yet.”  That must be why sometimes in my dreams I watch him ride away, alone in a limo with darkly tinted windows – no room for me.  The separation of death is bitter.  Memories are sweet.  I guess I will always taste both.

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In my heart, this is where my parents remain – in their late 60’s, active, involved, enjoying life.  Laughing with me.  Together.

Nobody prepared me (or maybe I just wasn’t paying attention) for this constant ache you get from watching your parents age and then losing them.  Maybe it’s because loss from death is the first thing I have ever encountered in my human existence that simply cannot be prepared for.

And the really strange truth about losing a parent is this:  the permanent pain is because of the sweetness of their love.  Like C.S. Lewis writes in “A Grief Observed,” -“For in grief nothing ‘stays put.’ One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral?”

At the end of the day, I don’t begrudge any of my fortunate friends who are still enjoying happy times with both parents.  It’s a gift and, after all, not something to be overly examined.  I had what I had and that’s it.  Boy, was I lucky.