Sunday, February 18, 2018

All she's had to give...

"It's the waiting, isn't it. 
It's never the end."
– Anonymous

The pitter patter of her tiny feet across the wooden floor pulled me reluctantly from my night visions. Suddenly, there she was, sitting by my shoulder, staring in my face, giving me 'the look.' You know, “Listen, buster, I’m going to give you a few minutes then you gotta get up.”

She climbs on my back, and like those expert log rollers of the Canadian north woods somehow manages to remain ‘top up’ until I’ve turned from tummy to back and we are face to face. Settling in, her purring engines hit maximum rpms. It is hard to describe how I love these wonderfully intimate moments. Yep, it has been a love affair from the beginning.

Wait! No!

This is still a dream and what I am actually hearing in the recesses of my waking moments is the gentle scratching as she hobbles across the floor to the steps that help her climb to the bed. She struggles her way up until she slips beside my head, giving me the “Whew, I made it, but it was tough,” look. The engines are muffled by time and gravity, her gentle purring a mere echo of her youth. There is no back climbing and chest lying anymore. Her arthritic hips and rigid spine make it uncomfortable for her to lie flat on my chest. Anyway, she just wants me to get up so I can lift her to the sink (her preferred method of drinking water these days).

She sleeps in the living room on a little padded bed yet has the uncanny knack for knowing when I am up in the night for, well you know, personal reasons. As I sit briefly, expressing myself as it were, she unsteadily wanders into the bathroom and plants herself between my feet. When I pick her up holding her close, she purrs, but ever so more quietly now. The bottoms of her paws cool against my hands and shoulders. In the intimacy of those nocturnal moments, she feels so frail and light – her spine humped and rigid – her shoulders bony and weak. It is almost more than I can bear.

Leah is now in her eighteenth year (the late eighties in human time) and I am in pre-loss mourning. She sleeps more, and when awake, wants to be with me. She comes to my lap and sits, sorting a ‘comfort calculus,’ before snuggling and settling in. In the office, I almost always hear soft scratching as she paws the cardboard box beneath my desk. Once lifted, she curls on a multi-folded towel by the keyboard where her arthritic bones absorb the heat from a warm lamp.

I have watched this gracious creature, who in the beginning, fit the palm of my hand, move through the stages of her life, giving so much more than she ever got. It is so often said it is the memories that are alive. I don’t think that is right. While it is true the memories are there, they are not alive. Rather they are shadows residing in the hard drives of my mind, merely liquid images of events gone by. What is alive, is this moment, the quiet sorrow I feel, the silent tears that fall and the love I feel for this soul, who is softly pawing the cardboard box beneath my desk.

-ted

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