Tulip Night

You know how you wake up in the morning, and click into the routine that gets you up, brushed and presentable, but there is nothing nothing nothing that reveals what is to happen in the next hours, before the hand of the clock again passes midnight into the day after, and eventually begets memory.  You learn to accept loss or go mad, regardless of faith or experience; your heart is a bit more ragged each time but also grows a shield of certainty that carries you through.

Even so.  Death is a quickly closing door that pinches our fingers as we are the ones left behind; for all of it's inevitable reason, the stopped heart of one is tethered to the living beat of us, we who are still here.  Then you meet with a cascading series of firsts; the first night alone, the first night without, the first daybreak, the first breakfast, the first game, the first weekend, holiday, year; life goes forward, if not completely steady in its stride.

Memory is formed from looking back at the lasts; the last talk, the last time that.  No, it's not counterproductive to look back, as long as you realize where you belong in this life and the responsibilities of living, to yourself and those within your circle of knowledge and love.  Humans regale in taking photographs, writing stories, or talking about their heroes and ancestors.  I guess it helps that connection we have with each other, here or hereafter.

Today is the anniversary of my dear friend's sudden death, some five years ago; it is also the fateful night, tonight, that my darling little cat Tulip collapsed, the labored breathing that had begun three days ago increasingly difficult and final.  I rushed her to an emergency vet, where it was supposed that the cancer of the early summer had taken over and run through her like mycelium.  I held her while the euthanasia was administered, and felt the one last heartbeat.

I am home, and time that had slowed is now speeding up; the lasts and the firsts have begun.  Already in October, I had lost my oldest cat, Min, who lived to be twenty-one; I remember that last time I saw her living, insisting on sitting in the bathtub for some crazy reason, wobbling even as she sat and butted her head into my hand.  The memories intertwine, threading strands of who we are with who they were, making a lovely, orchestral harmony known as us.

Sleep, my baby, sleep my darling girl, I am glad I was able to be yours, just as you were mine, if only for a short ten years.

Count the clouds, I saw a star on the way home tonight.