The places between here and there

CW: Dying, death, illness and loss is discussed in this piece.

The cat under our care for the last year is dying. Slowly. 

Approximately twenty-three years old (you give or take a bit at this old age), deaf and arthritic for all of our time together. A few weeks back, something in her shifted suddenly. Watching her stumble around the large room, bump into furniture, and startle at my pats, we realized her sight had gone too.

No stranger to loss but newer to the intimacy of slow decline, I’ve hovered at the margins of the soft temple we’ve created for her in the lofted, sunny area above the kitchen. I watch her lose balance, bumping into the blanketed edges we’ve constructed to gently hold her in her suddenly shrunken world. I find myself whispering to the old, deaf cat it’s okay to let go, it’s okay to let go. Hoping that some part of her hears me. 

A week into her decline, the moon covered the sun and the world paused. We all looked up and I thought to myself that maybe this was her moment. Maybe we’d find her curled up in her bed and we could tell ourselves that she took her final breath as day was momentarily night. An eclipse a fitting end for a creature who lingered earthside so long, who loved her sunbeams so much. 

She did not pass away during the eclipse. 

Another week and despite my professional work supporting human creatures moving through change, I am overcome with a feeling of loving impatience as this particular creature hovers in the in-between. So much gone and yet still here. She is suffering – clearly – yet clinging. I wonder about this place she finds herself.

Not yet there and no longer here, unbounded, with undefined perimeters, liminal.

And what is it to be in transition at this time of year, in this season?

The cat is dying and the world is blooming and perhaps there is poetry in that too. 

The orchard outside her soft hospice space has gone from bud to bloom, the finches from winter brown to spring yellow, the field from chestnut hues to bright green. I watch her breath grow more shallow and slow, her body movements contract and simplify as the window above her gives view to a symphony of life emerging. 

The cat is dying and I wonder how many of her nine lives she lived. Her owners told us a story about her early years when she got in a tussle with a raccoon. They saw it out the window and thought this is surely her end. The next morning they went outside bracing to find something murderous and the cat came limping out of the tall grass meowing loudly, bruised and battered but still there.  

The cat has lived at least two lives, but likely more, and I wonder how many distinct lives I’ve birthed and ended. Which were alive in me for some time before they sprang forth? Which new versions of me came out with a scream? Which needing-to-be-past-lives did I grasp wildly as I was pulled into what was next? 

The cat is dying and I am listening to a podcast called Quitted and Martha Beck is talking about lying to ourselves and I think some past lives feel a bit like lying. “The lying years.” Some past lives are defined by the ways in which we compromised our dreams, the various ways we sold out on our most authentic version of self.

By this assessment I was a liar for much of my twenties: saying yes when I meant no, living by other people’s definition of success, staying small and miserable in a career that didn’t fit while quietly dreaming of a life that might.  

The cat is dying and I am awash in sentimentality and gratitude for the lives I’ve walked away from. 

I’m listening to the wind blow through the willow tree outside, the birds chirping, and I feel my body sinking into the chair. I feel my feet on the floor. I have walked away from so much. I have walked towards so much. 

I have chosen to center my life in exploration, to care for other people’s animals instead of small humans I birth, to sell a house, to restart a career, to sit with other dreamers and expand a sense of possibility together. I have allowed myself to exist in the liminal so many times: to accept that where I’d come from was starting to shed and where I was going hadn’t yet appeared. I’ve encouraged myself to be brave in such an uncertain space. 

The cat is dying and her suffering has surpassed her quality of life. The vet is coming to the home to help her pass over. I haven’t been with a creature before at this moment. I’m scared. 

I suddenly remember being teased in high school for crying about my guinea pig who’d died suddenly – my friend said it’s just a guinea pig. Now I’m 40 and crying about a cat I’ve known for a year and probably also for the deaths I can’t stop and the terror and wonder and beauty in endings that are also beginnings. 

I stand as my sweetie holds the cat in their lap and the vet asks if we’ve done this before. I whisper no. I am a beginner at this type of ending. 

The cat objects to being picked up and gets her claws stuck in my sweetie’s pants. This is so her, stubborn and holding on. She fought a raccoon and lived to share the tale. She was insatiable for pets and circled our legs with purrs to let us know. She lived 23 odd years with a family of seven humans and many creatures. Her passage is the end of an era and I understand why she might feel the need to hang on. I tell her – all this being true – she can still let go. 

The cat is gone and it was thankfully peaceful at the end. Her life meant something to the people in this home including us, the people who knew her shortest of all. 

I want to honor her. I want to howl my way through each version of myself, each version of my life, as she howled her way through the house. (Which the vet assured us was normal for cats with hearing loss.) I want to know what I’m fertile for in each season of my life: be clear on what I want to germinate, grow, nurture, tend to. I want to believe in what my heart wants yet be flexible with how it evolves, and help others believe in the validity and limberness of their desires too. I want to be sturdy in each shape I take and provide sturdiness for my clients as they move through their seasons. 

Beyond platitudes: I want to trust that endings are beginnings, and that the places between here and there are where transformation is most irresistible.