A note of thanks
Thank you all so much for the outpouring of support in the death of my cat. What felt like an unbearable weight of sadness is now beginning to lift and I’m able to remember Grayson and his many quirks without constantly devolving into a blubbering mess of tears and tissues. I’ve experienced the death of pets before but never have I felt such raw and profound grief as when Grayson died. His entire life was bookended with struggles – I fought my mother for weeks just to get him and then I spent nearly $6,000 in a two month fight against nature to try and save him. And he, in turn, saved me. There was a time in my life when my furbabies were the only reason I slogged through each grindingly difficult day. I knew that no one could ever love my cats and care for them as much as I did and I cared too much about them to give into the pain. Even in death, Grayson saved me from the agonizing decision to have him put to sleep. He died on his own just seconds after I arrived.
Buddhist tradition teaches that no matter how strenuous our efforts or how desperately we hold on to anything, it is already in the process of leaving us, and that only by accepting this impermanence and letting go can we ever hope to achieve harmony and balance. It’s easier said than done, even for this committed Buddhist. The night that Grayson died, our veterinarian Paul allowed Brandon and I to stay with him for two and a half hours past closing as I struggled with the decision I knew I needed to make. Through my tears I remarked to him that I would have been much more able to accept the situation had Grayson been 18 and at the end of a long end of a long and happy life and not just a young eight years old. Paul then told us about his two golden retrievers, the same dogs I have fallen in love with during my frequent visits to the office these past two month. Both have lymphoma, he said, and weren’t expected to live till 11. He kept begging the universe to just let them get to 11, but when they got there, he started wishing for them to make it until 12. “You always want more time,” he said. “It’s never enough.” And it never is.
When our vet called at 1 a.m. that night and said that the decision needed to be made now, Brandon asked if I wanted him to come with me and I said no. Brandon was very fond of Grayson, but Grayson was my cat both before we met and after, and I wanted to be alone with him and my sorrow. Afterwards, as I sat numb in my car pondering whether I should go home or just keep driving wherever the roads would take me to, the thought came to mind to stop eating again. It’s been such a long time since I’ve had that compulsion to flagellate myself through starvation but it didn’t feel foreign… it seemed completely natural, comforting even. I had taken Wednesday off work and so had a lot of time to be alone with myself and my thoughts and for one of the few times in my adult life with ADD, my monkey mind was mercifully still. Perhaps it’s a sign of recovery that I realized the exact etymology of that cunningly seductive voice urging me back to that disordered heaven of hell. As Marya Hornbacher so beautifully details it:
Bulimia is linked, in my life, to periods of intense passion, passion of all kinds, but most specifically emotional passion. Bulimia acknowledges the body explicitly, violently. It attacks the body, but it does not deny. It is an act of disgust and of need. This disgust and this need are about both the body and the emotions. The bulimic finds herself in excess, too emotional, too passionate. This sense of excess is pinned to the body. The body bears the blame but is not the primary problem. There is a sense of hopelessness in the bulimic, a well-fuck-it-all-then, I might as well binge. This is a dangerous statement, but the bulimic impulse is more realistic than the anorexic because, for all its horrible nihilism, it understands that the body is inescapable.
The anoretic operates under the astounding illusion that she can escape the flesh, and, by association, the realm of emotions.
Genetics may have dealt me the eating disorder gun, but it was an inability to confront and manage what was at the time extremely difficult and trying family issues that pulled the trigger on my disorder. I could not express the loneliness or desperation I felt and so in flesh, I described a pain I could not communicate in words. Armed with this heard-earned self-awareness, the desire to starve myself came as little surprise in the wake of the profound grief I felt at the passing of my beloved kitty. I wanted to not feel the aching sorrow of his absence, I wanted to be free of the pressing anvil on my heart and soul as the realization that I will never again stroke his soft ears or set my ear against the rumbling purr of his belly set in, I longed for the reassurance that each day wouldn’t be a sad continuation of the next. Anorexia may have transformed me into a soulless cold caricature of a human, but it made walking through the valley of the shadow that much easier.
I’ve heard it said that we should give thanks for the grief we feel for it is a measure of how much we loved and were loved in return. I could deny my hunger, my body and my pain, but to do so felt as if I would be denying the memory of my cat and all that he had given me in the too brief eight years I was blessed with him. Instead, I chose not only to feel the pain and sorrow, but to wallow in it and savor it as a way of painfully, but properly repaying the gift of unconditional love.
Instead of restraining my emotions, I gave of them. I made a concerted effort not to isolate myself and to feed my body and soul nourishing food. I donated all of Grayson’s medication and pricey prescription food to an animal shelter I used to volunteer at and spent an afternoon with the 75 cats there in wait of their own homes. I took time to play with my remaining cats and to appreciate them and how very happy they make me. I prepared a small gift box of treats from one of Cincinnati’s most decadently delicious bakeries to give to the vet who lent his expertise at no charge to our vet on Grayson’s puzzling and extremely rare medical condition. Over the weekend, I compiled a large box filled with goodies — cookies and fudge from my favorite indie coffee house, coffee cake and muffins from the same decadent bakery, homemade chocolate-covered pretzels– to give to the staff at the animal hospital who took such good care of my baby. I found the perfect fair trade, hand-carved stone sleeping cat paperweight to give to Paul, our vet, as a token of my extreme gratitude for treating and loving my cat as his own. And this weekend, we will be meeting a new cat, a three-year-old Himalayan who’s been so horribly treated in his short life that he’s afraid of people – to see if we would be a good fit to give him a forever home.
Despite his penchant for relentlessly chasing our little gray cat Bella, I’m certain Grayson had positive karma and if the Buddhist concept of life is at all definitive, I have no doubt there may come a day when he will be scratching my ears and not vice versa.
Thanks again, everyone.
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