Every year, usually soon after Memorial Day, Tabby’s Place staff and volunteers congregate in a garden to remember and honor beloved cats (and sometimes people) lost to us during the previous 12 months. Every loss counts, but those for the cats we knew the longest are often hardest hitting. This is not always the case.
There are different kinds of mourning for different situations and types of loss, including due to adoptions. Other kinds of mourning include the way we greive for cats like Sweetie and Popples, both of whom were too afraid to believe us when we told them that we were their friends. In Sweetie’s case, grief is doubled because he was starting to believe, beginning to trust. For Popples, grief is doubled because we didn’t have enough time to get him to start to believe in what could be. These losses of potential are a persisting grief indeed.
So too were the losses of Mr. Man and Chaz (aka Chazmatazz). Their short time with us feels almost like a scam. But we weren’t duped into loving so much in such a short time. We had months and days that we will always cherish. But, grief is doubled because we didn’t have years.
By and large, the impacts of losing longer-term residents with deeper connections with more people would seem to be the most impactful. In some ways, this is true. We relied on the sound of Grecca‘s yells. We counted on seeing Boobalah‘s swishy sashay. Tucker’s tummy trap was extraordinary, as was his growl when his trick failed. Lola’s sass was legion and legendary. More cannot be said because there is too much more to say about far too many cats that we unconditionally loved and love still and will love forever. It doesn’t matter how much time we had together or what that time was like. No matter how plentiful the moments, they fell short by aeons.
Over long periods or short, with attention and intentions appreciated or doubted, we grieve our losses. We continue to process our grief, individually and as a community. In tech speak, we might say that non-linear functionalities alter the processing speed of grief. In lay terms, sometimes we move forward and see daylight, while sometimes we slip backwards into the darkness with sharp or dull aches. Yet, there is always grace. There is always the softening that comes with long-term healing. For the short-term, we simply need to remember that what we are feeling in our grief is nothing less wonderful than love persisting.