Grief

I Was There

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RDP Tuesday: Pets
I’ve run across several articles where Veterinarians are asking people to please be there with your pet if you have made the heartbreaking decision to, ” let them go”.
Animals know when their time has come- frankly I think that they can see what we can’t, so I believe that 100%- but in the articles it said that these pets are looking for their families before they leave.
I was there for my Cerberus- she fell  seriously ill and it was very unexpected. So I made the choice to let her go.

Cerbie

I told her she was going to sleep and that when she woke up she would be with her brother Wolfgang . I promised her that she was going to be able to run and play and that I would come find her and her brother.

Then I told her I loved her.

Wolfgang
Photo A.M. Moscoso

The last words Cerbie heard on this Earth was her Mommy telling her she loved her.

My voice. She took that with her into the next world.

I know if you are ever faced with this choice and you’re not sure you can do this- you can. Just remember your pet, that piece of your heart, the last thing they heard on this Earth was you saying you loved them.

You won’t regret that moment. Ever.

With my Cerbie – We didn’t say good-bye. I told her I love her. Those were the last words she heard- September 17, 2012 Lynnwood, WA

A Holiday Ritual Returns

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RDP Tuesday: BREAKING NEWS

A scene from the lost 1923 silent film BLUEBEARD’S EIGHTH WIFE.

We all have our little rituals.

Some of us buy fancy expensive underwear and chocolates  to hand out for Valentines Day.  Some of us eat Waffles on Sunday.  Some of us get tattoos every time we pop out another child.

My ritual is a special one and I look forward to performing  it every Halloween.

On Halloween I kill you,  sometimes I do it  more then once because, darn it-it feels good.

I guess this is the part where I mention that you turn up in various stages of decay in the stories I write- sometimes you are already dead and the part you get is that of a rotting corpse. Other times you get done in by a Devil or a psychopath.

Once I baked you in a pie.

It was yummy, I mean the story was yummy. It was funny too. And well written, if that counts for anything.

For the curious, you worked your way into this special ritual because when I told you my nephew had died from a terminal illness- that you knew about his illness because I told you about it when we learned seven years before that at the age of 14 he would probably be dead by the time he was in his early 20’s,

you sent me this message

That was all you said about my nephew’s death. That’s how you expressed your condolences for the death of a young man you watched grown up.

I wouldn’t have wished his death on anyone, not even you. But to be honest sometimes I do.  Yeah.  Honestly. Sometimes I do.

So let me take away the  mystery, let me erase any doubts, let me make myself perfectly clear. In  August when I start setting up my blog for Halloween and the body count racks up around here, I just want you to know, so that there is no question about it  that in that pile of ink stained corpses is you.

For the record, I toss in a few more people into that pile  for different reasons that don’t matter right now.

But you my dear and special friend,  I kill you every Halloween, sometimes more then once during Halloween but I never do it thoughtlessly or carelessly because unlike you my Soul might be dark but it is not empty.

And I put a lot of thought into what write and send out into the world.

Soulmates

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RDP Tuesday:  not a cat but a textbook.
After the last of my cats passed away a few years ago, I was thinking that maybe I should adopt a cat for me and Hamish.
Hamish had never been alone since I had brought him home as a puppy and I wasn’t sure how he would handle it. It turns out he had issues.
When I came home from work I found blankets  from my bed piled in front of the living room door- he also piled the blankets his cat brothers had used in the same spot. He had a hard time sleeping at night.
At about the time my cats would get up in the middle of the night Hamish would get up and look for them.
Then he would come back to bed and sit near the door and cry a little.
Hamish was experiencing textbook grief, wasn’t he? Anyway, that’s how I handled it.

Hamish, Micey and Darwin
Photo A.M. Moscoso

Blitzer
A.M. Moscoso

Kolchak
A.M. Moscoso

The thing of it is, I never went out and ‘got a cat’.

They always found their way to me and that must have been the way to do it because my cats all lived to be nearly 20 years old.

I think we were meant to be together.

So as of the moment, me and Hamish don’t have felines in our family and as hard as it is to live that way there’s something in me that says that’s ok.

For now.

Evergreen Washelli- Seattle, Washington Photo A.M. Moscoso

I Remember That Road

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RDP Thursday: FLASHBACK

I worked in a Funeral Home and at that home, in one of the storage areas we used to store the toys that people left at the graveside for their children. Each of the elements I describe here are some of the toys I remember seeing on one of the shelves together and I remember thinking it looked like a road. So I wrote about it.

This poem is actually a few years old, but I did some edits and decided to run it again:

“Ghost Road “

A baby wrapped in blanket with a box for a crib

a basket of kittens who stopped crying when they heard the wind

a dog with no collar, but he once had been called Finn.

all of them waiting to feel warm again.

Each of them placed with love and care

on this unmarked road under the stairs

then

reluctantly left where the ghosts of could have been

live.