Oct. 31st: We had to put our kitty down yesterday. Her name was Freud. She was a beautiful dilute calico, a perfect balance of orange and grey fur on her back, tail, and head, with lovely white chest, belly and stockings. We named her Freud because under the triangle of white nose and cheeks and chin, she had a grey patch that looked like the beard Dr. Sigmund had. She was very sweet to everyone, and slept at the foot of our bed. Sometimes she would tease our dog Genki by rearing up and swatting at her nose. They would have a round in the ring with Freud swatting and Genki wheeling this way and that to dodge her “blows.”

At first I thought I didn’t want to be there when the vet administered her lethal injection. But when she had to endure two failed attempts to get a catheter for the injection into a vein in her leg, I decided she needed me. She had feline leukemia, and was so dehydrated from not eating or drinking that her veins collapsed when they tried to insert the catheter. When the vet finally gave her the injection in a femoral blood vessel, she was so weak that it was difficult to tell when she left her body. She lay on her side as the sedative took her away, while Dan and I stroked her head and cheek.

I knew yesterday morning that I was spending my last hours with her, but I only shed a couple of tears when I had Felix say goodbye to her before he went to school. I thought my lack of overt sadness was because I was tired of being sad, or that I was comforted by getting to say goodbye to her and by the knowledge that she wouldn’t suffer anymore.

But when I held her on my lap in the car while parked at the animal hospital, I sobbed. She shook her head to disperse the tears that fell on her ears. I sobbed with Dan after the vet explained the euthanasia process and left us alone to be with her in the examining room. And I sobbed over her lifeless body. The agony of death and abandonment came flooding back. I pictured Elise’s sweet but lifeless face again, and I wanted to scream helpless curses at the universe.

I was exhausted the rest of the day. I felt thankful that I had a simple life with no work obligations to drag myself through. I was glad we were picking up Felix from school to watch him make his cheerful, uncomplicated way through his day.

I had one work obligation that evening, but thankfully again, it was a comforting one: for the Bozeman Film Festival, I introduced and facilitated a Q & A session for the Japanese film After Life. The story takes place at a sort of way station for the dead: the newly deceased are given 3 days to choose one memory from their lives, which the staff at the way station will recreate on film and screen for them, at which point the dead will leave to spend the rest of eternity with that memory. It’s a languid, thought-provoking film, one that asks what is important to us in our own lives. It celebrates the art of filmmaking, our individual ways in the midst of our need for connection, and the unshakable belief that we will be consoled. One of the characters says that he made the wonderful discovery after many, many years, that he was important to someone. And that is what I hold on to: that even in their tiny, short lives, beings like Freud, who very few besides Dan and I care about, and Elise, who is forgotten or never remembered by most except Dan and me, are important to us, and cherished.

Oct.15th: As the days creep forward towards the day of Elise’s birthday, my agitation builds. We don’t have anything planned to commemorate it. We don’t know whether to spend it as a family, with just the two of us, whether to stay home or go somewhere, what kind of rituals, if any, we’ll hold.

I wonder whether I would feel less restless if I did make plans. But whenever I try to think about it, I draw a blank. Maybe I don’t want to think about it.

Which is strange, because I think about her every day, several times a day. She is constantly on my mind, if sometimes in the back, or hovering somewhere out of sight. If she’s always on my mind, why am I not thinking about ways to honor her and help us take the next step toward integrating her into our lives, however that’s supposed to feel?

Maybe I should give it some focused thought, because it seems like most our emotions associated with her are regretful, sorrowful, disillusioned, frustrated. Dan let out a moaning sigh last night: when he said he’d received his first e-mail from his new employers, I thought he was going to say they gave him a huge assignment, but the e-mail was announcing the birth of a fellow employee’s baby. I shopped for some birthday things for Felix the other day, and saw the little plastic tiaras and beads for other birthday girls, not mine. The last photo we have of me pregnant with Elise is with Felix on his 2nd birthday at his grandparents. His face is lit up with glee as he sits on my lap, and Dan and I have joy and anticipation in our smiles as all three of us gaze at the birthday cake before him.

We travel to the Bay Area to see some friends next week. After that, I’ll go to a retreat for women in Seattle with two of my sisters. I’m sure some ideas will come to me then. As always, I will practice patience with this journey.

Oct. 9---I visited a Montessori preschool today, one of several I am checking out for Felix. We think Felix’s teacher in his toddler group at his present daycare is wonderful, but he’s ready to move on to a group with older kids.

I was really exhausted after spending an hour and fifteen minutes visiting this school. Not because it was chaotic or crazy—the atmosphere there is far from that, actually: the children were totally engaged in their little projects with drawing animals, or making letters, or sorting shapes and colors, or siphoning colored water from one beaker and squirting it into another. Also, I had a long delightful conversation with the very dynamic director. She showed me some endearing books about children in Japan who meet foreigners, and about a biracial child’s family, written by an American who grew up in Japan. When I sat down to read them, a little girl who’d been fascinated with me ever since I arrived showed me another book that showed how to make colorful animals with autumn leaves.

Suddenly I had eight kids surrounding me, pointing and exclaiming at the leaf animals. Then Annie Jane, a five-year-old whose parents let us crash her birthday party at the park last month, showed me a book about colors called “Little Blue.” She and another little girl read some of the words with me, about how Blue and his friend Yellow hug each other to make green.

I felt so warm and fuzzy, it almost made me want to start my own preschool. To look into their smiling, searching eyes, their eyes that show they are getting to know the world’s wonders, lifted me up, but also wrenched me open.
I try not to force the door closed on my sadness, but lately it’s been easier to move through the hours without feeling flayed open, exposed to the indifferent elements. I’m building up my protective layers again, the healthy kind that keep me safe and calm, not hardened and edgy. So today when I immersed myself in all that little-kid energy, and saw another teacher at the school who is pregnant (“having a baby in three weeks,” the director said; I hope so, I thought), it was like having one of those layers slowly, painfully peeled away. I really did enjoy myself and smiled the whole time, but once I was alone, that rawness began throbbing, and regret flooded through me. Now I’m exhausted. Some tears slide silently down my face as I sit here at the public library, gazing out at the treetops through the big picture windows.

I thought I wanted to just sit and read today, but I need to take myself into the glorious clear day out there. An October passage from Healing After Loss reads, “In the turning of the seasons, I find promise and hope.” I’ve been feeling particularly drawn to the colors of autumn. Maybe I’ll gather some colorful leaves and make pictures of animals with them.