Waves...

What is the appropriate, socially acceptable amount of time to mourn for a bereaved pet? A few days? A few weeks? Maybe it depends on the number of years you've had the pet. Or perhaps the age and maturity level of the surviving owner. Maybe it's a combination. I've had Cinnamon for 16 years. I was 7 then and I'm 23 year now. That means for 2/3s of my life, 66.66%, Cinnamon has been around. It's like he became a permanent fixture...I just always expected him to be around. And then, on Thursday, I came home to find him gone. He's been declining in health since December but was psychologically healthy. Never seemed to be in pain, even though he was losing weight. Never became a recluse. Never ceased to want to be around people, to give and receive affection. His sister, Oreo (yes, yes...we named them when we were in early elementary school), has been psychologically wack for the last year or so...like an angry, crazy aunt who lives in the basement and never sees the light of day. But Cinnamon....rocked. We were thoroughly attached to one another. We had our rituals...waking me up in the early morning, meeting me on the stairs, greeting me when I walked in the door. Ugh. This hurts a lot.

It really does feel like such a loss, no matter how minor a cats life may seem to the world. Funny, there are plenty of people on this earth who treat human life as frivolous and unsacred. I can only imagine what they must think of me, blubbering over the lost life of my sweet cat. My friend made a good point when he said, "The world can be a very lonely, alienating place. Those creatures that help us overcome our loneliness, that provide us with companionship and unconditional love, are a great gift to us. Their loss can be very devastating." That's really all it was with my cat. I cared for him. He cared for me. Nothing else, really. No human baggage. It's hard to lose that companionship, the unconditional love of a non-human friend.

Man...I sound like one of those freaky cat lovers who collect all-things-cat, and have cat calendars and shirts printed with their cats' faces on them, and little cat tombstones for their graves. I never had Cinnamon pose in our family portraits or ever referred to him as a "little human being." But his absence is profound, and the devastation I feel makes him seem more than just a pet. So this is what grief feels like. I've experienced grief before, of course. I've experienced very painful loss -- the disolvement of certain friendships, breaking up with Nick when I was in highschool, Melissa going away to college, leaving Uganda, the loss of my faith, crying my eyes out in the basement of Ferrin when I broke up with Steve, the death of classmates. I'm blessed (or maybe not blessed?) to never have experienced major loss of life...no relatives or friends. Just my dear sweet cat who lived a long, happy, contented life and who died peacefully and without pain. And I'm sad. I know this will pass. Grief comes in waves. First it crashes down. And then it subsides. And the waves come, but they come farther and farther apart.

But the loss does feel profound, however embarrassing it is to mourn for the loss of a pet. Given my habit of grieving for the roadkill squirrels and lion-hunted antelope, this probably should come as no surprise. I'm an emotional sap. I cry a lot. I often have profound, deep, earth-shaking emotional experiences and I value these experiences, however painful they may be. I just hate the finality, the loss of control. And I am overwhelmed when I think about all the death in the world, the retched, senseless deaths of those killed in suicide attacks or natural disasters....if I feel this bad about the death of my cat, what of the 50 who died today in Iraq? The twenty-some children killed this month in Palestine? The lonely deaths of the elderly and disabled in institutions? The untimely deaths of my classmates at Gordon? The woman taking groceries out of her car in DC who was struck and killed by a bus? What of all these lives? How many people are mourning their deaths?

Death is earth-shaking, life-shattering. Grief comes in waves. But the loss of life itself comes like a giant crash of a boulder in still water....ripples moving out and out and out and affecting ....everyone really. Everything is disturbed. And my heart aches for those grieving mothers and fathers and children and friends and loved ones. My heart aches for them because, though my loss feels significant, I will move on mostly unscathed. But imagine...your baby dying in your arms? Death overwhelms me. Life ripples in a pond, like waves in the sea.