I scarcely knew what to say when Jenny informed me this morning that her beloved cat Coco had slept in the sun one last time before being released to the cosmos Saturday.  Coco’s health had been failing; she was an older cat for certain.  Yet I knew the pain Jenny felt, experienced it all over again as she wept her sorrows upon a sunny day that cared little for her tribulations.

Swimming the depths of my own unflinching depression left me little comfort to offer.  I tried, though, reassuring her of the obvious: the pain would last a lifetime; telling her the weeping cannot be contained, nor should it be; holding her as we stared at the bones of the world holding up a blue sky from which sunshine poured endlessly; and letting her know I understood better than most what she felt, and I would not cheapen it with hollow words when holding her could accomplish so much more.

Of course, words do little in such cases, a lesson I learned following Henry‘s death.  The tears will come as they wish, when they wish, and nothing can stop that.  Losing a beloved, a familiar, is much like losing a bit of our heart.  Every loss takes more, and so we are forced to rend ourselves time and again such that we can replenish the well of emotion that becomes drained and dry.  For we do it time and again, we of compassion, and we set upon the same painful road over and over despite knowing what ends lie in wait.

Grendel, Coco’s doppelgänger, reminds of what was lost this very weekend, what was lost years ago, and what will be lost soon.  Even as I cradled Jenny and let her heartache manifest in tears, I thought of the life waiting at home that careens toward the same destiny.  Cursed throughout his years with one wretched ailment after another, inflicted with agonies no creature should be made to endure, Grendel will not see the years Coco saw, will not enjoy as many sunrises and sunsets and sunny afternoons.

Along the boulevard of days rest historical markers signifying empty spaces once filled with cherished souls.  And each of us walks that boulevard every day, every moment.  We glance this way and that way, and all about us, leaping from the shadows of history, mournful things pass within our vision, no more so than for the heart full of giving for that which cannot be kept.

His trembling a constant reminder of the toll life has taken on his body, I look at Grendel and see within his eyes the clouding of a sunny day.  Coco must have looked as burdened when finally her spirit recognized what her flesh screamed upon the winds of time: These are my final hours, my final moments, and soon I go to be one with the universe, to return to that which made me.  I see that future here, here in my home, here in my arms as I hold him and caress him and speak to him.  Even his purring sounds weaker than once it did.

What grim specter besets me now sees its essence grow colder still, an icy hand scraped against my inner self and grasping at what torments as yet lie undisturbed.  A falling of dominoes brings death and its kith and kin, darkness and its ilk, anguish and its brethren.  I envy not the torture of Jenny’s soul now, especially so soon after the loss of her mother.  I see in her experiences my own destiny, with Grendel’s fate hanging in the skeletal hands of that which cannot be denied and my own father’s health rapidly succumbing to the ills of a future already written based upon a past too clear to deny.

No creature of conscience can escape the emptiness.  Why would we want to?  Doing so only means we have not loved.  For that reason alone, I hope never to be full.

[that shadowy apparition with golden eyes floating in the background of the second photo is none other than Vazra]

Beneath a cover of sunlight he lay squinty-eyed and trembling, his new world ever changing, ever crumbling.

What has become of the grand master of the house?  What blight tears away at his spirit with such abominable disregard for this majestic survivor?

At the nexus between what was and what is to be rests that which is.  For Grendel, the threads connecting past to future weave a wicked tapestry indeed.

Weakness becomes him, claims at every turn yet another piece of the invincible soul that once was.

As the cloak of his days wraps endlessly around him, the pattern knitted strikes me as unbecoming one so beautiful, one whose tiger stripes demand respect, whose green eyes glint with the fire of timeless splendor.

Yet even master predators must give way to the cosmos.

He throws about his essence the drapery of one who has suffered much, seen far, lived superbly and, most importantly, experienced true happiness.

A home full of love surrounded him at all times, a home with familiars respectful of his dominance and longing for but one more moment in the light of his being.

Only now in the dimming twilight do any of us comprehend what will be lost.

The once unconquerable patriarch, the master of all, now scarcely hides his tremors, wistfully swells in challenge only to cower under the spread of his perpetual decline.

His first year colored the cloth that would envelop his existence for all the days to come.  One ailment after another beset him.

And in my quest to manage the ills of his flesh did I also lace into the years the very demon that likely would strike him down.

I care not for more tests, more examinations bent on finding the next cause and, therefore, the next solution.

Causes have effects.  Effects brought us to where we are today.

Mind his suffering, mind his health, mind his well-being, but subject this handsome creature to more devilish fiends that will do nothing more but prolong the agony?

Absolutely not.

Long have I held that in life it is quality that matters most, not quantity.  What is living for a hundred years if the last twenty are spent being sponge-bathed and spoon-fed in a facility where true living has no meaning?

Why should it be different for my children?

Grendel has fewer days ahead than he does behind, a bridge we all cross at some point in our lives.  He faces the reality of his body’s continuing battle against his will.

Would that I could give him some of the life in me, that I might conquer the inevitable by carving from my own self a relief capable of undoing the pattern that life’s loom has woven for him.

But instead I reach out, offer him the adoration that brings a purr through the shaking, share a bit of time in the sun with one who deserves more than he has received.