Acceptance

An extract from a conversation with my friend, which I'm writing up here in case I need to be reminded of my own words in future...

My old cat, Leo, passed away a couple of years ago. I LOVED Leo. And I mean ADORED him. He was my safe place on four paws.

We worshipped each other- every morning I carried him into the kitchen for breakfast. His voice was the first thing I'd hear when I got home, demanding cuddles, which had to last at least half an hour or he'd swear at me. He was totally uninterested in food - cuddles first.

We got him when I was 12, and at the time I was probably most traumatised in my life. When everything else turned shit, I turned to Leo. He was there for me when my husband (R) was in hospital over and over again, when friends and I argued, when my family imploded. He was my refuge through my teenage years, through illness, trauma, bereavement. He was the thing that made sense, when everything else confused me.

He pined when I went away, made himself ill, wouldn't eat. He would let me carry him round the house like a baby, upside down, for hours. He slept in my arm, under the duvet, with his head on the pillow. Every night before bed he would wash R's beard vigorously.

As he got older he got arthritis, and then diabetes - Type 1, just like R. We used to say it ran in the family. On the vet's advice, we gave him blood tests by trimming his claws a little short - we would use R's blood test kit. We gave him 2 insulin injections a day. He never complained. He knew it would hurt when we trimmed his claws, and he knew it was coming. He would sit in my lap good as gold as I did it. He trusted me not to do anything that would hurt him, that wasn't completely necessary.

As he got to the end of his life he got extremely incontinent, in a variety of unsavoury ways. He'd been doing it on and off for years. He totally melted the carpet in the corners of our old house! For the last few months we lived with plastic sheeting over the sofa, bed etc. He still slept in with us because I couldn't bear to be without him, or to upset him, even though I'd be woken up most nights from lying in a pool of elderly cat wee. And believe me, until you've woken up covered in a diabetic's wee, you don't know anything about urine. There was laundry hanging everywhere, sofa covers constantly in bath being cleaned. We had to try and encourage him to...ahem...evacuate..by hand.

When he passed away, the vet came to our home. He slipped away in my arms, with his belly full of freshly cooked chicken, and for the first time, his body relaxed more than it had done in a year. I realised how hunched his body had been, with pain, for so long. I am sure I saw something, young, leave his body and joyfully spring away. I always picture him now in the grass, in the morning, wet with dew, stalking invisible creatures. He was beautiful. He was always such a beautiful cat - like a brick wrapped in silk, muscled, soft, graceful. Everyone fell in love with him. He had marks all the way up his cat-bed post.

His remains were cremated, and I asked them to cremate the scratch-proof, dribble resistant teddy bear that he loved, as well.

For months - and I mean MONTHS - I woke in the night, crying, waking up R to cuddle me. I HOWLED with loss. My body grieved. I had stomach aches - the heaviest period I'd had for years. It was as if I'd fucking MISCARRIED. My mind knew he wasn't my child, but my body did not. And he was my child - the child of my heart. I couldn't watch anything on television or films about losing a child, for about a year, I would just WAIL.

I lost interest in everything. Nothing seemed to matter anymore, without him. I was in such a bad way, so lonely, that we got our two kittens then, a couple of months after he died. But they weren't *him*. There was still this huge gap, this space, in my heart.

I remember being in at work one morning a couple of months after he died, and saying to my friend - I feel as if a light has gone out inside me, and that it will stay dark there for the rest of my life. I feel as if I'll never have that light inside me, ever again.

And she told me - 'that light HAS gone, and it won't come back'. 'Oh, well that's bloody comforting', I said. And she smiled, and replied, 'but something else, something different, will come. It won't be the same, but good things WILL still come, they will be different, and things that you don't expect. But they will come, and you'll always miss him, he will never be replaced, but other things will come and make your life worth living'.

And they have.

I never thought I could fill that dark space inside me with sexual fulfillment for the first time in my life, for example! I never thought I would fall in love again.

But that's how it works. Things come and go. Part of something being important to you, loving someone or something, is that it seems irreplaceable. And they ARE irreplaceable.

But that doesn't mean you are lost, or dark, or alone, for ever. The sun will always rise - even if the landscape looks different after the earthquake, the light will still come back.

I promise.