Honouring Mr Lucks

Marking the Day

I am writing this blog post with trepidation.

Tomorrow is Lucky's death anniversary. He died last year on May the 4^th at 4am. I want to mark the day. Light a candle? Pray for him? Meditate for him? All of those...plus I am going to ignore all writing teachers' advice against writing on issues that are still raw for the writer. I am devoting this blog entry to Mr Lucks; for the love and joy he gave me in the 14 years that I was privileged  to have him in my life. Those of you that have pets, have lost a friend or miss loved ones gone, you'll understand anyway. The rest of you, please indulge me.

The pieces below are extracts of my grief, from my journals, whilst Lucks was in the process of dying and afterwards. I wrote 4,500 words the computer tells me. 4,500 words for 14 years of companionship. It's not much, but it's all I have that is tangible. The rest will go on living in me, until I die.

May 3, 2011

I don’t want my Lucky to die. I don’t want to lose him. I brought him home as tiny kitten. He was such a spirited little thing. And now, fourteen years later, it seems it is time for him go. For a year now his kidneys have been failing, his arthritis is bad and his heart can’t cope anymore.

I can’t write this. It makes his going real and I don’t want it to be. I know he is old and ill, but cats do live till they are 20, don’t they? So why does he have to go? I am crying and want to stop, because crying and grieving makes his going real and I don’t want it to be. How will I keep his memory? His grassy animal smell and the feel of his soft fur on my hands and face; his tufted ears, his silent miaowing talk…how can I store all that and never forget? I will forget and I don’t want to.

How do you stop someone you love from leaving you behind? Death is just so final and there is nothing you can do to stop it. I can bargain. I give 4 years of my own life, for him to have a good life a bit longer. Why 4? No idea, it just seems like the right number. Perhaps, because 4 in China is the number of death and so it seems appropriate to bargain with that.

Last year, when Lucks almost died, I willed him to take of my life force. The focus and power of my will had a tangible, undeniable, unconditional grip on his little life. A palpable, thick energy exchange that worked in getting him better. So why isn’t it working now? In desperation the other day, I even tried to give him hands on healing. I am wacko, I know, at best of times, but this time I excelled. I really did do that. Trying to send the energy welling in my solar plexus up my arms and into his small body through my hands and fingers. I don’t care if I am a loony, I just wish I could have made it work.

...I have said goodbye to him. Reluctantly. And asked him not to go without me here. And told him that despite all that, he has to do what’s best for him. I don’t want him to suffer. I hope he knows I love him more than anything in this world. I hope he knows that I felt loved by him. And I still wish he wouldn’t go.

  

May 4, 2011  

1:30am. I have been lying on the floor next to my Lucky since 11pm. Why? Because he is dying and I want to be with him. He is at the final stage. I feel it…and I hate myself for feeling it. I have been meditating next to him. I don’t want him to live in pain. If I could make him better, give him energy, fix his heart and kidneys and legs I would. I would! I’d give anything to have him live a few more contented years. But not in the state he is now. The answer in my meditation is that I want him to find peace.  As much as I would rather I was spared having to make the decision for him, I know that his pain will give me the strength to decide if it comes to that. A torturous decision. Is it going to be more torturous though than seeing him drag his little body on the floor? Harder than looking into his big cat eyes, that are alternately empty and full of pain? I hurt him daily by forcibly shoving pills down his throat, by giving him a drip under his skin. Can I make the decision for one last hurt that will put an end to all his other miseries? I hope I can find the strength to do that. How, when even now, as I type, I nudge him in panic to see that he is still alive? How will I be able to consent to what is needed? Do I have the strength to do that? Where inside me do I have to reach for that? What part of me do I have to rally up to deal with it?

...I try to let him go. I say the words and think I mean them, even as I know that I don’t. How do you let go of a creature that loved you unconditionally; that received your love with gratitude and returned it tenfold. How do you say goodbye to an old friend that has seen you through happiness and misery without judging you, just accepting you? I took care of him as best as I could. Some times exceptionally well, sometimes a little less, but I always loved him. I hope he felt it. I hope he feels it now as I sit here next to him in the quiet of the night, typing these thoughts. I try to imprint the feel of his fur on my fingers and his animal grassy smell on my brain and his green eyes in my memory. I kiss him and hug him and hold him. I stroke him and try to store as much of him in my memory, because I know that some of it, most of it, will alter, and will be lost in the passage of time…and I want to remember.

May 4, 2011

You are gone. Just like that, you are gone, leaving behind you a big Lucky shaped hole in our life. You were such a huge part of Frank and me. You were such an enormous part of me. And I miss you desperately.

I see you as the tiny black furry ball that fitted in one of my palms and still left room. I remember when Frank and I got a ladder to rescue you from the tree you were stuck on -or so we thought- only for you to run out  again, offended and re- climb the tree to stalk the birds. Then, there was the time that I was told by the neighbour that you regularly climbed three floors to her flat, beat up her cat, ate her food and slept on her sofa.  And what about the time you disappeared? We took to the neighbourhood, to eventually hear you miaowing in response to our calls, locked in a flat being refurbished...

...I always knew Frank was at home before he even put the key in the street door, because your ears would prick up and you’d head for the door. In Amsterdam you always greeted us from halfway down the red spiral staircase. Always pleased to see us back, never sulking for leaving you alone. Even here I China, in this apartment with its foreign smells and sounds, even when you were terrified and probably perplexed and missing the garden. Even then, you never gave us the cold shoulder when we returned from a long absence.

You were a great hunter. Birds, the number of times I found just a beak, or some strewn feathers…Mice, dead, alive, whole or in dismembered bits …Frogs…you loved to stalk, to hunt and to bring in your pray for praise, always I am sure, puzzled as to why you got shouted at and had your spoils confiscated.

I miss you my brave cat, that went from provincial Richmond, to happening Amsterdam, to cosmopolitan and strange Shanghai. My classy, handsome, tax-wearing pussy cat, all black, but for the white patch in the middle of your chest.  I miss your tufted ears, long curly lashes, slightly squinty eyes, bumpy nose and long whiskers that over the years turned unequally white.

... it wasn’t to be anymore. It was your time to go. I had to concede that I had to let you go. Through my meditation the answer I got time and again was to let you go. I am thankful to you my lovely, smart Lucky- cat that you answered my prayers and waited for me to come back before you left us. You waited for me so I could be with you and tell you again how much I loved you. You waited so I could hold you and talk to you and comfort you whilst you were gasping your last breaths and howling your last cat-call. I thank you for relieving me of the responsibility for making what would have been the hardest decision of my life. You left on your own terms, under your own steam. I am glad that we could love you at your last hours with us and thank you for all the joy and love you gave us. I am glad we could hold you and talk to you and have our tears wet your glossy black fur. When it was done, you looked asleep. “Handsome to the end” Frank said.

Goodbye my Lucks. Rest in peace. No more pain. Roam cat heaven and chase those birds and mice and frogs to your heart’s content and come and visit us often through our dreams.

6 May, 2011

Last night, late into the darkness I got up in anguish to meditate. He came to me, as he always did when I sat down to meditate. He padded softly, nudged me gently and then settled next to me to wait me out. Except this time, at some point he disappeared from my side, only to appear on my other side. And again he moved. And again, faster and faster, in circles around me. Then, after a time, he was gone. I was calm and knew somehow, that he was inside my heart then and that he will always be with me. Still I grieve  and will always grieve his loss.

29 May, 2011 - A prayer for my Lucky  

There is an indisputability to your death that leaves me breathless; bereft… Every time I think I am coping, something or other reminds me of you and your absence kicks me in the belly with such a force that I gag. My throat constricts, my   stomach heaves and I want to vomit all the grief that stored and continues to store since the moment you died. I miss you. I miss your grassy smell and your soft fur. I miss your silent miaows and loud purrs. I miss you waking me up in the middle of the night demanding attention. I miss worrying about you. I miss your love for me and I miss loving you back.

Today in the temple I didn’t know what to pray for. You are gone and I couldn’t ask anymore for you to get better. I couldn’t bargain for another four years, three years, two years, one year, a few months more of your time. You are gone. I thought to ask for my mother’s soul, my dad’s health, for enlightenment and learning about life. I thought to ask about world peace and harmony…I thought of all those things and more. But when it actually came to asking, what welled up from the depths of my being, was just this: Please let my Lucky’s soul soar free in the heavens.

I hope, I wish, I pray that I did all I could to make you happy, to love you and make you feel safe.

I hope that whatever pain I caused you, you have forgiven me.  

I wish I could have done more to lessen your pain and to have kept you with me just a little bit longer.

And I pray that wherever you are, in whatever form the Universe has transformed you in, you have a visceral memory of my infinite, indelible love for you.

May 1, 2012

He saw me thorough happiness and sorrow, always constant in his love, always there to ground me back to reality. He listened to me laugh, cry, rant. He made no judgements, asking for very little: just to love him back. And I did. I loved him more than any other creature in this world. I returned his unconditional love and his affection. I hope he felt it. Where is he  now? Is he a spark of energy that powers another life? What kind of life? Is he part of the collective consciousness? Is he dreaming a new dream of existence? In whatever form he finds himself, does he carry with him a nanosense of my immense love for him?

Some days I feel him very close. I can still smell his grassy smell and feel his soft fur on my fingertips. Some nights I still see a shadow detaching itself from the darkness of the night and swaggers up to me in bed. I stretch my eyes wide, hoping against my sanity, that he is really there. Then the darkness takes over and the shape dissolves. A warm fuzzy feeling that consols me and leaves me beferft at the same time takes over. Where are you Lucks? What are you? Are you still here in China or roaming the gardens behind ours in Amsterdam? Wherever you are, in whatever form you may be:
May you be in peace of mind.