Greetings All,

Just two hours ago, my cat, Trixie, was put to sleep in our home. After a 5 month battle with multiple myeloma and 12 years as my best baby girl, she went quickly and more peacefully than I could have hoped for. My heart is breaking, though, and the following, written by Henry Van Dyke, has helped me much over the past few months. My hope is that perhaps it will help some of you, as well.

Kai in AZ



A parable of Immortality

by Henry Van Dyke

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails
to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of
beauty and strength and I stand and watch until at last she hangs like a
speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come down to mingle with
each other. Then someone at my side says, "there she goes ".

Gone where? Gone from my sight...that is all. She is just as large in mast
and hull and spar as she was when she left my side and just as able to bear
her load of living freight to the place of destination. Her diminished size
is in me, not in her. And just at the moment when someone at my side says,
"there she goes", there are other eyes watching her coming and other voices
ready to take up the glad shout, "here she comes".

I am so sorry for your loss of Trixie.

Thank you for the van Dyke post. It is beautiful and made me cry and gave me comfort. Thank you.

Thank you very much. A friend posted that to an email list I'm on when another lost a parent. That same week Trixie had been diagnosed. I kept it and I think it will go in a frame next to her picture and ashes.

This is still so hard. Today I actually crawled around on a little patch of the carpet where she used to lay down, trying to catch a little bit of her scent. Pretty comical, I guess. Or maybe just desperate. One hurdle crossed, though. She was cremated today. Up until this time, they kept her at the vet's office. The office is only a couple miles away and I had to truly and willfully restrain myself from driving down there and demanding to see her and touch her just one more time. I know it wouldn’t have really been my little girl. She's gone.

Kai

Kai,

I don't think that is comical or desperate. Just part of the love. Hope you are doing well today. Are you scattering or urning Trixie?

Love,
Jennifer

Hi Jennifer,

Every day gets a bit better, but in a way, it seems as if the better I feel the more she fades away. Ahh! There it is again. Guilt. I did get a condolence letter from the oncologist and her team today and they included this:

“We who choose to surround ourselves with lives even more temporary than our own live within a fragile circle, easily and often breached. Unable to accept its awful gaps, we still would live no other way. We cherish memory as the only certain immortality, never fully understanding the necessary plan…”

“The Once Again Prince” Irving Townsend

I had never read this before and it gave me some comfort. I guess that’s why they put it in the letter.

I work from my home office and Trixie would sit with me for a big part of the day. I am in the house alone for the first time in 12 years and I can’t believe how quiet things are. And a little lonely during the day. It will take some time to get used to it.

As for Trixie’s ashes, I plan on putting them in an urn that I ordered. The lady who makes the urns paints them to resemble each individual cat. It will take about 6 weeks to get it but that’s ok. I saw a lot of examples of her work and it seems to be what I was looking for. I will put her picture (or several) and urn up by one of the windows she used to sit at to watch and “sing” to the birds. When the oncologist came to the house to put Trixie to sleep, she brought along a clay impression of her paws that was made on her last doctor visit. At the time, I was still in shock and in a bit of denial and would probably have gotten very upset at them making some little memorial to her while she was still alive. I’m very glad they did it, though. That clay impression will also go up along with the Van Dyke verse I posted last week and maybe the above quote as well.

Trixie wasn’t an outdoor cat at all, so putting her outside just wouldn’t seem like the right thing to do.

I also put the picture I posted of Trixie up as the backdrop on my computer. So, she is the first thing I see when I turn my computer on in the morning and the last thing I see when I turn it off at night.


Thank you very much for caring!

Kai