Shady circumstances aside, my heart is completely broken
from the loss of my friend. Regular readers of this blog will remember when I
got him back in September, and how head-over-heels in love I was with this
little monster. He grew from a scrappy fur ball into a beautiful, full-grown
gentleman, and he brought joy to every single person he met.
In the days since his death, I have struggled with
waves of sadness and despair, anger and fear. Thankfully, the support and love
that I have received from friends and strangers has been enormous. So many
people have shared their stories of loving and losing an animal friend, and it
has truly touched my heart to know that pets have brought light into the lives
of so many.
It has been a ceremony from the moment I heard the
news—a constant prayer that I am holding in my heart. A prayer of gratitude, of
peace, of love. I have kept a candle lit since the night I came home from the
emergency vet clinic, unsure if my friend was going to make it through the
night. (He passed on peacefully early the next morning.) I planted a pineapple
on his grave and have decorated the fresh dirt with flowers. I sit with him
every morning and every evening, like I did when he was still physically with
me. I feel his presence.
Curling up in my bed to cry, talking to friends about
Rumi, looking at pictures of him being adorably amazing, sitting beside his
grave—all of these things have brought me peace in different ways.
Writing about Rumi and our beautiful life together has
also helped on this journey of mourning and healing.
When we write, we connect to the deepest part of ourselves. I often turn to pen and paper to help me through hard
times. Break-ups, deaths, frustrations, fears—writing about them often helps me
get past the superficial stuff and down into the depths where the kernel of
truth is hidden. And the truth is never as terrible as we imagine.
Take a house with a tin roof, for example. During a
rainstorm, the racket inside the house is insufferably loud. You would think
you were experiencing a hurricane, or a monsoon. But if you go outside into the
rain, you realize that it’s not as horrendous of a storm as you thought. The
rain feels soft on your skin; it cools you down. Getting soaked in the rain,
being exposed to the elements you were afraid of, might bring you comfort, or
even a revelation.
So, in writing about Rumi, I have been going out into
the rain of grief, of sadness, of loneliness. And I am finding so much beauty
in the memories of our time together.
Who knows if what I have written will ever leave my
notebook, but that is not the point. Right now, I am not writing for the final product.
I am writing for the sake of writing, because I am at a loss of what else to do
with my sadness.
One of my favorite writers, Natalie Goldberg, says:
"As writers we live life twice, like a cow that eats its food once and then regurgitates it to chew and digest it again. We have a second chance at biting into our experience and examining it."
I
am grateful that writing is giving me the chance to re-live the beauty and joy
that Rumi brought into my life. The love we shared was special, and I have been
forever changed by my feline friend.
I will leave you with this poem written by Rumi’s
namesake.
