Finality

In IN THE DARK, Tish Verdure asks Stride if there's anything of which he's afraid.  With some hesitation, Stride admits that he's afraid of loss.  "I hate endings, goodbye, funerals, everything like that," he says.  "The end of books.  The end of movies.  The end of vacations.  I like it when things keep going, but they never do."

This comes to mind because Marcia and I are at the end of an agonizing week in which we had to say goodbye to our friend and companion of more than 19 years, our cat Disney.  His health has been going downhill for several months, and he had a particularly bad day on Monday.  We're leaving town for nearly three weeks soon for our 25th anniversary trip, and we knew he was in no condition to survive without us, and we hated the idea of him dying of a broken heart, feeling alone and abandoned.  We struggled with the decision all week, but when we saw him at peace yesterday, we knew we had done the right thing.

As I said to Marcia, it's hard to imagine a better way to spend your last hours than to rest in a sunbeam on your mom's lap, with a belly full of tuna fish, and then to go to sleep with your friends whispering how much they love you.

So we know we did the right thing by him.  The suffering now is ours.  For almost two decades, it's been just the three of us, and the house feels empty and lonely.  We know there are many other cats out there that need a good home, and soon several of them will move in and take over, as cats do.  But for now, we simply miss our little guy.