On grief

I have lived with death in my world since I was six, and my friend Judith suddenly disappeared from school. I was told later she died from leukaemia, as in those days there was no treatment available for younger children. And as it was around 1961, no adult ever mentioned her again. I have a single vision in my mind of a young blonde girl with plaits, but I was shocked enough to recall the event.

Some six or so years later my father died after a very long illness and hospitalisation. I was never really able to deal with this as I was sent to school that day (he died overnight) and was bullied for crying in the school yard. So I did what was expected and pushed it down. I was not permitted to attend the funeral, so from my perspective, I went to bed with a living father and awoke without one. As it was 1967, no adult ever mentioned him again. Two things stand out for me from that night – one was that my mother stitched together a suit of clothes for a marionette I had made for school. The other was that night was the first time I ever heard a song from the White Album by the Beatles, ironically titled “Good Night”. I still tear up when I hear it, despite its sentimental and syrupy arrangement.

Next was my remaining male family figure, my great uncle Ted, who died after his wife a couple of years later. Again, I couldn’t attend the funeral, because his close family had stolen all his property and we were excluded. Then a friend at high school took his head off with a shotgun in front of his dad (God, how devastated his father must have been). It was apparently an accident; he was just being dramatic. That didn’t help any of his school friends or family, though.

Since then I have had ex-lovers kill themselves, friends die of overdoses, car accidents, motorcycle accidents, and of course as I asymptotically approach 70, cancers, other diseases, and old age. Just last week a friend of mine philosopher Helen de Cruz died of cancer, which was expected, leaving their two girls and their partner distraught. Helen was not the first person I had met online but not in person who I have grieved over. Anthropologist David Rindos, with whom I was in email discussions every day for three years, died suddenly from a heart attack. This was the first time I had heard of someone grieving for a virtual friend, and I didn’t know how to do that either.

But the deaths that have most deeply affected me were not those of humans. They were my pets.

Now since I was five I can recall having cats, and I still think of myself as a bipedal cat. Several Timmys, a couple of Changs, and the cats we had when my kids were young. In particular, our cat Chesh (short for Cheshire Cat, which my eldest, named Alice, would pronounce “Cheshy Cat” when she was three). Chesh was a beautiful companion to the kids and to me, and would get under the covers in bed on cold nights and poke her head out and purr so loudly one could be forgiven for thinking that a Harley had pulled up. When she died from old age, it was at a vet’s, after she’d gone missing for several days, and I found her (or my son did) and rushed her there, to be told she needed to be euthanised. I held her and said goodbye as she drifted off. That was nearly twenty years ago, and she was 17 when she died. I mourned her, but it was her time. She’d been a very good babysitter and playmate to the kids.

But almost nothing has hit me so hard as the premature death of my Clio, a tortoiseshell cat, yesterday morning. I held her, too, but she had, I think, been poisoned by a rat bait, and she did not die peacefully or with dignity. In fact she had a seizure just before the vet was to give her the injection, and I think died then, in my lap, with my partner and I in tears. And since that happened, I have been hit with wave after wave of tears and deep sadness, out of all proportion to the objective tragedy, although to me it is so significant. She loved me and I loved her and I keep turning to see where she is and remembering that she isn’t there any more. I always tell cats they are good boys or girls, and I told her that as she was dying. I can only hope it brought her some peace. I’m in tears as I type this.

Why did their deaths affect me so much more than the human deaths? I suspect it has to do with the nature of grief itself, and my prior traumas. I felt abandoned as a young person when people died and I wasn’t allowed to mourn them. But every cat I had, even the grumpy feral one adopted by my aunt, returned affection from me (along with extensive scratching from the feral one), and grief for them was earned, as loss of a part of my life that valued me as much as I valued them.

I have issues with my family relationships and most adults who have died were not close to me nor I to them, such as colleagues, even when I liked them and they, to all appearances, liked me. But every single pet I have had has been close, emotionally and physically, and Clio (named for the muse of history) was especially giving. She was only seven years old. I am feeling the loss of the extra decade I should have had with her. And for the next decade I will still.

Many friends have mourned the loss of their pets, and it is the cost of loving them. Apart from, say, an African Gray parrot, which can live around half a century, we outlive nearly all our animals. It makes the experience of affection and companionship that much more valuable, and the loss stronger. And of course, I am old (and twisted) so I am more touched by her passing, especially since it all went down within four hours, and feel more strongly her loss. Our other cat Noodle is wandering about confused. Do cats grieve? I cannot say without anthropomorphising them, but as part of my family they are griefworthy.

So to all who suffer grief, and there are so many who are needlessly suffering it now, I offer my sympathies. Whether for animals, or parents, or children or childhoods, we all grieve that which we didn’t or don’t have. All I can say is that it helps to talk about it.