D is for Death

Yesterday I wrote about my cat, his life and his death. Death is something that many of us fear: both death itself and the journey to death, as that journey generally involves loss, pain, and sickness.

We often say that death is part of the Fall, that big bad decision that Eve made by eating the apple, but I don’t believe that. Without death, the ecosystem that is our world just doesn’t work. Without death, there is no life.  God wouldn’t have designed a world that required death, then withheld death until Eve screwed up, and then punished Eve and all humanity for screwing up. I know people will disagree with me. I’ve been disagreed with over worse than this, so, you know, just be nice when you call me a heretic in the comments.

We have this romantic notion of what it means for the lion to lay down with the lamb – this idea that there is a world, an ecosystem, that can exist without death. We try to enact this in our diets, by eating vegan, or raw. Yet this ignores the fact that the plants we are eating must die. The book Food and Faith makes this point far more eloquently than I could hope to in a simple blog post (and I highly recommend it as a good, thought-provoking read). The simple fact is that in our ecosystem, living beings must eat, and when something is consumed, it dies. Without death, there is no life.

Why does this matter? Because we refuse to embrace death. Death is an essential part of life. We deny it, turn our backs, bemoan it, and wail over it. And it is normal and good to grieve. After I initially drafted this post, I learned of the death of a friend. And I wept. Death is loss. Yet it is also inevitable.

Tomorrow I will celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, the ultimate victory over death. The Resurrection promises a world where death will not be loss, where death will not be the painful separation of loved ones. But although we hope for a new world, a new ecosystem, if you like, we still live in a world where death is required for life.

While we frantically ignore and delay death, we give ourselves permission to live small lives, lives that pretend to be safe. We fear what others think. We refuse to take risks. We grasp at everything, pretending that we can control the world. We put off tasks “until.” Until we lose the weight, until we organize the closet, until we have the right job, until we have enough money. Let’s embrace the inevitability of death and live lives filled with passion and risk and love. After all, one beautiful lesson of Easter is that death is not the final ending: there is something more.

The Best Cat Ever

When I was 22, I got a pair of cats. I walked into a shelter, and saw Shadow, laying on a chest. He was a beautiful thin adolescent cat grown into his ears. I picked him up and he relaxed against me. I loved him: his silky black fur, his white fur tuxedo markings: the tiny black spot on his tongue. I knew he would not be adopted – he wasn’t an adorable kitten any more. But he was mine.

In addition to Shadow I adopted Pipsqueak, the smallest gray kitten I had ever seen. I could feel every bone in his tiny starved body. When I fed the two of them, Pipsqueak would inhale his food and then stick his tiny nose into Shadow’s bowl. Shadow would look at him with confusion, then stroll off.

Shadow is black, Pip is gray!

The two of them were best friends. They both grew into large cats: Shadow was 13 pounds at his largest, while Pipsqueak embraced irony as he blossomed to 24 pounds. Shadow was my lap cat. Always in my lap, always meowing for attention. He was also my skittish cat. He didn’t like anyone much. If he stayed in the same room with you, that was a high mark of approval. He was a reliable barometer of friends and dates for me. Even if he allowed you to pet him, he stayed as far away as he could. My husband and I always joked that Shadow really just wanted a disembodied arm – a nice hand and arm to stroke his fur without any scary human attached to it.

Shadow was my explorer cat. In my first apartment, he used the continuous rail between my balcony and my neighbor’s balcony to explore both! He learned how to open folding doors, which meant all my closets had bookends and rocks in front of them. One time he got in my trash to pull out the rotten potatoes and play soccer with them. In the mornings, he would jump to the top of my bureau and go to the saucer where I kept jewelry. He would pick up the pieces of jewelry individually and drop them to the floor, very deliberately.

Shadow was also my problem cat. Two years old, and he developed urinary crystals and infections. I spent my entire life savings account (yes, all of it, but 24 year olds don’t always have the best judgment) on surgery to save his life. It paid off though. Shadow continued to thrive through three moves, marriage, and a new kitten. He got constant UTIs, but he loved the antibiotic and took medicine easily. He was even polite in letting me know of the infection: he would find a magazine or book and urinate on it so I could see the blood. He never urinated on my floors – always on something laying on the floor.

When Shadow was 17 years old, he became incontinent. He had been having problems for a while, and with a toddler, we had to adapt quickly to cleaning up constant accidents. But then, in the summer, he lost all control. It was untenable. I took him to the vet, only to discover that he had fluid on his heart, shrunken kidneys and an enlarged liver. His quality of life was over.

It was not a good time. We were in the middle of a deck renovation that turned out to be much more work than we expected or planned for. We were also planning my daughter’s third birthday party. To add insult to injury, we were in the process of leaving our church home. But I knew it was time to let Shadow go home.

The appointment was on a Friday. My husband volunteered to stay home to dig the grave. He couldn’t bear to go with me to the vet – a friend was coming instead. My heart broke all week. I petted Shadow every chance I got. I set up a giant litter box surrounded by a picnic blanket to provide some sort of hygiene to the situation. On Thursday, he stopped eating the canned tuna I had been feeding him. I wrapped him in a towel and held him in my arms as he slowly released everything from his body. I didn’t know if he would last until Friday morning, but he did.

My friend met me at the vet. We walked into the office and I took him out of the carrier. The vet explained everything to me – she agreed with my decision and was so kind. I held him when they gave him the first shot, which would remove the pain. His tiny body went into mini seizures and then was still.

I put him on the towel, his tiny body limp. I squatted on the floor so I was at eye level. I locked my eyes onto his: green pools of age. He and I stared at each other. His pupils dilated larger and larger until they were pools of black. He was gone.

Is Shadow in Heaven? I don’t know, or really care. He was a good cat. He stayed with me through many lonely nights, through many heartbreaks. He brought me joy through his exploits. And at the end, I was able to end his pain and be the last thing he saw. God is a good God, a God who loves. Wherever Shadow is, it is a good place. Probably a place where he is surrounded by disembodied arms, just the way he would've wanted it.

Shadow, the week before he died.

Books, Books, Books

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B is for Bible. That’s how little Christian children learn it. Bible is simply Greek for Book, which is another excellent B word. I adore books. They spill over from every shelf and horizontal surface in my house. I can’t have enough books. And replacement with the Kindle just won’t work. It’s fine for vacations but I don’t like using it to read.

My love affair with books started early. As a very young child I collected books, buying one every Friday night at the bookstore with my allowance. I still remember the price stickers on the back covers, no bar codes.

As I got older, my books got thicker. I began to break the spines. I also ate the corners of the paper. I’d pull off a little triangle and pop it in my mouth and masticate it while my eyes raced across the page. I was a bookworm, consuming as much of the book as possible.

Later I stopped the paper eating. Not because it was gross, but simply because it was very difficult to earmark a page when all the corners had been torn off. I also stopped the binding breaking. Instead, I developed the habit of rubbing one of my middle fingers against the smooth binding. To this day, that’s my rule when I loan out a book: don’t break the binding. I rub the soft pad of my finger back and forth against the soft shiny paper of the cover while I read ferociously. My eyes still devour the book, but my physical consumption has ceased.

My 3 year old already has three box sets of books for when she’s older. Harry Potter, Little House, and Winnie the Pooh. We do read some of Winnie to her but it’s not her favorite. I keep the other two sets safe on the bookcase in my office, away from harm. 

The best book I've read recently is Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. What's the best book you've read lately?

Books are important, but you should always leave some space for a cat to nestle!