A brilliant little bit of writing I started and will now finish
For some days now, even weeks, I have wanted to write a last piece for Oswald. Not Oswald the cat even. Oswald was a cat. But he was also our friend. Friend first, cat second. And I want to write something that somehow ties a few things together so that I can let go a little more.
His ghost?
Well, his ghost is around I guess. The other night I felt him jump up onto the bed. I did not tell Lynda, because it might have brought her to tears and she has those anyhow. I catch Oswald out of the corner of my eye, here and there and now and then. Nothing too unusual.
In order to write about Oswald I must write about death. I want to write about death. Not many folks seem to be interested in reading about death. Not in blog form, or tweet form. Maybe I'm wrong about that. Maybe folks would love to read about death in blog form. I'm not talking about the death of this blog though. Don't misunderstand...
I am lonely for conversation partners who would welcome a death chat. Lynda will discuss these things with me, and well. Our Oswald discussions have dropped off. That's natural. That's the way it tends to go. That little guy lives in memory but the mind has only so much time for memory. There are many other things to be thought about and time makes demands.
So....
Death. I have had quite a few folks die on me. It wasn't personal. They were, mostly, quite old. Some were younger and died before "...their time..." Although it's fair to say if they are dead then it must have been their time. In any case, they are dead. When people I feel attachment for and that thing called "love" for, I have cried. I've cried hard and my eyes swelled up and my throat and my chest was full. I have felt great longing and sadness and I've been lonely for the dead and gone person.
For a period of time.
And then something happens. Then it's as if the dead person has moved to Baltimore. They are a long way off, we don't speak on the phone, or share a meal of Chinese food. We don't exchange gifts or even gossip about one another. They are gone. Gone to Baltimore. And what I feel, then, is closer to...nothing.
I don't know whether I should be ashamed or concerned about that. But I cannot describe it differently. If a friend were out of reach in Baltimore what is the purpose of feeling unending longing? I could discuss this with a doctor or therapist. There is no point in my taking a pill about it. I have used up my allotment of pills. The feeling of nothing may be normal, and if it's not, well...
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I look at pictures of Oswald. They are flat. In some pictures he looks well, considering the fact that he is dead. His fur is shining and his eyes sparkle with life force. But the pictures are flat. To watch his breathing is what I miss. When he became ill with cancer, I became his chief nurse, I watched his breathing for hours and hours. Was it too rapid and shallow? Was it alright? The air went in, because he was drawing breath. Because he was alive. And then the air left his furry body, because he was exhaling, again because he was alive.
I was holding him when he drew his last breath. I loved him so much in that moment. I felt a stronger feeling of love than I thought I was capable of. Such a strong feeling of love, and while we were fighting to maintain his health and delay his death (before that last day) there were moments when I truly wondered if love could, in fact, somehow and at some level, defeat cancer. Even as I wondered that I knew it was childish and irrational. But I wondered and I loved the wondering.
Years and years ago Lynda and I had a particularly tough patch and thought we might have to live separately from one another. I guess Lynda must have lost her mind temporarily to have even entertained such an idea, but entertain it she did. So we thought it might be a death of sorts. I remember at night as she lay sleeping I watched her breathe. I was like Steve Martin in The Jerk, watching Bernadette Peters sleeping. Only it wasn't funny.
I watched her breathing and I lay there beside her knowing what I was about to lose. This was an invaluable living being, this was a person that mattered and this was a loss that would be immeasurable. And she slept. She's good at that. It's not that she didn't love me, and it's not that she wasn't upset. She did and she was. But she needed to sleep. Women are practical in this and other ways. They have to survive...
In that moment I understood something, is what I am trying to communicate here. And I have not forgotten.
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I miss Oswald. He lives in Baltimore now, with my mother and father, and Joanne and John and George and many many others. As much as I miss him and as much as the pain of missing him does, in fact, leave a scar, I am content to bear that scar, to add that scar to my scar collection because I understand there is a price for loving. It's amazing, actually, that the source of that love for which we must eventually pay seems bottomless. That's a good thing.
He lay on his pink pillow, his very own pink pillow, and Lynda and I spoke to him, and our voices were thick with grief and our faces were swollen with sorrow. His head was tiny and his fur was discolored and his eyes were cloudy and it was as if the candle burning inside of him was almost gone out. His feet were pulled under his body in an effort to maintain warmth. That was a lifetime ago and today this is for you Oswald, and you Lynda, and you Johnny, so that you will know it all matters.
