Rainbows

Crying.  My husband has seen me ugly cry more in the past week than anyone ever.  If I'm honest, I don't think I've ever been this heartsick before.  I am literally in pain from the loss of my Stanley.  It's like there is a hole in my heart.  In my life, in our family.  I can't stand it.  It has been one week since we had to put him to sleep and I can't get the images out of my head or the way that he died.  It was horrible; so sudden and panicked and frantic and quick.  I know he was suffering and deep down I know it was the right thing to do but I just can't stop feeling like I killed him.  Like I took his life.  It was too soon; I didn't want him to go that way.  I wanted him to go lie down under a tree and die peacefully when he was 20 years old.  That's what I hope for my other two.  I feel gulity that I didn't take his ashes.  I just didn't feel like I would ever trust that they were really his, and even if they were what would I have done with them?  Kept them in some urn forever?  Scattered them in the lake?  He hated the water.  In fact he was terrified to go outside most of the time.  He was so silly; he would beg to go out and then he would stay outside for five minutes, eat as much grass as possible and then cry to come back inside where he would promptly throw it all up.  On the carpet, of course.  Plus it was almost $200 dollars.  I think I just felt like why spend $200 for him to be dead anyway?  But now I honestly regret it.  I feel like I don't have anything left of him except the beautiful paw print the vet made for me.  And the orange fur I find around the house on the cat tree and on the curtains and the blanket on the couch.  That's the stuff that really kills me.  I really thought he would outlive all of them. I miss him so much.  It really truly hurts.

I can't help feeling like my life will never be the same.  And it won't.  I mean, don't get me wrong, I know that it won't hurt this much forever and I know that eventually I will be able to move on from it, but this has begun a huge shift in my life.  It is the end of an era.  I was 21 when I got Mingus and Lulu  and 22 when we added Stanley.  I am 34 now.  I have brought these cats all over the northeast with me.  Everything I did was based around them.  Anywhere I went I made sure that they could come and would be welcomed.  The only time I didn't was a relationship that lasted a little over two years which I deeply regret.  They were my little family and I made them my first priority always.  It seems so quiet and lonesome in the house with just two cats.  Stanley and Mingus were best friends and Lulu and Stanley would always squabble loudly.  Mingus and Lulu are pretty mellow together.  They are mostly independent.  They have been wonderful and trying to make up for it but I know how much they miss him too.  Lulu has taken his spot sleeping up by our heads.  She's not as snuggly as he was, so she kind of sleeps on top of our heads instead of right in between us.  With Stan you could snuggle him like a teddy bear and he would just purr and go right to sleep.  Mingus has been snuggling with me a lot, but he gets restless and leaves after a bit.  Stanley would just cuddle up for hours.  He was the one I was closest to.  I love Mingus and Lulu to the moon and back and am very close to both of them, but Stanley was the cat version of me.  If I went upstairs, he went upstairs.  If I went downstairs he did too.  He was very affectionate and loving and never aloof.  It is not the same and never will be.  And Mingus and Lulu are 13.  Let's be honest; they don't have a whole lot of time left.  And that makes me really sad too.  I love them all so much and so does my husband.  He loved them from the moment we got together and they became his cats too.

I started a new teaching job this week.  It was so hard to come in on Monday morning after what happened last weekend, but at the same time it was a good thing to have something to keep my mind off of Stanley rather than sitting at home in paralyzing grief.  Every day I held it together all day long and then got in my car and broke down after school.  On Tuesday I was crying and thinking about my mother.  My mother told me he would come to me somehow.  She has told me stories of feeling her mother at a certain time and place after her mother had passed, or of a dream she had when we had to put my cat I grew up with to sleep.  But that kind of thing never happens to me.  I was crying and wishing it did.  I said, "Stanley if you can hear me I wish you could give me a sign."  And then......I swear to you, I looked out the window and saw this little patch of rainbow in the sky.  You wouldn't have seen it unless you were paying attention.  It wasn't an arch or even very large.  But it was there and it stayed.  I was overcome and started talking to him and bawling.  I couldn't believe it.  There he was, having crossed the Rainbow Bridge.  Then on Thursday I had a dream about him.  In the dream we were at the vet but he was fine.  He was himself, not sick or scared.  I could feel his fur--he had the softest fur; he never outgrew his kitten coat--and everything.  I kept saying to the vet, "Didn't we already do this?  Weren't we already here?  Look at him; he's fine, do we really have to do this?"  I know that was him, telling me he is fine.  And then yesterday I saw another rainbow patch in the sky on my way home from school.  I know he is trying to tell me he has crossed over and is okay and forgives me and understands.  But somehow I don't feel any better.

I almost am worried about feeling better.  It feels like if I start to feel better than I am letting him go and I am not ready to do that.  I'm just not.  It's like if I'm not grieving then I'm not honoring his memory.  Deep down I know that is ridiculous, but I suppose that if I do start to feel better that will signify that I am ready to start letting him go.  I think it's going to take a long time.