So last week sucked a lot. Not for the most part, the weather was good, school chugged along. But then one free afternoon I was taking a break and watching a hospital show and one of the nurses gets in an accident and winds up in a coma there and one person is super reluctant to accept it and say goodbye and after she finally does, the nurse dies. The accompanying voiceover: “sometimes I think people wait until everyone who needs to has said goodbye before slipping away” and I had to pause and sob my face off because of that parallel with my aunt Adrienne. So that was a fun afternoon.
And then my mom called to update me with the further news of my old cats deterioration. Nothing new or surprising, he’s been slowly declining for quite a while, but still upsetting, and she wanted me to help in making a decision about whether or not to put him to sleep, and without being there I really couldn’t, and even if I had been it would have been utterly heartbreaking (which is why she wanted me to help, so she wasn’t making that decision on her own). But fortunately/unfortunately I got a text two days later that he had picked his time and died during the night. Cue more sobbing. Aside from being my first cat (the one I grew up with before him was wonderful, but not mine) he was exceptionally sweet and handsome and playful. Because he’s been declining for so long, the last three times I was home I was prepared (as much as I could be) for that to be the last time I saw him. But then it kept not being the last time, and so while I knew, that kept a terrible little bit of hope that maybe he would hang on till summer, and then the next time, etc.
My mom sent me a card about it, and I knew it was coming, and I knew what it would be, but man. You just can’t really control the feelings when you open something like that. So now I get to cry every time I look at the fridge.