It's been a week. Let me tell you.
But first, it's early. The sun isn't quite up yet.
Lucy the wonder cat is teaching me to play fetch. She drops her favorite toy at my feet and waits for me to throw it. Meowing at me softly to look away from reading all your recent entries and pay attention to her.
My girlfriend's cat, though, was what started off the long week. Though I guess it's been closer to two weeks now.
It started with one of his eyes seeming a little swollen but it soon led to the whole half of his face. He looked bad. He's a 15-year-old cat. The vet said he'd see what he could do, but mentioned they might need to discuss "end-of-life care."
That sent my girlfriend spiraling.
It started to go beyond the cat. She started really thinking about death. It would seem more so than she ever had.
She's obsessed with Andy Warhol and discovered a 24 hour livestream of his grave. I don't know how long she watched it. I think she's been checking it a few times a day. She hasn't seen anyone visit the headstone. "People only visit cemeteries at like anniversaries and special moments," she said. "The dead are mostly alone. Unvisited."
A few days later, during one of my night shifts, she called at around 2 am. For two hours, I tried (rather unsuccessfully) to calm her as she went through the worst panic attack I've witnessed from her.
She was hyperventilating. We are all going to die alone. What happens after we die? Is death painful? I don't want to die. I don't want to die. I don't want to die.
Two days later, we discovered that her grandmother was dying of a heart attack, all alone, during that exact same two-hour stretch of time.
That same morning, her dad was rushed (again) to the hospital. He has been in increasingly poor health. It's the reason she moved back to Tulsa. For the last year, we've known he could go at any time.
So her cat and her dad near death. Her grandma (who was more like a mother) now gone from this world forever.
The cat, it turned out, had an infection from an abscessed tooth. The tooth was pulled, the infection was treated. He is acting five years younger.
The dad, somehow, seems just fine again at the moment. It won't be long for him in all likelihood. But not yet. Not this week.
She and I keep thinking about her panic attack and the timing of her grandma's death. She asked me if this meant she had to believe in God now.
I said to try to just feel the experience and be with it for as long as you can before trying to understand it or explain it away.
I think it clearly shows some sort of cosmic connection. The timing is just too exact. It really does seem like she was channeling her grandma's fears and feelings as she transitioned away from mortal life.
Her grandma was very religious. Religious in the southern Pentecostal way in which I was raised. She was always a bit obsessed with the rapture, but much more so this last year. When Casey and her brother went to explore the house, they found several care packages of cash and canned goods. All with little notes addressed to different people that she apparently thought would be left behind in the rapture.
Had I heard about that a few weeks ago, I might have considered that a little silly or crazy. But now I think it is rather sweet.
She told Casey's brother a month or two ago that she was convinced Jesus was coming back no later than September 7th of this year.
And in a very real way, she was right. It's just that Jesus came back for her alone and not the rest of the world.
I don't know what to think about death or any of this.
I do think about death a lot. But it tends to be in a wishful way. Dreaming of a day when there will be no more pain or sickness.
But the reality of it is different. Or rather, I guess I don't think much about being the one left behind. Having to sit with and grieve and ponder all the mysteries that are beyond our perceptive grasp.
I am comforted though by the thought of connection. Cosmic connection. Like trees communicating through their roots.
I am glad to think that we aren't alone. Not even in death. That's something.
It can help us endure the pain of living. It doesn't ease the pain, exactly. And life is so full of pain.
But it helps.
Just as it helps that there is a purring kitten on my chest as I type this.
We must take what pleasures and joys that we can find. We must be open to the possibilities of whatever it is that is beyond us.
What else is there to do?
6:21 a.m. - 2023-09-01
Recent entries:
Get Down with the Sickness - 2023-10-20
Conflicted - 2023-10-16
A Dark and Meandering Path of Wayward Thoughts - 2023-10-08
A Bit of a Nothing Entry - 2023-09-28
To Be Born Again, You Must Surely Die - 2023-09-08
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