I began this journey in sadness, mourning the loss of my cat companion of ten years, a little black cat named Sabina. Sabina was not an easy cat. She didn’t like to be picked up, she swiped at family members as they walked by, and preferred to be outdoors. Like many cats, she was devoid of humor – or else her humor was too dark to be appreciated by most. But she and I understood one another, and she would sit by me when I worked or meditated. When I walked the dog she would walk with us. She might run ahead a little or drop behind, or dodge into the bushes when a car or a person came by, but she stayed with us. In all three of the houses we shared, she met me when I came home and accompanied me from my car to the front door. Sometimes she came in. She liked her space.
So I was back in grief. And while it was a different grief than the loss of my
husband, it fingered the same notes.
There is something immediate about the loss of an animal friend; the
full impact of it hits right away.
A human loved one seems to leave more gradually, the psyche only
allowing itself to experience parts of the loss at a time until one day it all
adds up and you realize they’re never, ever coming back. Sabina’s death, abrupt and unexpected
and still unexplained, landed me right in the center of my most abandoned self
without preamble or the chance to cushion the fall.
I spent a few days hoping to scramble out of this terrible
place before I got too badly burned.
As I often do, I focused on the bright side of pain hoping I wouldn’t
have to see the dark. But that never lasts for long. I pretty quickly resigned myself to the fact I was heading someplace hard. I had no choice but to be
led by the tender nose of my sorrow into the place I most avoid.
This is the place of no-self, the mother of all soul
loss. It is a place without a
fix. No coach-induced modification
of behavior, thought or diet will get me out of having to sit here, at some
point, and feel the cumulative effect of all the times I have abandoned
myself. I can put it off, and
sometimes it seems to disappear like a cat into the shadows, but it tracks me
wherever I go. In it is the truth
that the only thing missing from my life has been me. If I can sit unprotesting in this place, acknowledging the
consequences of that truth, I have found the doorway home.
This morning I was called back to life by the sight of a
great blue heron landing on the roof of the house across the creek. Its blue-gray coloring on a foggy
morning mimicked the mists of the liminal state through which I’d been traveling. It stood, elegant and certain,
belonging first to the community of itself, and so very much a part of the
world. I went outside in my stocking
feet to see it more closely, and we stood together in stillness.
At the end of this journey I am left with the certainty that
I am no longer willing to live half a life. I feel as though I’ve been sitting in a waiting room not
quite concentrating on magazines, glancing at the pictures and looking
expectantly at the door where my next appointment will be. It seemed this morning as though the
heron opened that door and beckoned me in, and perhaps I only thought I saw a
little black cat dart between its legs into whatever lay beyond.
With love,
Mia
