Mark’s favorite holiday was Thanksgiving – the bigger the table the better. For all of us, the last one he was alive was our most memorable. It would be the first one we would be celebrating without Mallory who had moved to California and had to work that day. At my sister’s house the night before in walked Mal who had bartered with someone to take her shifts after my younger sister arranged and paid for her to fly home. We jumped up and screamed when they came in the door, Mark’s eyes filled with tears. That was also the year my mom was not yet in the abyss of dementia and my brother and his wife flew in from Las Vegas. We were so happy that weekend, never knowing it would be drastically different the following year.
In these last few months there has been a young mom I’ve gotten to know whose story of loss is so similar to mine it catches my breath. I want to scoop her up and cradle her like the broken bird she is and I was five years ago. I want to promise her that one day things will get better, but if someone had said that to me in the early months following Mark’s death I never would have believed them. She will have to lead herself and her young daughters to light, the steps forward so incremental they can’t even be measured. On the day of the year designated for family and thankfulness that feels like an impossible task.
This year our table will look a bit different. I’m not sure what healed is and whether I will ever be completely there, but I am happy which for so long I wanted to believe was possible while never actually buying into it. One day I will write about how that came about, how the stars aligned in the most incredible way, and you will think I made the whole thing up. Like other times over these past few years, I keep asking myself, “Is this real?”
I think the most grateful people in life are the ones who have suffered tremendous loss. They are the ones at the Thanksgiving table who know there is no guarantee that the same people will be there next year. They act accordingly, taking in every detail and putting it in the bank, on-their-knees thankful for every life preserver that was thrown their way when the dinner in front of them on Thanksgiving Day looked like a heaping plate of loss.
When I talked to some writer friends about turning this into a book one day, one of them said, “It needs to have a happy ending.” There was some disagreement about that, about why things only feel complete when there’s a happy ending. I might have been the one pushing back the most on that idea. It has been hard to allow new things to come into my life when both of my hands were tightly clutching what used to be. But I never let go of hope and one day it said to me, “You can unclench your fingers and set those things down now. I am here. You are going to be okay,” and I grabbed the ring and allowed myself to drift towards something new.
When I was a little girl, a cat gave birth to kittens underneath the shed at the back of the yard where my siblings and I grew up. Our mom discovered the litter and let us bring them into the garage. We were obsessed with these newborn cats, held them, chased them, squeezed them until our arms were covered in scratches, and then go crying to Mom with our bloody forearms. After a thousand times of her telling us to leave them alone, she’d had enough and told us that all the cats were going to a shelter. We begged her to let us keep them but she was sick of nursing our scratches and said that we were not a cat family.
Mark, on the other hand, was from a cat family and it wasn’t long into our marriage that we went to the shelter and adopted one, followed by a dog for me. After that there was a parade of animals that came into our home. When two of our cats died fairly close to one another, we got another cat from the shelter – a tabby that we instantly fell in love with. On a Sunday morning while walking her dog, our neighbor found him on the side of the road across the street from our house. He likely had been hit by a car and we were heartsick he was gone from our lives so soon.
As Mark had an accomplice in Mallory, they were in cahoots to get another cat right away. We had a wedding coming up and I was adamant that there would be no new pets until the wedding was over. Maggie and Nate tied the knot on a Saturday, we had family over for breakfast on Sunday morning, and when everyone headed out of town Mark said, “Okay, we ready to go to the shelter now?” I thought he had to be kidding – we were exhausted – but Mal got her shoes and said, “I’m ready!” and I went to keep some control over the situation.
On the way there I said, “You know this is only a looking expedition to see what’s available, right? We don’t have to actually get a cat today,” and they nodded and I already knew the odds were stacked against me. We went in, signed some paperwork to look around, and went cat shopping. “Remember,” I said, “ONLY ONE!! WE ARE ONLY GETTING ONE CAT,” and I don’t even know why I bothered because nobody was listening to me.
One by one we looked at the cats, those two ten steps ahead of me, and they came across a gray and white one named Pip. Mal loved him, Mark said, “Pip, pip, hooray.” They gave me a hard sell and I asked if maybe we should look around some more but they had made their decision. We were about to take home our one new cat when Mark and Mal found out that the cat next to Pip was his brother, Francis. Mark pulled me aside and said, “I don’t think we can leave a brother behind,” and I said, “Oh my god, will you stop? This isn’t the History Channel and he isn’t in the infantry. We’re talking about a cat.” He sighed and said to Mal, “Mom says no to two cats, we gotta leave the brother behind.” I told him I knew exactly what he was doing and said, “We had an agreement.” “Well, actually,” Mark said, “we didn’t agree to anything,” and then he said, “We’ll call him Frank. Anybody calls him Francis and we’ll kill them,” and pretty soon I’m giggling over my funny husband and he’s motioning to the shelter employees that we’ll take the brothers and all of a sudden I’m realizing I’ve been played.
We brought them home and while Pip was needy and in your face all the time, Frank hung out all over the neighborhood. He could get into our neighbor’s screened porch through their dog door and in the summer went over there most afternoons for a nap. One time they found him napping in their bathtub. Sometimes he’d be gone for days and we found out that on the other side of the creek was a house that fed him so if he didn’t like the choices here he’d head over to their place.
When Mark died, Frank started following me around the neighborhood. If my neighbors were sitting outside and I decided to join them, Frank followed me the whole way. I’d tell him I WAS FINE and he needed to go home because while he patrolled my end of the street, Bootsy owned the middle and wasn’t fond of this gang banger showing up on his turf. The two of them would hiss at each other, Bootsy livid at the audacity, but Frank never left. He’d sit in the driveway waiting for me and when I headed back home he’d be ahead of me, looking over his shoulder to make sure I was still following him.
Last month, I picked Frank up to put some flea medicine on him and could feel every vertebrae in his back when I ran my hand down him. He was always a big cat and by appearances he still looked big but something was going on. The next day I couldn’t find him and Maggie came by and helped me look for him. A little while later I spotted him on the patio laying in the shade. I brought him some water and he lifted his head and drank a bit. When the kids came over for dinner I told them I thought Frank was dying and that I wanted him inside. There were other cats that came around, along with the occasional possum and raccoon. Frank had no fight in him and I didn’t want him outside where he might get hurt. He let me pick him up and bring him onto the screened porch where we petted him and cried at the thought of our big, bad Frank weak and struggling.
If you want to know if I ever get mad at Mark, this would be one of those times. All of our cats died at home and Mark nursed them to the end. He always seemed to know what to do, I had no idea. The next day I put Frank in a box with the intent of going to the vet hospital. I didn’t even make it a block. For a cat that was very sick and weak he had plenty of energy left to go absolutely nuts in the car. I came home and brought him upstairs. During the night I checked on him. He was under the bed so I grabbed a pillow and laid on the floor with him. When I woke up in the morning I was shocked that he was still alive. Will brought over a pet carrier, I arrived at the vet first thing in the morning and cried the minute we walked in the door. “He’s probably got twisted intestines,” they said to me but I knew our Frankie Boy was on his way out.
He went fast after that – so fast that the original plan to bring him to a little room for me to hold while they administered the meds had to be changed. They led me back to their ICU where he was barely alive. “He wasn’t exactly affectionate,” I told the vet, “so when he jumped on you and started purring it was really a big deal.” This poor vet who probably sees this too many times a day waited for me to give the okay. I petted Frank on the head, scratched behind his ears, told him he was the best mouser we ever had, and then it was over. I cried during all of it, on the way home, most of that day. Then I had to call Mallory and tell her and we both cried.
The house has become eerily quiet for a cat who preferred roaming the neighborhood to being inside. Pip is still here and still like the Real Housewives of Felines, drunk with neediness. I miss our Frankie Boy and his non-chalant bad assery in my life more than I ever thought possible.
Isn’t it funny how if you let your guard down, people can teach you how to cast a wider net and love the unexpected?
