Who are you grieving?
The answer came instantly. I know it did.
I know, because I sit next to you here on the same park bench.
The wood is weathered. Countless initials are carved into the grain. The plaque is so old, it’s hard to make out the words. But there they are:
“THOSE WHO LOVE”
It does not say “Those Who Loved,” because we can only live in the present tense. Grief expands and contracts. It is the heart that turns into a fist and back again.
You may have lost your soulmate cat twelve years ago, only to wake gasping for air, in disbelief that she is gone.
Your wounds may be fresh and livid red, but already core-deep.
Still, we sit here, determined not to run away.
Who are you grieving, and what are they saying?
You hear them under your heart. I know you do.
At Tabby’s Place, our ancestors are many.
Durin and Antin and Samantha are gone, yet still they speak. They are the voice that says every act of kindness echoes into eternity. They are the breath in our ear promising that love is never lost.
They are the insistence that mercy is no less powerful when it goes unseen.
They are ever urging us to give life our all.
The other side of grief is a ferocious love for life. We are carried, an inch off the ground, by a cloud of cats who have gone before.
They bear us into Suite J. They serve notice to Betty’s cancer. We grieve, so we give the full measure of strength into saving this life. We have lost, so we know how much this graceful lover has to gain.
We have wept on the bench, so we have the strength to stand against the daunting diagnosis.
Betty was young her first time here, under blue skies that favor kittens. Betty was adopted, returned after a decade, and just starting to learn that the sun that prefers veterans. It was an ordinary day in her bright orange window seat when Betty was diagnosed.
Grief knows the value of ordinary days.
Grief gets neck-deep in the rapids to dredge for ordinary days with its bare hands.
We grieve because we love, and steel stitches keep our broken hearts in our chests.
We will pour out the full measure of our treasure to save Betty.
We will consult the council of love and loss, whose joint decisions are brave and wise.
Betty will have every day she deserves.
It is all so much more beautiful than we could ever deserve.
We will end up on this bench over and over, collapsed into each other’s shoulders. But our friends will bid us to rise, and rise, and rise again.
We are here together, and when one of us can’t help but contract, another will expand. We are too small to grieve or to love alone.
We are mercifully spared that option.
Tabby’s Place stretches your heart out big enough to know all of these wonderful cats – and they fill us with a love that only hurts when they leave.