This morning we put Bobbi the cat to sleep. For the past four years, we’d successfully managed her diabetes, but recently she had inexplicably lost weight, and after two stays in the critical care unit for hypoglycemia, pancreatitis, and liver lipidosis, this morning Bobbi was unable to walk, stand, or control her bodily functions: a sure sign her fight was done.
When you have euthanized as many pets as J and I have, there is nothing surprising about the process itself. There’s the same quiet drive to Angell, the sad transaction as you pay for the procedure, and the solemn walk to a euphemistically named meditation room, where you can cry and say goodbye in private.
In the meditation room, you reenact the familiar ritual of getting the pet comfortably settled until the on-duty emergency vet comes in, offers her condolences, and then carries the animal off to receive an IV catheter. When today’s vet brought Bobbi back to us, she was swaddled in a blanket, only her head and the end of an IV tube visible. I held Bobbi in my lap as the medication was administered and she went from being a small, compliant bundle to Gone. With the plunge of two syringes, a beloved but suffering creature went to whatever rest awaits her.
After all this time, I still don’t believe in the Rainbow Bridge or other euphemisms of immortality; to me, it is enough to be free from suffering, a slate wiped completely clean. I don’t believe in the resurrection of the body; why would Bobbi (or any of us) want to return to a vessel that was failed and failing? When Bobbi died, she still had sprouting from her neck the esophagostomy tube J had faithfully used to keep her alive over the weekend: pureed food, water, and so many medicines pumped into her four times a day. Why would any creature want to return to that?
I have no wish for a feline afterlife or for some magically mythic realm where old souls return to young bodies. What sense would there be with so many creatures congregating in confusion, the lives that were lost mingling with ones that replaced them? It is the necessary and unapologetic way of this world that life goes on. Once the arrow has been released, it never returns to its quiver.
Whatever comfort I find in the aftermath of another pet death lies not in an imagined future but in this stone-sure truth: for a brief and precious time, Bobbi knew moments of pleasure and peace: the bliss of a head-scratch, the delights of a sunny windowsill. Forever and ever, amen, such simple pleasures will be–must be–amply and abundantly enough.
When we put Reggie the dog to sleep seven years ago last week, the window of Angell’s meditation room revealed a square of blue sky on an impossibly beautiful spring day; the next day, I remember, our backyard tulips bloomed. We haven’t had tulips in our yard for years–the neighborhood rabbits find them too tasty–but this morning, I saw a cluster of daffodils ready to bloom by our birdbath. How fitting that flowers–nature’s most ephemeral expression–are the universal language of condolence. As go these blooms, so go the rest of us, eventually.
It was an impossibly beautiful day when Reggie died, and today–Bobbi’s last day–the sun also shines. On the drive home from Angell, everything I saw seemed transfigured by the miracle of April light: so many people headed off to work, their heads cram-packed with worry as if any of this matters. Looking up at the morning light basking upon a brick facade, I had to wonder why the Universe, which is merely temporary, would waste so much precious time on useless beauty. Knowing the ultimate end of all our days, why bother?
Bobbi was the first pet we adopted with a known diagnosis of diabetes. Before her, Snowflake the cat had become diabetic in old age, and realizing we could care for one diabetic cat, we adopted Bobbi in June, 2015, when her medical condition made hope of a forever home seem unlikely. Snowflake was a large, lovable lug; when it was time for his insulin injections, I’d spread a towel on my lap, and he’d climb on it, luxuriating in the petting that came after the prick. But Bobbi was different. A grumpy, feisty calico, Bobbi had no tolerance for cuddling: the best approach at insulin time was to distract her with food, then grab the scruff of her neck and jab her quickly. In her younger days, Bobbi kept the veterinary staff at Angell on guard…but more recently, her temper somewhat softened and she would occasionally crawl into my lap and press her head into my hand.
Today, as I mentioned, is an impossibly beautiful day: impossible because beauty seems unlikely in a world intent on impermanence, and impossible because beauty insists on existing alongside heartbreak. Sitting at an intersection on the drive home, I saw a tattered plastic bag snagged on a stoplight, flowing and flapping in the spring breeze. The sight seemed too profound for words: a bit of rubbish caught and temporarily transformed into something unspeakably lovely. If you live gently and kindly enough in this ephemeral world, you eventually see our brief time here as enough, our souls snagged and tattered until they eventually float away.
Hoarded Ordinaries 