Blogetary (Weblog + Commentary = Blogetary)

Remember “Ring around the Rosie”?  Did you know it was supposedly a rhyme made during the middle ages and the black or bubonic plague of the 13th century?  (I think it was the 13th Century, or it may have been the 1300s – I’m sure someone out there knows).  Anyway, supposedly, the rhyme refers to the plague.  If you got rings, or sores on your body and started smelling you could wear flowers to hide the smell, I think that’s the first part.  The second part refers to the practice of burning the homes of those who had died of it.

Anyway, that’s just a roundabout (get it? ring around? round about?) introduction with a bad segue into the topic of getting Kiko’s ashes back yesterday.  I was teary, but okay when I got them.  The delivery man and I talked about our common love of tabbies.  His gray tabby is 18.  I wish Kiko could have lived that long.

Okay – back to topic.  But my boss was there, the one who likes to ask if I have had any life affirming moments that day.  He and I are pretty good at gruesomely inappropriate jokes and thank G(g)od(s)(ess)(es)/Universe for that because the joking kept me from falling apart.  Then a friend offered to give me a ride home so I wouldn’t have to maintain on the bus, but even then, my spirits were cheery cuz we were in a convertible in the California sunshine and talking. So just a few tears.

No, it was getting home that was the bitch. Ouch.  Kiko’s canister I put out to Pye who only slightly sniffed at it.  Pye kept wanting to play with the box it came in.  I started bawling then.  Pye moped all last night and today.  I cried some more.  Cried whenever I woke up.  Kiko was a good friend who watched out for me.  When he could go outside, he used to walk me to my bus stop and meet me back there at the end of the day.  When he thought someone was bad for me, he peed on their stuff (and he was right most of the time).  When I was sick or sad, he knew whether to cuddle with me or bat my head with his tail.  So, I am sad to no longer have my friend around. I’m crying – a lot.  I didn’t go to work today.  Pye threw up on the bed (he, like some of my family, carries his stress in his belly).

I know some people don’t get this.  That’s fine.  If it helps to explain, the friend who drove me home last night pointed out that it can actually be worse with your animal friends.  I mean, they’re your friends and live with you like family, so there’s that bond.  But where a human who is dying can talk things over with their loved ones and their loved ones talk back and everything is understood, that can’t be done as well with your animal friends.  So, there’s always a feeling of helplessness.  You always wonder if your friend was really ready to go.  Did they really understand that you had done all you could for them? Do they really understand how much you love them and will miss them?  Or do they just feel betrayed in the end?

I guess, until we develop our brains beyond the normal 10% we’ll never really know.

So the grief is partly due to this lack of closure with our animal friends’ deaths.

My dad has lost two animal friends in the last couple of months. I think one of things I will be doing today, besides washing the bedding where Pye threw up, is calling Dad to check on him.  He and I were talking last week about whether or not you believe in an afterlife yourself, you want to believe that there is one for your animals. You want to know that there’s a place where you can meet up with them after you all die.  And there is that poem about the Rainbow Bridge out there.  Dad, card carrying agnostic that he is, doubts everything – existence of God, heaven, hell, etc.  But he was saying, in regards to a kitty heaven “when they die, it really makes you want to believe in the Great God-Damn Fucker, doesn’t it”?

I don’t know where Kiko’s spirit is: if there is a kitty heaven, if he’s wondering around snooping through walls and spiritually pissing on everything, or if his spirit evaporated with the last breath in his body and the last beat of his heart. It would be comforting to believe that he at least gets to wander around again.

Meantime, though I never thought I would be the person who keeps the ashes of their dead kitty, I find myself turning remarkably Egyptian  (influence of Bastet maybe? Did Kiko have a religion and observances he is whispering into my ear? He did sometimes stare into space for no reason, seemingly only to meditate.).  I’m going to find a suitable kitty cookie jar or vase, hopefully at some Color Me Mine type store where I can paint and finish it to my liking.  Then put the canister in there with his collar, a favorite toy or two and his eulogy.  Then I’m going to put it all up on the type of high shelf he would have liked to have perched on when he was alive, and maybe his “ka” will be happy then.

So, not that you wanted or needed to know.  But that is what I’m doing in honor of my friend.