Little Lost, Trying to be found

Your garden was beautiful this summer. Mum and I are doing well. The animals are all doing great, I accidentally adopted a new one; his name is Jack, he is so sweet and he really needed me. You would absolutely love him.

We miss you so much. We talk about you all the time. We laugh a lot ... and we cry, but we are okay because we have each other and so many beautiful memories.

I spent the weekend making art in your workshop. I can’t do what you could do but I’m trying something and it’s pretty nifty. I think you’d like it.

Mum and I were looking at the blue moon last night and arguing about whether something was Mars or an plane (it was totally a plane) and we saw a iridium flare! It was beautiful!

It feels impossible that you have been gone for a year. I swear I can see you out of the corner of my eye every day. I am alway looking for you.

Firstly, black cats are the least likely to be adopted due to some ridiculous, superstitious mumbo jumbo that still sticks around in people. Personally I think black is awesome and I’m planning on putting batwings on him at Halloween because it’ll be freaking fantastic. But the biggest reason he is unlikely to be adopted is because animals with special needs are highly unlikely to be adopted. Jack may look just fine right now but he is feline leukaemia positive. It’s an incurable virus that makes him highly susceptible to illness and means he will have a short little lifespan. I have seen this disease in action too many times so I know exactly how it goes; he’s going to be fine and dandy right up until the day that he isn’t and then he will get very sick and be gone quickly. My heart is already breaking just thinking about it, but HE doesn’t know that is life will be short. HE doesn’t know he’s going to get sick and leave this world faster than either of us would like. Nope, that information my burden and my heartache, and i can’t run away from it and put him back into a shelter where I know he’ll spend his life wondering where his cuddle partner went. He just knows that at 7 am everyday (even weekends) he likes to stick his face in my face to wake me up. He know he likes to watch Kitty TV on the window sill and chill with his buddies, the neighborhood outdoor cats who come visit him. And he knows that he can cuddle up on my lap or my shoulders anytime he damn well pleases. So Jack and I are gonna have a good run together. We’ll have lots of cuddles, lots of laughs, and we’ll enjoy the time we have while we have it. It’s gonna hurt like a bitch, everything does these days so I’ll take this too.

This is what I want to say to others out there; if you can find it in you heart to give an animal a chance who may otherwise be over looked. DO IT. It’s worth it. These little souls deserve the chance to have a home. The older ones, the special needs ones, the funny looking ones. The little bastards that spray their food and litter all over the place. They need you more than a perfect little kitten or puppy ever would. Please please please give them a chance.

And then March 2020 happened. I left my parents house after spending my birthday weekend with them. I hugged them goodbye and thanked them for everything. By the next morning the world shut down. I went to work and they told me to pack up my computer, get in a cab and go home. Politicians were saying to stay in our homes, see no one, go out only for essentials. And that anyone with a compromised immune system was extremely susceptible to this virus. Dad needed to be protected at all cost.

If I had known that weekend in March would be the last time I could hug them without being afraid that it could kill them, I would have held on so much longer.

So I complied. I stayed home and away from everyone, everything, even my parents. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do to. COVID stole precious, irreplaceable months from my dad and I. It stole time I should have spent by his side. It stole hugs. It stole laughter. It stole joy. It stole hope. It stole EVERYTHING we fucking needed in the worst, most desperate time of our lives. Something I can never have back or do over or make right. It robbed me of being the daughter I wanted to be for my father. I don’t think I’ll ever get over that rage.

Eventually I had visits where I came to the back yard through the gate and treated everything I touched like it was a biohazard that could kill my parents. I freaked out when either of them came within ten feet of me. This went on for months. Then finally wrapping myself in plastic-wrap so that I could finally hug them. I cried in my car as I drove away every time I left their house worried that I had accidentally fucked up and may be transmitted the virus to them.

And in the end the virus didn’t get him. All my precautions and sacrifices and heartache didn’t make one inch of difference. The cancer got him. And my mother and i had to make a guest list for his funeral. How do you make a fucking guest like that? For a man who could have filled a small stadium with the lives that he touched?

When things were looking grim with my dad, there were several times that my drunk ass asked my best friend to drive me somewhere, anywhere. And when I found a field that suited my needs I told her her stop the car, got out and walked to the middle of said field and screamed like Michael Myers had just found me hiding in a closet. I screamed till I was hoarse and crying and fell to my knees.

When he walked around the hospital, he put the gloves on his walker. I heard someone ask about them and he said “Yep, where’s the gym?”. A seventy-odd man with a walker, a broken hip and a stage four cancer diagnosis. He was so fucking funny .