Lynda has gone to Vernon now, so Oswald and I are hanging out together. Outside it's trying hard to snow. Oswald just ate and I was right there, helping. The lessons of this experience continue to present themselves...
While he was eating, struggling with his altered oral mechanics, I knew and know that we might have been mistaken, wrong somehow, to bring him home from the vets this last time. But it's an impossible thing. We could talk about it forever and there would still be no way to know exactly when the right moment is. We've come to really value Doctor Watt, and he's human, unable to decide for us, and of course we should never burden someone else with that kind of decision.
I've spent moments with the cat and I could swear there is some kind of exchange of thought. I don't know how to explain it, other than to say that when we tune in and remain tuned in we connect with other living things.
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What have I learned here?
That I'm responsible for how I feel and what I think in this world. My grief becomes misshapen and suddenly I am enraged and wanting to do damage; to hurt someone like I haven't wanted to hurt others in my memory. It's a white hot anger, and of course it must be just sadness that for some strange reasons shames me.
But I am responsible.
I told a friend that I was drawing the bridge up now, and would remain behind these walls for the duration. That will be days, not weeks. We do not have a culture that is organized around these passages. We are organized around working and consuming and I'm afraid most of our connections are superficial, so when we are wounded I think we feel more soreness coming in contact with the hardness of an unfortunately empty community.
This is not a thing to make blame around.
And there are amazing, wonderful nurturing exceptions to the rule. I can think of a couple of folks I work with-Patrick and Dawn, Chris and Mojo-folks who love animals very much, and these folks have been so supportive. There are others...Frankie and Katrina and Sean and my best friend Russ. This is more of the learning.
I am responsible for all of my relationships. I am the one who decides who I will allow to touch me. This is not the responsibility of others.
And to think I have come to a deeper understanding of these things because the process of losing a pet companion is the teacher. For most of his life Oswald was just a passing concern to me. He was my gift to Lynda. Now I've had nearly seventeen years of watching Lynda love this small and gentle creature, and she taught me, dragged me to it. Pay attention, she would say, he's come out to see you.
It's an odd thing, a perversion, that in seeking to protect my own tenderness I may have become hardened in this world. But there it is. Oswald is sleeping on his pink pillow, in darkened bedroom, and the afternoon is passing.
