Death, Grief, & Come What May

Come what may.

It's easy to say when things are easy. It's difficult to live out when every day is a struggle for composure, for normalcy in light of sudden tragedies.

In recent weeks, my husband has declared that it hurts tremendously to shed the skin of who you once were. Shedding this skin not only includes making peace with your childhood self or college self or even the self who occupied the entirety of last year; it also includes internalizing and moving past the deaths of loved ones.

Within the last year I have learned an excruciating amount about myself through such experiences.

As many of you know, I grew up with dogs - never cats. My dad was not terribly fond of them, so we stuck to canines. When I got married, however, I knowingly married a cat person, and without much effort he convinced me I’d enjoy the company of cats if we got them as kittens. So we did. A month after we married, we decided to enlarge our family with two furbabies, Sophie and Emmerich, both barely 8 weeks old as rescues.

They stole my heart from the very first moment these skittish balls of love came to rest on me of their own volition. I had no idea I had such a capacity to love cats so much, and I’m so happy Sophie and Emmerich were the ones who showed me. They made me a catmom for the first time in my life.

Then, a year later, we had to say goodbye to Sophie because her kidneys were failing. It turns out lily poisoning is fatal if not caught early enough. On August 28, 2018 I was reminded for the first time in ten years how much it hurts to lose someone you love.

About a year later, I was due for a painful reminder again.

Friday morning July 19, 2019 I cuddled with Emmerich on the couch while I drank my coffee, a ritual we’d established over recent months. I noticed he was breathing heavily but otherwise totally lovey and normal. Later that morning, Joseph took him in to get checked out. We thought it might be asthma or something similarly minor. Five hours later, we were taking him home in a box, taped closed.

Feline leukemia is a tricky little virus that manifests without much warning and with a smorgasbord of potential symptoms. Emmerich had been carrying the virus in his bone marrow and it chose to present itself and start shutting his body down. There was nothing we could have done and nothing we could do except hold him and tell him how much we loved being part of his life while the vet put him to sleep.

The suddenness and utter surprise of his death are what gutted me the worst; I realized with painful clarity over the following week that looking into the face of an old, well-lived pet is very, very different from having to unexpectedly put down an otherwise healthy two-year-old catbaby. You look at the latter and wistfully imagine a long life with them; you look at the former and experience a twinge of reality that says the possibility of them dying of old age increases each day. How could I look at Emmerich like that? His death due to any reason seemed so far off as to be intangible. I can and have looked at my 12-year-old dog, Maxx, like that though, ever since I moved out.

I try to visit my parents where Maxx lives once a month or so. I live two hours and twenty minutes away now - that’s not close but it’s also not far. But in the last year, the fruits of my maturity have come to light in how I’ve regarded Maxx every time I show up and he’s still there, howling his greeting and bounding up to give me kisses: I look at him very deliberately and think “this could be the last time I see him.” It is a bit painful and uncomfortable, staring the inevitability of death right in the eyes, but it provides a sturdy jumping off point for our subsequent interactions. They feel so much more meaningful to me and I practice a present mindfulness, appreciating the silkiness of his coat as I pet him, the sound of his baying as he launches out the front door after a crow. This could be the last time, I think, smiling a bit sadly while Maxx prances around the yard, sniffing for deer poop. So let me be here with him while I can.

The second chapter of my grief opened with the death of young Emmerich and continued in the last couple of weeks as a lesson on the many shapes and sizes grief comes in. It can come on suddenly and without fanfare much like a tsunami, and it can also arrive somewhat slow and steadily, but still end in a jolt.

Death, even when totally expected, still manages to strike deep and quick into the humanity of those left behind.

Chapter three of my grief opened suddenly barely two weeks after Emmerich’s death. My dog Maxx died on Sunday, August 4th of 2019.

Loss, of this rapid-fire nature, certainly makes it hard to breathe.

I remember taking Maxx out for an evening potty break when he was about a year old. My family were in the final stages of readying to uproot our lives and move to Peru, but we were uncertain whether Maxx could accompany us. On that walk, I kneeled in the leaves next to him and took him into my arms, crying into his silky coat. I wanted so badly for him to come with us; imagining this next chapter without him felt hollow and dull, so much so that the image alone brought me to tears next to this clueless, happily wagging animal in the trees behind our house in Virginia.

Thankfully his goofy butt was able to fly over with us and my life during that period of isolation and soul searching was the slightest bit sweeter because of his presence.

It’s amazing how meaningful these animals are, even though they can’t talk to you and don’t see the world like you do and can’t even begin to comprehend their own mortality. Maxx was alive for exactly half my lifetime. That’s plenty long enough to leave a lasting, profound, stinky paw print on my heart. He was my buddy, great for cuddling and singing but not so great for fetching. I will miss him dearly, but I rest in knowing he lived a full, well-traveled life with a loving family, and now he’s enjoying a vast field full of crows to chase, popcorn to munch on, and all the butter wrappers to lick clean whenever he wants. No pain. No tears. No strangers. Just love.

It’s easy to feel sad for myself in the wake of these deaths. One terribly young, the other approaching old; one like a child, the other more of a little brother; both unexpected in their own ways but woven of different hurts. And I have every right to fall to pieces at seeing a photo or talking about them while the wounds are still freshly glistening. But you know what is also true at the exact same time? I can, and should, keep moving forward. If I’m truly living out the Come What May permanently inked on my body for all to see, I can certainly dig deep into this grief - but that doesn’t excuse me from my habits and goals. I still need to take care of and stay true to myself and my family. Both grief and unrelated meaningful pursuits can happen simultaneously. And they will.

Some days it hurts to keep going, but each day I’m able to manage the weight a little better. For the first week after Emmerich’s death, coming home from work sent me into hysterics because of how he used to greet me after a long day. Now I can pat the arm of the couch where he would perch and await scratches and smile fondly at the memory, thankful I even have the capacity to remember such things. And it will be the same with Maxx. If I don’t keep moving forward, the grief will turn into quicksand and consume me. I have to keep getting up at 6. I can cry while I drink my coffee because the weight of how much I miss them hits me - that’s acceptable. But when I dry my eyes, it’s time to hit the gym and throw around some weight. Then I hoist up that backpack of grief and go to work. So far I haven’t missed a single day. Gotta keep moving. Then I come home and work on my book or clean the house or make dinner. Do my nighttime routine, go to bed, and do it all again tomorrow. The backpack won’t be quite as heavy then.

Death sucks. Grief hurts. Understanding our own mortality and the mortality of others sets us apart from other creatures. It is a heavy burden to bear, and it will happen to all of us. Come What May, you gotta keep moving. It’s the only way to stay alive.

That doesn’t mean I won’t miss these precious babies of mine like hell.

In memory of:

Sophie (1yo) ~ August 28, 2018

Emmerich (2yo) ~ July 19, 2019

Maxx (12yo) ~ August 4, 2019

Sophie

“For one so small, you seem so strong.”

~ You’ll Be in My Heart by Phil Collins

My family growing up were unashamedly dog lovers. There was a stint or two when I was too young to care much where my mother conned my father into getting a cat. I don’t remember a lot besides the day we tried bringing her home, which was a catastrophe inside the car.

It may not be honest that I tell people I didn’t grow up with cats, but fundamentally it is true in my mind – cats were never in my house long enough to leave an impact. I’d love on my relatives’ cats, but at the end of the day always went home to my dog. It didn’t bother me not to have a cat growing up; I had an assortment of odd animals pass through my life as pets, including a ferret, chinchillas, dwarf frogs, and a hermit crab, to say the least; I was not neglected by my parents in the realm of family critters. For the last 11 years or so, our dog Maxx has been the solitary family pet. All this is to say if I ever did decide to welcome a cat into my life that I could call “mine”, it would be special.

And it was.

On September 12^th of last year, a mere ten days after marrying the love of my life and moving to Baltimore, Joseph and I rescued two kittens. They were cousins – the girl, an orangey-brown tabby, we named Sophie; the boy, my silver prince, we named Emmerich.

They were 8 weeks old at the time. Little did I know how hard I would fall for them. I never could have prepared myself for the love and joy that these two babies brought me; and, by extension, the tremendous, breathless sorrow of loss that permeated our house just this week.

We celebrated their first birthday’s in mid-July and were approaching our first rescue anniversary. Unfortunately, our babygirl Sophie would not be able to celebrate with us.

Last Thursday I received some lilies for my birthday – lovely flowers with a lovely scent, and creamy orange petals. I immediately put them in a vase of water on the dining room table for all to see. Sophie, the one notorious for eating things she shouldn’t, took this as an opportunity to nibble on the new addition to the house. She swallowed a petal and regurgitated it shortly thereafter.

For those of you who are already shaking your heads in horror, I know it seems such a simple and obvious piece of knowledge. For those of you who are like us and have no idea, please pass this message along to anyone you know who owns a cat or is thinking about getting a cat: lilies are one of the most toxic things a cat can ingest. Even the water in the vase or the pollen or the stalks of the flowers are highly poisonous – all it takes it one little bite, one little sniff, and kidneys begin to fail.

We didn’t find this out until it was too late. 

A couple of days passed without much incident since she vomited the petal. On Monday morning, Joseph noticed she was moving stiffly and acting incredibly lethargic; I raced home from my errands and beat my way through traffic to take her to a local animal hospital. At this point we still didn’t know what was going on. If I read back through my texts from that day, I am still heavily under the impression that this is something she will recover from and we’ll be back home in no time. Still, the doctors checked her in and kept her overnight for some analyses. Nothing was certain yet, although I’m sure the doctors had their suspicions.

By the next day at 2pm, the doctors informed us that her kidneys had failed beyond recovery, and that it would be the best course of action to put her to sleep as soon as possible. Fluid had built up in her bladder, unable to succeed through the natural urination process, and if this was prolonged it would end up flooding her lungs. Joseph got the call while he was at work, and he called me during a break at the library. We rushed to Sophie’s side, spending her last few moments on earth petting her silky fur and calling her sweet names. She was a little uncomfortable, though thankfully not in pain. I think we bore all the pain she could have possibly felt, and much, much more.

The suddenness is what cuts the deepest. It’s one thing to see the death of a pet gradually coming when they’re approaching 10, 15, 20 years of age, but when you go from one day imagining those long years with the precious animal growing up with your kids to the next day where they no longer exist in your arms, where you will never again call them by name and have them trot toward you with sounds of pleasure and recognition…the brutal suddenness changes everything about the grief that rushes in.

We were not prepared for this. She was only a year old. She, and Emmerich, were our babies, the first additions to our newly bonded family. To lose her only a year later and so rapidly all-at-once is utterly devastating. The last time I lost a loved one (person or animal) was my grandfather 10 years ago, and I have never lost a pet in my adult years. This grief, as one so conscious and feeling, tears me apart, sends tremors deep into my bones. I loved Sophie so freely, so thoroughly, and she loved us unconditionally – I suppose it’s only fair that the gaping hole she left behind would ache so acutely.

This past Wednesday was the first full day without her in our lives. I couldn’t stand coming home from work without her fluffiness greeting me at the door that I collapsed onto the couch in hysterics. Joseph held me tightly to him, our bitter tears mingling. It hurts. My God, oh it hurts like hell. Her absence even after such a short bright time is absolutely unbearable. Every little thing reminds us of her, and the grief that follows floods my stomach and my lungs, rendering my appetite entirely absent and making it hard to breathe.

She was the most brilliant little light of my life. As John Smith says in the Disney movie Pocahontas: “I’d rather die tomorrow than live a hundred years without knowing you.” If I could travel back in time and warn myself on September 12^th of 2017 that this tragedy would inevitably happen, that it was a fixed point that I couldn’t change, I would still have bundled her in my arms and taken her home. As much as this pain is all-consuming, I am thankful for the year I was able to spend with her. She taught me that cats can be more than grouchy balls of fur. We passed many hours with her napping on me while I wrote or read or slept. She nuzzled her way into my heart and before I even knew it, I was wholeheartedly in love.

Something that makes me feel more at peace is imagining this visual: God sits at his desk, checking prayer emails, and Sophie jumps up onto his lap like she did to us on a regular basis when we were at our computers. She snuggles into him and dreams of chasing flies while he pets her softly with one hand, typing with the other.

She went without pain to the giant windowsill in the sky, where there is eternal sunshine and an infinite supply of birds to chatter at. We did the right thing with the knowledge we had. Still, this wave of grief will lap at our heels for a while, and we will never forget our first kitty – our first baby.

Rest in peace, Sophie. You were the best little kitten anyone could ask for. Your heart was too pure for this world.

Friends, I now ask two things of you: first, pass along the knowledge that lilies are lethal to cats – don’t assume longtime cat lovers know. As soon as cats come up, lay that fact down. Be aggressive about it if you have to. Sharing that little tid-bit of knowledge now might save a life later. Second, we would appreciate it if you could share photos or memories of Sophie in the comments section. Her legacy is one of love and softness, and we know that we aren’t the only ones who will remember her with fondness.

In Memory of Sophie

7/15/17 – 8/28/18

Vicki's Guide to Taking Better Selfies

Vicki’s Guide to Taking Better Selfies

            So you wanna take good selfies, eh? Well you’ve come to the right place. Within this post you will find tips and tricks that I regularly follow when taking my own selfies. Some may be new, others may be obvious; regardless, I feel some guidelines need to be thrown down about this. Selfies have exploded as a medium of expression on the Internet without requiring a professional photoshoot or even another human being to snap the picture. Front-facing cameras on our phones and mirrors in our bedrooms make it incredibly easy to take pictures of ourselves. The following six tips are here to guide you on your personal selfie journey (with creepy/goofy photos of my own to assist comprehension). Shall we begin?
            *Note: clicking on the pictures will make them bigger! I don't know why you'd want to do that, but just so you know.

1.    Good Lighting

X  ~  Too much front light = bad. Your face gets washed out and it looks flat. Or you could be like me, and look like you have no mouth.

X  ~  Too much back light = also bad. There’s an excess of shadows and no feature definition. And you just can't see your face.

O  ~  You want just enough side light to highlight and define your features. Find the angle that works for you

2.    Snap Angle is Key

X   ~  No emo MySpace angled photos. Quit.

X   ~  Want followers to play “how many chins do you have?” Stop.

O   ~  You may find another angle that works better for you, but I prefer to hold the camera at eyelevel and tilt and angle my head accordingly. Either that, or slightly elevating the camera also works, but don’t go too crazy (refer to the first bullet point). Angled more from the above tends to create a slimming effect.

3.    Look At Me When I’m Talking to You

X  ~  Don’t look at the screen of your phone where your face is. This close of a picture makes it obvious you're not looking at the camera.

X  ~  Also don't look at yourself in the mirror.

O  ~  Whether taking a picture with the front or back camera on your phone, look directly into the lens. This creates the effect that you’re looking at the person viewing your photo later, and creates more of a connection.*

*If you’re deliberately trying to look away and that’s the aim of the photo, that’s fine – totally acceptable. Just don’t look at your phone screen.

4.    Face Muscles

X  ~  Now that we’ve talked about eyes, let’s cover the rest of the face. The expression you make is up to you, and of course it’s okay to be goofy if that’s your aim. But NO DUCKFACE EVER. Go hangout at the duck pond where you belong if you’re going to do that crap.

O  ~  Whatever you decide to do, be relaxed, and as natural as possible. Obviously different expressions will vary with this one; just don’t force it too much.

5.    Background

X  ~  Before taking a selfie, consider your surroundings. Is your bedroom dirty? Are there toilets reflected in the mirror? Bras and/or underwear hanging off gaping dresser drawers? All of these things are terribly distracting, as well as way too much information.

                                             Don't be that person.

O  ~  If your face/body don’t take up most of the framed shot, either clean up your room first or choose a better background. Something as neutral and uncluttered as possible is ideal, because, after all, we want to see you, not the mound of laundry you have yet to tackle.

6.    Censorship

X  ~  Lastly, be wise about the types of photos you post on the Internet. Suggestive and/or vulgar pics have no place on the world wide web, for it is a vast, highly accessible place.

O  ~  Be classy, guys and gals. When taking a selfie, think of why you’re taking it and all of the people who might see it (whether you know it or not). Please be wise in dividing public and private affairs. There’s no real need to “show off” cleavage, tummies, or muscles to the public like that. Showing more skin may get you more likes on Facebook, but that should not be your primary source of measuring your self-worth. You’re a beautiful human, and as God’s creation you need not rate yourself on likes or comments. You belong to Him – you’ll find no greater source of self-worth than that.

Just a couple last comments: Keep in mind that vanity is not attractive. Keep the selfies posted to the Internet to a minimum.

And, as always, there tend to be exceptions to every rule. Use these tips as guidelines and figure out what works for you. Be creative!

Now go take a great selfie!

There's a Crack in My Crystal Ball

The entirety of last week, I was deeply unhappy; my soul possessed a supreme discontentment – even the bits of soul down in my pinky toes felt it! And the worst part? I couldn’t even put to words why. Thoughts could not embody this disturbance in my being. It drove me crazy.

For days, I woke up with a frown that barely shifted with each passing hour. A reason to pin this crappiness on would have been marvelous, but it took a while for me to properly interpret it.

As most of you know, I am in college finishing up my junior year with a double major in Psychology and Creative Writing. The double major had been something I was 100% certain of even before I set foot on campus in the fall of 2012, as well as plans to go on and get a Master’s in Psych. Freshly 18 years old, I had the next 6 to 8 years of my life planned out as far as academics, and at least 4 years of that I was undoubtedly sure of.

Now that I am on the cusp of finishing my 3^rd year out of 4 in undergraduate studies, the post-graduation future is looming and the pressure of that unfortunately has pushed me to be the most stressed out I have ever been in my life, and I do not say that lightly. I do not get stressed because I don’t allow myself to, but over that week I had to admit that I was discontent with something and stressed out about it. But what the heck was it? I needed more variables to fill in this equation – thus far it was all question marks.

I had been doing what every decent Christian does – pray. Most of my prayers that week consisted of me asking for clarity about my future, about where I was supposed to go and what to do. A couple weeks before that ultimate-stress-week, I had been telling God to make it obvious when He lets me in on my future plans, because I know I’m not the best at interpreting between my feelings and God’s intentions. I distinctly recall saying during family prayer time for God to sledgehammer the obviousness into my head if need be.

Careful what you pray for, kids.

Stress-week was emotionally and spiritually painful (sledgehammer to the soul?). Wednesday night I finally found a faint glimmer of clarity: I didn’t want to go to grad school in Psychology anymore.

It was a feeling before it was a verbalized concept, one that presented itself in tears before words.

There was an acute internal trigger, and through the sniffles I verbalized to myself why I was so discontent. I had realized I didn’t want to go to grad school in Psychology and I had to tell myself it was okay. It’s okay when plans change – now is much better than later, too; for instance, in the middle of a Master’s program for Psych I sure as heck would not have wanted this realization. And anyway, it didn’t currently change much, although initially I thought it changed everything (more stress).

I wanted to write. As soon as I admitted that to myself, I was rushed with alleviation. I wanted to get an MFA, go to a graduate school program that would better my skills. Writing is my passion and has been solidly since 2010, but the seed was planted years before that. Writing is something I cannot live without, while psychology can remain dormant without much fuss – there are so many indicators of this that I feel a fool for not seeing them. Last semester I didn’t have any creative writing classes whatsoever and didn’t have any time to write creatively, so academic papers took over. By the end of the semester, I was crazy with the need to write something, anything creative.

Over spring break (February 28^th to March 8^th) I was home with my parents, and the very first day I was there, my dad and I had a lengthy conversation about the future. At that point I had still been sure about my Master’s-in-Psych decision, and I told this to him. He squinted his eyes a little and gave a small smile, saying he thought years ago that my idea was that creative writing is the capstone and psychology was going to be a helper in that realm. Writing was the Pacific Ocean and psychology was just one of the many rivers that eventually leads into it. Instead, psychology had taken over, in retrospect I think because I had career-minded thinking and had already written off using a creative writing major as a potential future career.

Funny how people on the outside have more insight into my own mind.

Later in the realization week I got Chinese take out for dinner. I happened to walk out with two fortune cookies and for some reason only cracked open one. The fortunes was unsurprisingly inconsequential and irrelevant.

On Sunday I got the urge to crack open the other one, just because. I hadn’t even planned to eat it. The message inside made me roll my eyes and smile.

God finds himself hilarious.

And I blessedly find myself in the arms of pure contentment.