April Awakening: Day Four 🌧️☁️🌥️
Lately I’ve been saying to the cat, “I love every moment of you.” I look at her sweet little face and can’t help but blurt it out. I’m just so glad she’s here. I’m so glad we found each other. She just turned ten last month. I don’t know how much longer I have with her, even though housecats tend to live a long time. Sadie has a lot of life left in her. I’m not going to get ahead of myself here, but she’s no spring chicken either. So while she and I are both here, I’m going to tell her how loved she is until I physically cannot anymore, and appreciate every bit of time I get to spend with her. Even when she approaches her time to go to heaven, I’ll be cherishing whatever I have to do to make sure she’s comfortable and calm, because it’ll be all I have left at the time.
My first cat Abby passed away in 2014 at the age of eighteen. It happened relatively quickly. One day, she had just stopped eating. My mom took her to the vet where she found out her kidneys weren’t functioning properly. Her little body was shutting down because it was time for it to do so. I came home to see her about a week before she died. The vet set my parents up with a saline injection to keep her hydrated, as she wasn’t drinking either. It made me sad to come home and see my skinny pet, weak and tired, barely able to fight back as my dad put the hydrating needle in her skin. But they were helping her. They were keeping her here as long as she could bear it until she could no longer go on. It was a humbling and sad experience. I gave her lots of hugs that weekend and told her how much I loved her. A week later my mom called with the sad news. I wasn’t sure what they did with her, but she was entirely at peace either way. Still, my childhood pet was gone and no amount of crying was going to bring her back.
I try not to think about the end so much. It’s just too morbid, even though it was something I had to deal with, and will have to deal with again. I just want to remember the good times and not focus on the discomfort experienced at the end of life. I had to tell my dad that the last time we visited Mom at the cemetery. “She was just in so much pain,” he said. I asked him not to think about that, as he had over forty years of good times with her before the slow decline of dementia set in. I don’t want that to be my final moments with my mother. I don’t want to think of her that way. It’s hard, and I’m not saying I’m there yet. Because there are some days I’d give anything for just one more moment with her, even if that means being a caretaker like I was doing in her final days.
Death is one of those things that’s inevitable, but it’s best not to get too hung up on it. Because we’re not here on this earth just to die. We’re here to experience all of life’s precious moments first. Sometimes that includes caring for your loved ones in their most dire of needs. You do it without thinking another thought, especially if they’re the ones who gave you life in the first place. And if we’re lucky, we can experience many lives in just one lifetime. Cats have nine. Who says humans don’t as well?