EVERYTHING
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“One night, my 3-year-old asked me if she could sleep in my bed. I told her no. She said, “That’s not fair! Why does Daddy get to sleep in your bed?” READ MORE
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My older cat, Toonces, whom I’ve had since I was 21, died on Tuesday, in my arms, purring to the last. A lot changes in life between 21 and 35, and she was there with me through all of it, a bridge across the years. She lived to meet my wife. She lived to meet our son. Toonces had been at the animal hospital since Friday, and our boy, who is 4, had been missing her. I walked in the door Tuesday night and he came running to me. “Did you bring Toonces home?” “No,” I said. I decided I ought to explain, but by the time I’d put my bags down he’d gone back to the kitchen, where he was pretending to eat his dinner. For the rest of the evening, he never stopped moving. He did headstands during the bedtime books. It never seemed like the moment to tell him. Maybe he kept moving so the moment couldn’t catch him. The next morning, my wife drove him to school. “Is Daddy bringing Toonces home?” he asked. “Not today,” she said. She knew I wanted to be there when we explained. “Is she coming home?” he asked… We went to dinner at a sandwich shop. There were words to be said. I’d found the words within me. The words weren’t hard to find, but they weren’t so easy to say. Toonces wouldn’t be coming home, we told our son. He knew she had not been feeling well; nearly every morning and every night of his four years we had given her a pill. He always reminded us to do this. In this way he had taken an active role in her care. Now, we told him, she had gone to the next world, where she wouldn’t feel bad anymore. We told him that she could not visit us in our house, upon our couch. We told him, though, that he could close his eyes and think of her and see her in her new world. He closed his eyes. “Do you see her?” I asked. “Yes,” he said. “Can you see her eyes?” “Yes.” “Can you see her fur?” “I can.” “Can you hug her?” He hugged her. I had to report on a basketball game that night; my wife would drive our son home. I put him into the car seat and he closed his eyes. “Is Toonces behind my eyes?” he asked. “Yes,” I said, “and in your heart, too.” He pulled the neck of his T-shirt out and looked down. “Toonces,” he said, “are you in there?” She was. She is. Greg Blake Miller writes from Las Vegas. |
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