It’s raining and sleeting today, so I’m not going to the Y. I’m sitting in something called a “Chill Sack”. It’s a Thing. Amazon carries them; mine’s deep purple. My legs are stretched out on a needle-pointed ottoman (needle-pointed by me many years ago and made into an ottoman by my mother), and my one remaining cat sleeping on my legs.
The view from the chill sack is the gray roof of the garage and beyond are the frozen gray woods. Today is an ugly gray day, but I am cozy with my cat.
This is looking like the annual post. Last year I wrote about the messy tree and the bishop. The bish is still with us, alas. The tree is present again this year and is messier with a couple of long strands of CVS receipts and, for a touch of elegance, a friend’s black silk bow tie that was once worn to the Breakers in Newport, Rhode Island.
I’m not sure I want to add the ashes of my dead cat to this year’s messy tree. That seems a yard too far.
Lest you think I’ve gone completely round the bend. let me reassure you that I likely have. It’s been a rough year. My female cat, Wink, the one-eyed wonder, died of renal failure at age thirteen last March. It was not a good or easy death and ended with the long, inevitable drive to the vet, where she was finally released from suffering. I hope someone is as kind to me.
My new novel-in-progress is dedicated to Wink, since both she and my male cat, Clooney (he’s handsome), have now seen me through two novels. The new novel, Elephant, still has a way to go before any official submission, but we are seeing a dim light at the end of the tunnel. It’s five years and seven revisions in and probably a few more drafts to go before it feels presentable. The cats were focal in keeping me focused. To lose one is much more than missing the furry lump of purr to my right hand, when I get stuck on a concept or character.
I am not unused to cats dying–people, either–and the burying of their bodies or spreading of their respective ashes. I really do try not to anthropomorphize my pets or cast them as angels in some sort of afterlife. Regarding Wink, however, I cannot see fit to release her. Her ashes have been on my desk since spring in a little container with her picture on it and the words of Lamentations put to music by Pablo Casals in a lovely choral piece. I don’t need those words any more. I have finished most of the sorrow bit of grieving. But on this gray, rainy, sleety day, at the end of this year, troubled on so many levels globally and nationally, I thought that I should put those sounds of lamentation out there for all of us in hopes of mourning, of purging in preparation for something brighter for 2020: DO listen to this lovely thing.
O Vos Omnes by Pablo Casals (1876-1973), Lamentations 1:12,
King’s College, Cambridge
Mary Sanders Shartle 