Leaving old life brings more loss
It was hard to ignore her sobs on the phone. More than a hundred of us were on a full flight ready to take off. Even if you were trying not to listen, you couldn’t help it. Strangers heard this: “What bad news? No, just tell me now. Is he OK? Don’t tell me he died while I was gone … oh my God … when did he die?” followed by the first set of tears – the achy sounding ones, interrupted with gasps of air, and panicky breathing. Poor girl was trying so hard to hold them in, too.
All the people who could get a clear look at the caller turned to look – across the aisle, in front and behind her. There was no privacy for this girl who obviously just got the bad news that someone close to her had died. Now she was dealing with everyone staring at her too, and a three-hour flight to follow. But her next comment got much more of a reaction, with stirs and a few audible gasps when she asked, “You put him in the freezer?”
Her fellow travelers would never know who exactly was in the freezer or how he died, or better yet, why he had been stuck in the freezer. That will remain a mystery and likely a good conversation piece when friends are over. Only the caller knew and the nice woman sitting next to her, who felt compelled to try and soothe her. The he who died was her beloved cat of 19 years, and the reason why he was in the freezer was because her husband didn’t know where to put him until she got back home. The reason why I know this is because I was the girl on the phone. The same girl who struggled so much about whether to take her old kitty when she moved out of shemarriage and house.
As part of a yet-to-be-determined distribution of our joint stuff, we decided it was best for The Babe to stay where he was. He had limited his daily routine to simply lounging on his Australian rug in front of the fireplace. In fact, that’s where I was coming from – Australia – when my fellow travelers and I got the news. It was on my 15-hour plane trip to Los Angeles that I decided that it’d be best if he came to live with Sammy (my dog) and me. We missed him too much, and it was evident he missed us too. We had made the journey this long together – we’d end it together.
The Babe’s sight was going, and during recent visits home when we came through the front door, he didn’t appear to be as chatty or happy to see us. But then as I picked him up and he heard my voice, felt my touch, sensed my smell – he became rejuvenated and regained the meows and spirit of a kitten – my baby, who I had loved for more than half of my life. No loss of sight could impede his knowing his mom.
Now I would be going home to find him in the freezer. Yeah, I know. It’s OK to laugh and be a little weirded out, everyone else has been.
But to my husband’s credit, he didn’t know if I’d want to see him again or what to do with his body. Still, the idea of seeing my kitty frozen was a tough one. My friends urged me not to, but my heart told me I needed to say goodbye.
Going home that first time was brutal. I caught myself in the car asking Sammy if he wanted to go home and see kitty. As we walked in, that familiar Aussie rug looked devastatingly empty. I tried to tell myself it was just his body in the freezer, but didn’t have the guts to see him that time. Our plan was to cremate him, but it turned out to be a tad pricey, so we decided to wait a week later until I got paid. That meant another opportunity to see him.
One night I asked my husband to take him out for me. After retrieving his collar earlier, he said he looked the same really – just cold and stiff. He put The Babe out on his little rug and after doing a little freak out dance in the hallway, taking a peek at him, then rushing back around the corner, sobbing, “I don’t think I can do it,” I finally gave myself a little kick in the bum. “But this is The Babe you loved for so long – get over the whole dead, frozen part.”
I sat and petted him and cried like I didn’t know I was capable of. I kept thinking of all the times he’d disappear for a few days and then always come back home. But mostly, I just told him how sorry I was for not being there when he died and how much I loved him. I said all the things I wished, or hoped, I had told him before …
And he told me it was time to let go.