Sunflowers in Bloom: For Sapphire

This house creaks and moans as autumn settles in, as if it’s mourning the loss of you. It was once alive with a symphony of your melodic meows, the rhythmic hum of your purring, the delicate pitter patter of your footsteps. But now, it is silent.

Our conversations have ended.

The steady hiss of water when you were thirsty no longer flows from sink faucets. Foil balls no longer ricochet off the baseboards during spirited games of fetch and soccer. Excited meows when we turned our key in the door have been muted.

Patches of morning sun spill out undisturbed, bereft of your silhouette, onto the terracotta tile of the kitchen floor where you spent your mornings. Paw prints in the shower, on the countertops and windowsills, in dusty corners beneath radiators and end tables, are fading.

Your favorite resting spots are empty. Depressions where you slept, the faint outline of your tired body curled up like a snail shell, still faintly visible, although these, too, will inevitably fade. Your cat tower stands like an abandoned lighthouse overlooking the yard. Photographs of you, scattered throughout this house, may bring us comfort in time, but not now. They’re too painful now.

Our life has been reduced by a third.

Jarring Silence

You were the center of our universe, the catalyst of our smiles, the protagonist in our stories. The giver of millions of kisses, the inspiration for hundreds of nicknames, the heart and soul of this house. Your spirit was larger than life. You were larger than life. Svelte in stature, yes, the most delicate little girl, but immense in personality and your capacity to love. You were a sentient soul, as close to human as an animal could be. You experienced life with us and enriched every aspect of our days.

We talked constantly, and you understood and responded in kind. You always had something to say, a meow for just about any desire or need, be it hunger or thirst or attention or sleep or playtime; and to express distinct emotions: joy, sadness, surprise, annoyance, fear. You were anything but typical, far from it, but in true feline form, you did have a penchant for selective listening. Countless times, we would scour the house in pursuit of you, calling your name. Sapphire! Where is you, little girl? Oh, Coconut! Near panic, we'd find you comfortably nestled behind a couch pillow, right under our noses, with an innocent face and wide eyes that seemed to say, Oh, was it me you were looking for? We often joked that you, with your beautiful, bronze and silky leopard rosettes, were our “Def Leppard,” a nod to our favorite band.

It is our conversations, the daily chatter, our crazy, high-pitched exchanges that would make anyone within earshot question my sanity, that I will miss the most. The absence of your voice, this thundering silence, is new and jarring.

You could uncannily intuit our need for laughter when there was pain or sadness, empathy when we struggled to find comfort, light where there was darkness. You were inquisitive and funny and sweet and playful and mouthy and stubborn and loyal and deliberate and protective. And beautiful. Excruciatingly beautiful. You did everything on your own terms. You had an attitude and held a grudge. It took time for you to warm up to people, and some were never lucky enough to win your affection. You reminded me so much of myself that I often wondered whether my influence molded you or we were simply destined to belong to each other.

Moon in Virgo

I named you Sapphire. Your eyes were bright blue, the color of azure skies. You slept in the palms of our hands as we passed you back and forth to each other. You helped us to feel again, broken as we were at having lost my childhood cat, Cleo, shortly before meeting you. We felt empty and lost, as we are now. You were the antidote to our grief.

The wait to bring you home felt interminable. Little did we know the surprise we were in for when we picked you up. Your eye color had changed from blue to green! Should we consider a different name, we wondered, perhaps Jade or Emerald in keeping with the gemstone theme? No, Sapphire was your name. It was my mother’s birthstone, and ironically or fittingly, perhaps a bit of both, you passed while the moon was in Virgo.

We had a slumber party in the living room your first night home. We fashioned a fortress out of a pet gate and fitted it with the essentials. The fort was to prevent you from escaping; surely there was no way you would be able to scale the three-foot–high plastic walls. Hah! – that was our first lesson in never underestimating you! No sooner than we fell asleep did you manage to escape. We found you behind the couch, crouched in a tight ball like a frightened hedgehog.

Your first few days were spent hiding behind the toilet bowl, but you slowly warmed up. Millimeter by millimeter, you walked toward us to accept small bites of wet food, first from a saucer, then from our hands. Little convincing was required –  you quickly made us yours. The irony was that we thought we were domesticating you.

Our days and nights were filled with your flashy, acrobatic feats. Your routine was play hard for five minutes, sleep for ten, and repeat! Play, sleep, play, sleep, with play time gradually doubling and tripling in relation to your need for sleep. Sleep time, though, was what I craved. My heart swelled when you slept on my chest for the first time, nestled in the crook of my neck, your breathing and purring syncopated with my heartbeat. My hope that you were a “lap cat” fulfilled immediately.

Sapphire Lucille

You loved us wholly and fiercely for fourteen years. You were our shadow, following us around everywhere we went, and the light in our shadows. You graced us with so many memories, both tender and funny, that I wish I had written them all down.

The time when you were nosing around in the attic and fell through a drop ceiling, landing on all fours onto a stool. Or when you jumped from the floor to the top of a door – without a running leap! When you leapt onto my grandmother’s shoulders from behind her recliner and scared the living daylights out of her.

That night you slept in the linen closet out of spite when we arrived home from a weekend getaway. When you were a featured model in the 365 Kittens A Year calendar. All those times you jumped into the shower with us and slept on top of the cabinets in the kitchen. Once, you even jumped from the floor to the top of the refrigerator!

How we enjoyed taking you for walks outside. And at Christmas, you perched atop my shoulder to help me decorate the tree.

Above all, I’ll never forget the way the intonation of your meow almost sounded as if you were saying my name.

We had so much fun with you. You were sophisticated and poised, regal and proud, but you were a true comedian at heart. In fact, your full name was Sapphire Lucille Esmeralda McGillicuddy Gabriel, an homage to the character my hero, Lucille Ball, made famous on I Love Lucy.

Little effort was required on your part to bring us a smile or laugh, and you succeeded every time. You gave of your love freely and unconditionally. Throughout your life, you maintained your youthful exuberance. You lived a long life, but you still acted like a kitten, even after sickness began to settle in like fine dust on an out-of-tune piano.

In the Bleak Mid-Winter

Your light began to dim over a span of bleak January days. The skies were grey, and the chill in the air, biting. You weren’t yourself. You were withdrawn and not eating, and weight slid from you like rain water off the grooves of an aluminum awning. You recoiled at our approach. You were hospitalized for one night; the thought of losing you was unbearable.

Tests revealed inflammation in your pancreas and intestinal tract. The doctor didn’t believe it was cancer. I asked. The rapid weight loss concerned me, and it wasn’t your first brush with it. And I asked since, and the answer was always the same. I promise you, I asked repeatedly. We brought you home, and I started my research.

I cooked your meals, convinced that toxic commercial food was the culprit for your health issues, made you bone broth, administered your medications, and monitored you around the clock. I documented everything you ate, every medication you took, every side effect you suffered, every bowel you moved. Together, we fought. For months. It was a dizzying road, full of swerves and potholes and frustrations around every bend, but you never stopped fighting. I don’t know who was more determined, you or I.

Miraculously, you started to put on weight, and within three months, you gained more than one pound, a monumental feat! By month six, you were asymptomatic, off medications, and maintaining your weight – and you continued on this path for nearly two months! You were incredible and so very strong.

Just when we thought we were out of the woods, the bottom, as it so often does when one least expects it, fell out. All of the progress we made had receded. You lost weight again, but faster. Your hip bones jutted out like jagged seashells beneath a mantel of sand, and you grew weak. You couldn’t eat. And you started to pull away. We syringe fed you around the clock, loaded you up with medications and supplements to keep the nausea and pain at bay. But it wasn’t enough. You slipped away a little more each day.

Retreating to the basement, you came up only a few precious times. I fought against the selfish urge to close off the cellar so that you would be near us, come what may. But you didn’t want us. You no longer slept with us, no longer napped on our laps, no longer sat by my feet while I cooked, no longer greeted us excitedly at the door. You wanted to be by yourself. In hiding, I knew that you were preparing yourself for what was next. But I suspect it was more than that. Protecting us from certain heartache was your primary motive.

An ultrasound revealed a mass in your intestine and swelling in your lymph nodes. We opted against a biopsy – we weren’t going to put you through surgery after you had already endured so much. But I didn’t need a biopsy to confirm what I already knew. I’d been through this before. I know what a body ravaged by cancer looks like. I know the desperate, distant look that it creates in one’s eyes. I know how to fight for someone when she’s too weak to do it herself.

On Retreating

Your good and bad days were equal in measure. We celebrated the good, took them as a sign that our efforts were working and, in time, lived for those glimmers of hope. Laughing as you jumped into the utility sink for a shower or splashed around in a bucket of water, leaving trails of footprints all over the house, some which we haven’t yet had the desire or strength to wash away.

As days wore on, we saw less and less of you. We brought you up for feedings, and you retreated downstairs immediately after. We placed you on your cat tower while we watched TV, and you retreated to the basement at the first commercial break. We carried you to bed, hopeful that you would sleep with us, as you had every night with few exceptions, and you quietly left as soon as our breathing slowed, indicating our descent into sleep. We wanted to be close to you so that you felt safe, but we also knew to honor your space. It was heartrending to leave you in that basement alone. Every day, we reluctantly grew more accustomed to your absence.

Wild Blue Yonder

The sun was shining at 6:00 AM. Not a single cloud dotted the sky. A warm breeze filtered in through the kitchen window. The house was still and bright. It was the first time you hadn’t tiptoed upstairs for breakfast. I descended into the cellar, and my heart beat wildly out of fear of what it might find. I called out to you. Sapphire, who’s hungry? Where’s my girl?

I found you sleeping in a barren shelf of a small bookcase, one of many hiding places that you carved out. You seemed more tired than usual, but I didn’t think much of it. After all, you were a few days into steroidal therapy, and you spent a lot of time outside in the yard the day before. You walked around slowly and deliberately, pausing to rest in between small bursts of steps. We laughed when you buried your head in the butterfly bush next to the garden and followed chirping wrens with your gaze. A baby squirrel darted right past your nose. Two tall sunflowers, on the cusp of blooming, stood like sentinels over the patch of grass where you lay. The sky was so blue.

Draping you over my left shoulder and stroking the glossy coat of your back, my hand shuddered. The feeling of your serrated vertebrae brought to the surface the trauma of giving my mother, sick and dying from cancer, sponge baths. Running my hand along the delicate bones of her spine was like a hammer striking a xylophone that emitted no sound. Like you, she felt concave. Breakable.

I kept a constant vigil on you so that I couldn’t possibly miss a sign. I didn’t want to make that gut-wrenching decision, but I was prepared to if necessary, should you tell me that it was time. A pit had settled in my stomach and seemed to grow heavier each time I opened the basement door. It was that smell, that putrid smell, that wafted up from the depths of the of the cement floor and hit me like a wave. It permeated my senses and seemed to change the temperature in the house.

A meow rose up from the stairwell. I swung open the door and saw your ears peeking above a stair. What a wonderful surprise! Relief washed over me, and the queasiness in my stomach started to settle. Hi, Coconut! How is you? Come here, Missi!

You retreated. I filled a stainless steel bowl with water and dropped in an ice cube. It cracked when it hit the water and clinked against the side of the bowl as I set it down on the floor beside you. With perky ears and wide eyes, you stuck your paw into the bowl and commenced swatting. I was so happy to hear your voice that it never occurred to me that it was your last goodbye.

I left you there, then. By yourself. I thought you were ok. I truly did. If I hadn’t, I would’ve stayed with you. I would’ve taken a few additional seconds to look at you, really look at you, to make sure everything was copacetic. I looked in your eyes, right? I swear I did. I would’ve given you a dose of pain medication. I would’ve tried to settle you in on my lap to offer you comfort, even though I know you would’ve slinked away. I would’ve made that excruciating call earlier. But I didn’t do any of those things.

I kissed you on the forehead and told you I’d be back in a few minutes, and then I went upstairs to prepare your lunch. I will forever punish myself for that.

Bearing Witness

If you look closely enough, you will likely find fragments of my heart, small pieces of exploded blood-red tissue, splattered at the bottom of the stairwell. It was the tip of your tail that I saw first. You were lying in front of the refrigerator. Were it not for the pool of urine that encircled you and the black, vacant look in your eyes, you would have looked peaceful, as if you had simply laid down for a rest. The cries that rose from deep in your stomach as you struggled for breath were primal. You were already too far gone. I could no longer save you.

We caressed and kissed you, told you how much we loved you, that it was ok to go, that going meant your pain and suffering would finally end. Don’t worry about us, don’t hold on for us any longer. You don’t have to fight anymore.

You tried to stand, pushed up with your frail rear legs, only to collapse again and then once more. Watching you fight and struggle created a pain so searing that it sits like a burning stone inside of me. We placed the bottom of your cat carrier on the floor next to you. We didn’t need to put you inside. You stood up, stepped inside, and lay down on top of my baby blanket, its pink and blue stripes that have borne witness to life and now death.

We didn’t make it in time. You took your final breaths en route to the vet, but we know that your brain was already gone by then, and that you passed at home, with us. You heard our voices and felt our touch, and you saw us. A collection of moments as beautiful as they were agonizing.

We cradled you as if you were a baby. I’ll always remember that moment. We were not ready to lose you; we never wanted to lose you. But I’ve learned enough to understand that death, like life, can’t be orchestrated; each has its own intentions and timeline.

Dialect of Anguish

I have known loss and grief. I am fluent in the dialect of anguish. I cared for my mother while cancer ravaged her, inside and out. I changed her diapers and bathed her and gave her injections and cooked her meals and kept secrets about how sick she was to protect her and my brothers and deflected the criticisms she hurled at me out of anger for this thing that was destroying us but that neither of us could control.

I signed a DNR order when her suffering extended past the threshold of humane. I live with guilt for all the things I could’ve done better and for robbing my brothers of their mother and for the fact that I wasn’t with her when she died. I blame myself for not being able to save her.

I cared for my grandmother for the next twelve years until the day I authorized her doctor to overdose her on morphine.

I have mourned the loss of pets. Missi, our bearded collie mix, who was my first friend, my best friend, who slept with me in my crib when I was a baby, and whom I think about and miss every day. And Cleo, our beautiful calico, who appeared meowing at our back door on a cold and snowy night. She looked like autumn, a patchwork of black, white, red and rust and gold.

Sadness is a close, unwanted friend. But I’ve never felt sadness quite like this. Yours is distinct, as you were. It’s not worse, but different. Incalculable in its own way. It has compounded my grief, and with your loss, perhaps I have reached my ceiling.

In the summer of 2016, I lost my job. The loss catapulted me into an atmosphere of emotions – confusion and sadness and anger and vengefulness and, eventually, relief and acceptance. I decided to write a book. Every day, you sat with me, curled up and breathing rhythmically on my lap or against my hip, providing silent reassurance while I battled crippling doubt, fear, and uncertainty.

You were my constant companion, my only friend. That I was able to spend every day of what would be the last year of your life with you is a gift for which I will be forever grateful. I loved our days together, and I never felt lonely because I had you.

Kaleidoscope of Memories

We walk around this house like ghosts, lost and lonely without you. We still hear you and see you around every corner. Still feel the urge to call your name and talk to you. Still look back when opening and closing doors. Habit, or maybe instinct. Reminders of you are everywhere.

The Saturday before you passed, you joined us for breakfast. Leapt onto the table to stick your head into our empty bowls and coffee mugs. You settled on our laps for a nap, and you kissed and nudged us, all while purring up a storm. For a few fleeting moments, it felt like it always had. You gave us many gifts, and this was your final one. We will cherish it always.

I hope to remember always the sound of your voice; the softness of your luxurious fur, and the way it shimmered in the light; the rhythm of your purr; the smell of your forehead (oddly, it always smelled like syrup, and we often called you Buddy the Elf); the flecks of teal and gold in your piercing green (not blue) eyes. The feeling of your whiskers grazing against our cheeks when you wanted to crawl under the covers. All of your crazy antics and guilty pleasures  like Cheetos and honey-roasted turkey. You were such a character, and we were lucky to be owned by you.

Above all else, I hope that we did right by you, not just in your final months, but throughout your life. That you always felt loved and safe, never alone or scared. That we didn’t selfishly hold onto you longer than you were destined to be here. That you knew the depths of our love for you are limitless and perpetual.

The Sky Was the Color of Sapphires

The sunflowers in the garden bloomed the day you left us.

We drove to the beach. Walked for miles with the knowledge that we were entering a new season without you. The wind blew fiercely as we fought back tears, while five-foot waves crashed against the shoreline as if in stunned disbelief, covering us in a salty mist. The sand was smooth and looked like flowing silk. The sun shone brilliantly, replaced by a full moon hours later as evening settled in. I found an angel wing shell, my first. The sky was the color of sapphires.

And then the rain came.