This summer, I lost my cat.
I remember the drive home from adopting her in 2006. I remember her and her sister in the car, and poking my fingers in the holes of her plastic carrier. I was five years old, smiling and looking in her wide, green eyes as she shied away into the corner, praying I would accept she didn’t want to sniff me and be friends at that specific moment.
She looked soft, her gray fur fluffed into what looked like down. She was so small.
--
I have felt grief before. But every time, it’s been over the death of a relationship, not an individual. Romantic, platonic, or somewhere in between, relationships meant one person always made the conscious decision to walk away. Separation was not so unbearable as to warrant bending and molding and shaping one of us so we would fit into each other’s lives.
Had our timing been better, could things have gone differently? Or was this ending preordained?
I have felt grief before. Angry grief. Angry with someone else for cowardice— for letting go when they should have held on, for holding on too tight until I couldn’t breathe. I have shed tears so furious I thought they would break the table on which they fell. I’ve had my heart shattered as though someone threw it on the ground, then laughed at the pieces of broken glass.
I have shed tears so furious I thought they would break the table on which they fell. I’ve had my heart shattered as though someone threw it on the ground, then laughed at the pieces of broken glass.
Happy memories are looked upon with disdain, too sentimental. I grimace at myself for being so weak.
--
Lindy was odd. We kept her safe all 16 years of her life, yet she was plagued by the constant fear that one day, without warning, we’d decide to ‘get her.’ What she thought we were capable of (hugging her too tightly, letting her be fox-bait?), I’m not entirely sure. She had a permanent look of worry on her face that only shifted when she was perturbed, which was normally thanks to me squeezing her round, fuzzy feet (I was her least favorite family member).
I saw her this past March, fat and healthy. I took a picture of her as I leaned over the banister, calling for the pretty kitty to look up! Smile! She ran away; I rolled my eyes. I’d get one later.
I saw her this past March, fat and healthy. I took a picture of her as I leaned over the banister, calling for the pretty kitty to look up! Smile! She ran away; I rolled my eyes. I’d get one later.
--
My mind churns, shifting and folding over itself, boiling and letting steam roll between my ears. I replay scenarios over and over again to find the moment I lost them. I relive “relationship” moments, weeks, years in my head. I stare at the chapstick in my car, shaking my head, muttering phrases I can’t repeat here. They had asked to borrow it. I throw it out the window, hoping a car smears it underneath unsympathetic tires. I drive too fast, yet time slows as I stare at trees with past versions of myself sitting underneath, taking in the chimes of summer cicadas. What a foolish child.
This is violent separation—ripping my life away from another, peeling back skin. It’s like those painful blisters—the shallow ones, where touch feels like fire. It hurts like hell, but I’ll live. It won’t scar. One day I’ll look at my hands and forget where those sores were, or how they came to be.
One day I’ll look at my hands and forget where those sores were, or how they came to be.
--
We ate salmon, her favorite “people food,” and I watched my family pet look at us with bright eyes and a body that lacked the strength to obey her commands. She would stumble towards us, trying to meow. “I’m coming! I promise I’m coming! Just give me a second!” My heart tore at seams I didn’t know existed.
One of her last nights, she sat next to me. I begged my brain to take in as much information as it could—what she looked like, how this felt. My hand by her, willing her soft breaths to keep on.
I watch videos of her just to hear her purr. I see her in the tears on the carpet in my bedroom, where she would use her claws to drag herself from underneath my low-sitting bed frame.
I’ve cried while laughing at the memory.
I’ll play these moments in my head sometimes. Delicately, without narration. Simply to make myself smile.
I’ll play these moments in my head sometimes. Delicately, without narration. Simply to make myself smile.
--
For every loss, I could tear down shrines within me that once felt like home, as I have before. I could claw out memories of late-night drives and nervous-but-excited small talk and resting my head on the shoulder of a friend, or I could shove those same memories underneath piles of coats in the back of a cobwebbed closet, so that dust might make the pain of absence feel less great.
But what would it be like, to feel grief uncrippled by blame? Sadness, without regret? To feel blessed and grateful for having something worth losing, as opposed to writing off the experience as reason why I shouldn’t try?
It would feel like being paralyzed. Like staring at my reflection because I don’t know what else to do. Like not knowing how to respond to texts on my phone. Hollow. A brief, shining moment thinking I saw Lindy out of the corner of my eye, flicking her tail against the living room chair, and then realizing that’s impossible.
--
I lost Lindy.
Anyone I meet, from this day forward, will only know her as a story.
How silly, I think, to be this sad over a cat. A cat! Some people have real loss. Some people go through pain I can only imagine with dread.
Still, there is a void. Albeit small, and sometimes unnoticeable, it grows larger each time I visit home and only one cat runs to greet me.
But a void is better than its alternative: desperately filling emptiness with corrosive anger so I don’t have to feel so small, so vulnerable. It is better – for me, I know, but I think for you as well – to let the waves of sadness swell and break. Let newly-bittersweet moments that remind us of all we once had just hurt, instead of writing them off as artificial, unimportant joy to begin with.
Lord knows loss is painful. Yet it always seems to be worth it.
But a void is better than its alternative: desperately filling emptiness with corrosive anger so I don’t have to feel so small, so vulnerable.
My father recently reminded me of what the preacher said at my grandfather’s funeral, back in 2013.
“Grief is poured from a chalice of love; the bigger the vessel, the greater the sorrow.”
How lucky I am, to have had such sorrows.
