On the Passing of Our Cat, Jackie
This little cat cracked my heart open. I hadn’t connected with animals for an entire lifetime, and this one came with Donald, my one true love, also late in life.
Late in life is a blessing. Any time is a blessing, when love walks through the door.
In the world of love and life, there is no time. The time spent with our loves, though we treasure the seconds while we are with them and even more possessively when we know they are on their way out, is time out of time.
Seconds pass and everything becomes a memory – fleeting like cotton candy clouds dissolving in the sky.
Memories live on in pictures, our minds, hearts, stories, dreams, though the physical presence of the loves we lose along the way are done and gone. No soft fur to touch on Jackie’s white chest and exquisite underbelly, though I can feel him as I write these words every bit as well as I did when he was alive. I can.
It is not even three days since we held him in our arms for the last time. We have been sobbing in the morning and evening, when the distractions of the day cannot keep us from feeling his absence.
So now my heart turns to thinking about whom else we can love. I perk up when I think that some other little soul might need our hearts. I perk up to see that living without a cat is no option now and that loving is the best feeling there is. Loving is the only option. Who’s next?
Late in life is a blessing. And it isn’t late, when all there is Presence. There is no moment but now, and those who write about it are telling the truth.
In this space of now, we inhabit a small span of life. I got to spend some of that with my beloved soul animal. How he graced us.
Any time is a blessing, when love walks through the door.
For Donald and Jackie – Love Masters.
