That moment. You know the one I mean.
The moment where you lose someone dear to you in a way that it affects you personally. A moment when you are at a loss as far as what to do. You may lose someone that you know but aren't all that close with and be able to get by without noticing any severe effects. But there will come a time when such a loss will hit hard and close to home.
In my life, I have seen many people and animals I know die. Family members. Friends. Acquaintances. A family member's pets. Even my own pets.
I know I've been angry or frustrated in the past, but now I'm feeling a bit sad and lost.
In the past, I was pretty aware of my family tree. These days I keep a mental note of it, the dates of birth, how people are related, and so on. Some of those branches, however, have died and thus have a date of death attached to them. The first person in my family who died after I was born died the year I was born. It was my great grandfather, my mother's mother's father. Three (or five? 1992 or 1994) years later, when I was still very young, one of his daughters died, the first of the four "grand siblings". Three years later (1995) my maternal grandfather - my mother's father, died. This was the first major loss of someone I knew. I would visit him on the weekends when I was a young boy. The next year, his wife, my maternal grandmother, died. This was someone who lived on the floor below me my whole life to that point. We were fairly close, but I was still young. The thing about being young is that, when someone dies, you don't really understand the significance of it, because the concept is new and difficult to you. But when you're older, you know what's happening. Eventually, it gets to the point where you sort of accept it.
Then people on my father's side started to die. My paternal grandfather, of course, died three years before I was born, a fate I'm afraid my father might share at this rate. (My father was quite old when I was born) My paternal grandmother, on the other hand, lived until I was 9 or so. She was 88, about the same age as my maternal/maternal great grandfather. A few other people, some of my father's aunts and uncles, died in the late 90's. They were all quite old - in their 90's in fact.
Back to my mother's side. One of her uncles died in 1997. After that, there were two great uncles left on my side, the last of that generation. One of them my mother's aunt's husband, and the other my mother's uncle. In 1999, one of my mother's sisters's former husband died. Apparently it was an unhappy incident involving the police. I'm told he was mentally unstable. It didn't sit well with my aunt, who had her first two children through him and the third through her second, current husband, someone I'm close with. As an aside, I visited my mother's blood uncle who lives out west one year, and while staying there, had a chance encounter with some kittens at a nearby barn. My sister and I each took one cat with us. The year was 1999.
Those cats took a long road trip back with us to our home on the east coast, and became members of our family. Of course, my mother already had an older cat. The three of them didn't get along well at first, but eventually, I think they did love each other. However, a few years later (I don't remember exactly when, but it had to be before 2003), the older cat was hit by a car and died. Of course, my mom didn't tell me that until years later. You know how that goes with kids and pets.
In 2001, my mother's uncle by marriage died, leaving only the uncle who lived out west. The uncle who lived out west had a wife who died sometime before him - I'm not sure when. The uncle who died in 2001 was 84 years old. Quite old for someone in my mother's family.
I must interrupt my "list of deaths" here to point out that an important event in my own life not involving death, per se, happened in the summer of 2002. My parents split up. It was the death of their time together, I suppose. I found out sometime later that they were never married. I was very upset with the break up, but I was almost more upset that we were going to have to move. The house was too big for my mother, my sister, and I, and certainly too big for just my dad. So we went to two new separate places. This marked the end of my town living in the "city" and marked the beginning of my time living in the "town". The town I moved to was just across the city border of my original home, so it wasn't far. However, it was a completely different environment. My father moved to another town, somewhat close by, but further away than where my mother moved. This year was the first time my father and I had gone to watch a new professional baseball team that had opened up in our city, but it would be the only year we would live there and watch the games. I would continue to go watch the games there and in fact am planning to do so in a few weeks when the season starts. Additionally, I went with my mother's uncle to a few of the games. I remember feeling sad when he was at the game, so it may have been a year or two later. But it may have been the same year, 2002. That was when everything changed for me.
I was the new kid at school. I had (I thought) a lot of friends at my old school and had trouble making new ones. I wasn't really the kind of person to make a lot of friends. But a few kids who lived on my street befriended me and starting playing basketball with me. I tried out for the team that year (it was 8th grade) but didn't make it. I made another pretty close friend that year, but he ended up going to a different school, so we didn't see each other as much.
During my first year at the new school, specifically the spring of 2003, my mother's father's second wife died. Though she wasn't related to me by blood, I considered her my grandmother. I had gone to visit with her pretty much every weekend since my grandfather died, back in 1995. So it was a hard loss for me. I think this was the first time I actually felt a loss personally, because I was old enough and had already started to become jaded by life. My parents had split up, and I had felt the harshness of reality. I even remember a baseball practice a short time after her death where I got hit by a long-toss pop fly in the face, and I blamed it on the death of my grandmother. I was somewhat lost. But time went on and I continued to live normally, if not with some baggage, I guess.
The following year was ninth grade, the first year of high school. Many of the kids who went to 8th grade with me went to different schools, because they had the option to do so. That included a friend I mentioned above. During this time, I was still friends from the kids on my street, but a new group of friends started to come into the picture. Originally, I was good friends with one kid, and then I became friends with one of his friends. There were two other main friends in this group. Of these kid, I regularly only see the second and occasionally the fourth. There was also a fifth friend I didn't see as much but would become a good friend later on. In any case, this group of friends remained my closest friends from then until now. I now consider the second friend my "best friend" as he is the only one of the original group who I've regularly hung out with and talked to since then. By my second year of high school, circa 2004, this became my normal circle.
During that year, my mother's uncle died. He was the last member of that generation in my family. Though I liked him, I didn't see him that often and wasn't that close with him. His death did sadden me, however. After that family death, there weren't any until very recently. However, I still knew other people who had died.
In 2007, during the first summer after I graduated high school, I received a shocking phone call from a member of the football team's booster club, and a mother of one of the players. A teammate of mine (not her son) had been shot dead. I felt terrible about this because it was the first person I knew who had died unnaturally. My aunt's first husband had died in this way, yes, but I was very young and wasn't all that close, so it didn't affect me as much. However, this was different. Additionally, it was a murder, one that took many years to find justice. I was not close friends with him, but I always thought he was a good person and remembered a few conversations we had. I felt especially bad for the people in his grade who had to play football the next season without him. I also had met his mother and brother before, and knew they must be suffering. One light did come out of this, though. At the time, a girl in his grade was pregnant with his son. So I know at least that he left a legacy behind to be proud of. This kid was a great athlete. He was a good basketball player, and a star runner and football player. He had just started to turn his life around after some rough times. His death upset many, I feel, and I was one of them. But in the end, we weren't that close. I had my own things to worry about, namely, going to college.
Toward the end of the year 2010, my family would move again. My mother had been planning to move for years, but we wanted her to wait until both of us finished high school. My sister graduated in 2009, so it was possible to move then. Of course, I was still reluctant to move, but accepted my mother's decision. The house she moved into was the place her father and her father's second wife had lived until her death in 2003. Some time after that, a few of my cousins had moved into that house, and left sometime before we moved in. When we moved, we brought the cats with us, their third move, technically. My sister was still living with us in 2010, but sometime next year, she moved into her own place. She's always had it together, unlike me, who had little choice but to stay behind.
It should be noted that around this time, I was struggling with my future. During the winter of 2009, I had an incident with one of my professors and was forced to stay out of the class. Though I passed that class, it was the last good semester I had in college. During 2010 and into 2011, my grades were sliding. I was on my way out, as it were. I had a job that allowed me to stay at the school and buy my own food. However, I stopped working in December 2010/January 2011 and was running out of money. In March 2011, I told my mother about what was happening. I went home. I hated my roommate and didn't live at school anymore. I continued to go to school until the end of the spring 2012 term.
However, before I get ahead of myself, I'm unhappy to say another death did occur during this time period. It was another "unnatural" death. This time, it was a cousin of mine. Sort of a "step-cousin" for several years, by the way of his relation, who has now been promoted to "full cousin" through a half-brother. Complicated, I know, but I want to keep some anonymity here. Apparently, this cousin of mine was involved in an incident with a group of kids. From what I understand, he was trying to break up a fight. However, things went south and he was... stabbed. He was the half-brother of my closest cousin, and my cousin was with him in the hospital when he died. I knew that had to be hard for my cousin and his father. To lose a son, I cannot even imagine what he must have thought. At the funeral, the pastor lady said she knew there was nothing to do to console us. It was very upsetting. It's the only funeral I can remember being to. I've gone to some wakes over the years, but the last time I went to a funeral, I must have still been a child. After the funeral, we all went out to lunch and I got to miss a day of classes so there were some "okay" things about that day but it was still very hard for me to accept what happened. However, as has been the case in the past, I didn't know the kid all that well. He lived with my cousin's stepfather's ex-wife until he started going to college, so I didn't see him much in his teenage years. He had a twin brother, an older sister, and a younger sister, in addition to his step-brother and half-brother. There was an awkward period where people mixed up the names of the twins after his death, but I knew I had to get it right. In the end, it was another very sad and unwelcome incident involving a family member. But we weren't all that close, so I wasn't affected much.
Since the end of 2012 I have been wandering through life, trying to figure out what I want to do. Is it okay to not want that much and just live a normal life? Or must I have great ambition? This is America after all. It's hard to accept the ways of this hyper-competitive society after all. Last year, I was working for my best friend's dad for a while, but then I got laid off in September. After that, I did a few odd jobs with my cousin, but I don't have any steady work. These things are hard for me to figure out. I'm not sure what to do now that I've screwed up in school. Even now I'm not really sure what I'm doing. But I know everything is coming to a head soon. But enough about my pathetic life.
Unfortunately, the list of deaths does not end there. Sometime last year (2013), my aunt's husband (my uncle, the one I said I was close with) lost his younger brother. We were all shocked by his death, as he was only 51. Even now, I'm not really sure what happened, but apparently it was "natural causes". It may have been a heart attack, I don't know. I went to his wake and talked with his three sons. I even saw some people from high school, a good friend of one of the sons who I played baseball with (he was a year above me) and his girlfriend, with whom I was in many of the same classes. She was a twin, so I always got them confused. Apparently, my uncle's brother was a bit of a wild child. My uncle was much the same way until a few years before I was born. Their other brother is an authority figure of sorts. He always had to watch out for them. It was a sad scene. I had met my uncle's brother a few times. He was a Bruins fan and we watched a few playoff games together at this sports bar with my uncle and his family. He was a pretty good guy, if not a little quiet, and maybe rough around the edges. This past season, I was with that family group and we watched a few games together. My uncle's brother's absence was noted and felt. While I did meet him a few times and liked him well enough, again, we weren't that close.
About two months ago, I got a call from my best friend, the one mentioned above. We hadn't talked in a while. I was pretty annoyed so I ignored him. A few days later, my cousin called - the one I'm close with and who had lost his half-brother a few years ago. He's a few years younger than me, but he works hard and makes a fair amount of money with his side jobs. He had four days off and asked if I wanted to hang out with him. I said sure. He lives off the mainland, so I have to take a ferry to visit him. After going on the island and helping him with a job (which I didn't know about until the night before so I was a little annoyed but didn't say anything), we went back on the ferry and hung out at my house for the night. We had planned it so we would leave to visit his friends in Connecticut the next day. But that next morning, I noticed my cat was acting a little strange. She wasn't moving and was making strange cries. I told my mother and she said she noticed when she left for work in the morning that something was up. She came home for lunch and checked on my cat. Somehow, I knew. I could tell that my cat was dying. She couldn't walk anymore, and she refused to eat anything. I was dazed. I didn't know what to do. Meanwhile, while this was going on, my cousin was running some errands. There are things he can only get on the mainland that can't be done on the island. I told him about it before he came back. My cat was dying, but I was planning to go on a trip. I considered not going but eventually decided to go with the original plan. But my cat was in my thoughts.
While I was on my trip, I told my sister about the cat. My sister told my mom to take her to the vet and see what was going on. The next day, my mother called and told me it wasn't looking good. She even asked if I wanted her to have the cat put down. I told her I couldn't have that done while I was away. At this time, we were visiting a nice, picturesque park. I enjoyed this part of the trip, but the rest of it I didn't really care for too much.
When I got back home the next day, my cat was still alive. She couldn't move or eat anything but her eyes were open and she was breathing. I basically spent the whole day with her. My mother and I took her outside for a little while just so she could be out in the fresh air one last time. Then we brought her back in. That afternoon and night I spent the whole time with my cat. When I went to bed that night, I slept next to my cat, who was in a pet bed on the floor. By the time I woke up the next morning, my cat had died. It was a Monday, but my mother had the day off, so she was around. My sister's cat inspected her body briefly and then turned around. We took the cat outside in a blanket, as we didn't have a box or anything. I kissed her on the head before we wrapped her up and became making preparations to bury her. We dug a hole a few feet deep so the cat could be buried and undisturbed. It was so hard, going through this. I had been to funerals before, but this was different. I decided that I would wear a nice shirt and pants for the occasion. We buried my cat in the back of the yard, over by the shed and out of the main yard. As we laid her to rest, we each said a few words. I said of my cat, she was a sweet cat, from the time she was a 6 week kitten back at the farm near my great uncle's house out west, until she grew old in our third house, and that I was going to miss her. I then started breaking down crying and hugged my mother. It was a strange moment. I don't usually get emotional about things like this, but I couldn't hold it in then. This was my cat. This was my friend for 15 years. I haven't had any other friends this long. Even my best friend and I went over a year without speaking during college. But this one stung.
I know what you're thinking. "What's the big deal? It's just some mindless animal!" While I guess I can understand what you're getting at, my life has been anything but normal. I haven't had all that many friends I could count on. I don't have great people skills. There was never really any stability in my life, with the family breaking up and the multiple moves. But my cat was always there, through it all, a loving companion. Someone I could rely on. I mentioned a few other reasons why this was hard for me above. But the real reason is, I have nothing else going on. I have nothing to fall back on. All I had to lift my spirits was my cat. Without her, I feel empty. There is a void in my heart. My moral center was my cat. Without my cat, I am lacking something. I no longer really care about anything or anyone, not the same way I did before anyway. I'm still nice to people I spend time with but I don't feel any real connection with them. My sister didn't really feel this. She has her own life. It also wasn't her cat. That's not really fair, though. She does miss them. It just doesn't bother her as much because she doesn't have time to care about little things like this. She's too busy being a responsible adult.
For a time, I was saddened by my cat's death. But there was still another cat in the house. My sister's cat. She did not move in with my sister when she left here a few years ago. I don't know if it was because she couldn't have here there, or because it would have been too much of a problem, or what. But she has been here. In the few years since my sister left, I had grown closer to her cat. My mother had grown closer to my cat. Essentially, my sister's cat became mine and my cat became my mother's. I feel this is generally a true statement, even though my cat will always be mine in my heart. The thing is, my cat was aging faster than my sister's cat. Until very recently, my sister's cat had been energetic and full of mischief. My cat was merely quiet, kept to herself, and was nice with my mother and I. The closeness I felt with my sister's cat was magnified after my own cat's death. She was the only cat left in the house. This was the first time we only had one cat since 1999.
I know that, in a way, it was difficult for my sister's cat. She was used to being fed dinner with my cat, who was also her sister. We would divide one can of cat food into two plates for our cats to eat. But without my cat there, we had to either give her the whole can, or save half for later. For a time, my sister's cat ate whatever food she wanted on her plate. We tried giving her half a can and reheating the other one later. But she didn't really eat the food once it was reheated. Easter came a few weeks later. My sister came home and spent some time with her cat. On that day, someone gave my mother some Easter lilies. She put them in a vase somewhere in the house. At this time, my sister's cat seemed normal and happily spent some time with my sister. It would be the last time this would happen, unfortunately.
Sometime around a week later, my sister's cat started acting oddly. Her walking was labored, and she didn't jump as high. Her eyes didn't open very wide, and she developed a weak sounding cry. She stopped eating and going to the bathroom, except to urinate. Everything went down over a period of maybe 2 or 3 days. It happened so fast, we barely had time to react. I suggested that my mother take my sister's cat to the vet as soon as possible. She had an appointment scheduled for June, but I had a feeling it wouldn't be soon enough. The vet told us the cat probably had kidney failure or something similar and wouldn't make it very long. Because everything happened so fast, my mother and I didn't get into contact with my sister until it was late. My sister lives about 3 and a half hours away, and it's not easy for her to get over here. She also has a busy schedule. My mother didn't want my sister to have to come over here just so she could be saddened. But we ultimately decided telling her was the right thing to do. I spent a final day with the cat on May 1st. I spent most of the day just hanging out with the cat. When my sister came home the next day, she wanted to (understandably) spend most of the day with the cat by herself. I stayed out of her way pretty much and let them have some time together. My sister had called me the previous night, telling me to get rid of the lilies in the house because they apparently cause kidney failure in cats. I don't know if it was the cause, but it seems plausible. On the morning of May 3rd, after my sister had spent the night with her cat, the cat died. Sometime in the morning, my sister and mother buried her. I woke up to the sounds of them seemingly finishing up what was likely a very similar situation to what I had a month prior. My sister put some flowers on the graves, and some moss on her cat's grave, because she liked to roll around in the moss. Sometime later that day, my sister said goodbye to us and went back home. In a span of 26 days, both our cats, whom we had for fifteen years, were dead.
Since then, I've been unsure what exactly to do with myself. A few days after my sister's cat died, I called my friend back, told him what happened, and hung out with him that weekend. His roommate was having a birthday party, and we watched the Bruins game. At that time, they were winning the series, though they would end up losing the following week. There were a lot of people there I didn't know. The only people I knew were my friend, his girlfriend, his roommate who was having the birthday party, his other roommate, and this one girl my friend went to college with. The party got kind of out of control for a while. There were a lot of people and the roommates were having trouble keeping them quiet. I talked with mostly the people I knew and a few other people I didn't know. The girl who didn't live there that I knew was an animal lover, so I thought we might talk about my cats but they never really ended up coming up. But we talked about some other things. Eventually she went home as there was nowhere to sleep. I couldn't leave so I slept on the kitchen floor. It wasn't that comfortable, but using the detachable chair cushion as a pillow made it livable. I woke up the next morning and left when the house was empty. It was a strange feeling.
As I noted earlier, I feel empty. I also feel that these losses have affected me more than my mother or sister or anyone else, for that matter. My sister has her own life, which she's still working through. My mother has her own life, which she's planning on retiring from soon. But I have nothing else. Without the cats during the day this house feels empty. Over the past several months, I've been replaying the video games from my youth and watching some shows from my younger days. I guess I'm trying to find a new center for my life. When I finish with this video game series, which will probably be sometime in June, I probably won't play any games for a while. I have some shows I still haven't watched, but there will certainly be a new hole in my life to fill. Maybe I will finally accomplish something with my life (I haven't really felt accomplished since high school), or maybe I will go completely insane. But something is going to happen. That's why I said things are "coming to a head". Father's day is in June. The new How To Train Your Dragon movie is coming out in mid-June. I plan to go see that with my mother. After that.... things are uncertain.
In addition to all the deaths I have mentioned, my parents and their siblings and spouses are all getting older, and I fear that I am going to start losing them soon. I'm not sure I'm ready to handle these inevitable losses. If I can't deal with losing my cats, how can I possibly survive losing my parents, my aunts, and my uncles? When these deaths start happening, I will experience a sadness greater than any before. Even more than my cats. And I'm not sure I will be ready. If I can't start getting things together soon, then I will start having some real, serious problems among my family members. What will they think?
I'm not sure I want to make any new memories or form new attachments. Because many people have left me during my life, in one way or another. Either through death or simply fading away. I've never had a situation where a heated argument ended a friendship (although there might be one case where that's debatable) but these things do happen. You see, when you form a bond with someone, that bond is destined to be broken. This is simply the way the world works. People grow apart over time. No matter how much effort you give, you can't fight fate. And since I don't currently have anything going on, my future is uncertain. I fear something very bad may happen. I don't fear something good may happen. You see, fear, despite its negative connotation, implies that there is some possibility of success, however small. And I am not sure such a thing exists anymore. Not after such great loss.
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