Dying with the Death of a Beloved on the Celebration of One's Life

Feb 2, 1948-2025

This was written in the early morning hours on Sunday last as another day in what we refer to as a celebratory day of our birth, for whatever reason we fill we must identify a date on the calendar in which to frame the context of our lives.

This is my experience,however, not of my life, but of the hours of tragedy just prior to the arrival of another of my supposed birth celebrations. It was written to a very old companion and sent as an email. Posting unedited, as raw emotion of the feelings I needed to share that morning.

this morning i had the most wonderful birthday. my cat, itty-bitty kitty, so small, but close to 25 years old. i guess because she was so small she had to fight to survive probably in the litter. despite the short legs she could outrun all the other wild feral cats. her voice was loud, Loud, LOUD. she would run up the porch railing to escape the other cats who were too big and then leap in the air and land on the roof and begin screaming for help. no one ever got her down and eventually when the coast was clear she would jump down.

she used to like to be out most of the time in the summer and only spend much time inside in the winter. but as she got older she wanted to stay in, she got slow and couldn' t run fast and i worried when she did go out at all.

Like her younger brother Blaze who died several years back she wanted to do everything we did. She was too little to stand and open doors like Blaze, but she wanted to drink from a cup not a bowl. And she decided she wanted to learn to speak. Y. says I was imagining word-sounds, but if I were to ask her if she wanted to go out and she would meow "n-yo" , "well do you want breakfast?' "n-yet."

she had been eating less and less even before we moved; but the last two or three days nothing. Y. went up to visit her brother, and she got really sick today, she lay all day beside me and I stroked her for hours and tried to find an emergency vet. Then last evening she tried to got up but couldn't get her legs to hold herself up. Finally while I went out to smoke I guess she was looking for a place to hide, i read that cats, at the end, want to die secluded. she couldn't find anyplace and i watched her moving about seeing if there was a hidden place. i sat down beside and tried to pet her, but she cried and tried to tell me to stop the pain. i told her i wished i could but i couldn't.

i lifted her back onto the bed and then lay back on the floor. it was the most privacy i could give her. i fell asleep on the floor and then awoke just after midnight when I heard heaving. she knew y. would get angry if she threw up on the bed and so she was leaning over the bed and heaving on the sleeping bag i was laying on. and then she just fell right into hitting her head on the bedpost, or maybe she was just unbalanced and fell on her head. but i could feel the deformation on the side. i don't know if it was blood or just the slobber i'd been wiping away all day...the drool. i put my head on her and she yelled at me, the loudest cry all day, but not the typical cry. this was a last gasp cry. her legs began to twitch. soft whimpers for mercy. she wanted me to take away her pain. i decided there was nothing else to do. i wrapped the sleeping bag around her head and squeezed her small head god, her legs were lashing out, i thought i was being merciful but this was a very botched execution. i let go, and laid my head on her. she was gasping for air but couldn't get any, there was no heaving of her abdomen but the little girl was trying, as she always had, to survive. maybe i should have let her do so. but she wasn't going to live, i had crushed her little head. so i finished it. the legs kept twitching forever although i'm sure she was finished, or at least could no longer get air,she wasn't breathing. but there was fierce couple of kicks and the small leg twitches for several minutes while i cut off her air and smothered her.

cold-blooded murder. so there you have it...everyone always said that someday i would kill someone. i even thought it possible, why i never had a gun.

but i proved everyone right, happy 75 ken. you proved your destiny.

i never thought i was on a trajectory for salvation, but now i hope there is a devil to torture me forever in the same way i took the life of that blessed little itty-bitty kitty. she had another name but she answered immediately to itty-bitty, hardly at all to her given name.

well i got this lump in my lower gut. they said it was a hernia. well that hernia is 3 times bigger and seven others lumps in the lower abdomen , one the side of my leg,, one on my left elbow and now one on my right wrist.

well i get to see the gi doctor in march if the devil doesn't punish me. and if he doesn't then stop the presses, god doesn't exist.

i don't know if continuing to live with myself is possible cause i tell you, i murdered my own mind when I took that wonderful little cat's life.

A very fine birthday to give to myself: the recognition of my own cruel self.

Please cry for those who are being harmed.

Cry for those you harmed.

Cry for those who harmed you.

And then hold out to all the arms of understanding and hope we can all find a way to no longer need to cry.