I dream to make sleep less boring

Near the end of last year my Benji died at home. He was 15 years old and had a tumor growing in his chest that was absorbing all of his nutrients. Benji was my baby, my best friend, my companion. Never my familiar in the way I tend to think of them because he was so much more than that. My wife and I found Benji abandoned when him and his siblings were just 4 weeks old. I thought he was going die when I first found them. He didn’t move, he barely cried out like the other 2 did. It turned out all he needed was a reason to try. He was the biggest of the 3, his sister the littlest. We also kept her, Brody; she died when she was 9, also from a tumor. The third one we found a nice home for. But Benji and Brody were ours. Benji was mine.

Anyone who has seen or met Benji could probably tell you he was more than just a cat. He held something very special around him and we connected within that space. The last couple years of his life were up and down with his health. He would go for long periods of time not really eating. We talked with a pet communicator and overnight he started devouring his food again. She said he was anxious about the world. About us. His anxiety was eating him up from the inside, so she wrapped him in a temporary bubble. For a year he would wake me up between 4 and 7 every morning to feed him, and how could I deny him food for a couple hours when for the last several months he wouldn’t eat at all? It became a routine for us. He’d wake me up, meow, pet my face, in general just poke at me until I would get up and feed him. Then we would sit up together and wait for the wifey to wake. It was our time. We’d watch a movie or tv show. He’d sit with my while I crafted. And then I woke up the weekend after he died, and he wasn’t poking me or meowing and I just couldn’t find a reason to get out of bed that early.  And the next weekend. And the next. My other kitty, Luna, just lays on me and demands nothing until I actually get up. This is how it’s been since he died.

Yesterday, I spoke with Athena. I told her how lost I have been feeling, even while making steps to move forward. I told her it felt like it’d lost my wisdom and my sight. She held my hand and told me she sensed I was mourning. and at first I didn’t know what she meant. But as she hugged me I realized I was still mourning Benji. I realized that Benji had come to represent, and hold, in his own ways, my wisdom. If you’ve met him or seen him, you might understand why. When he died I let him take that with him. He had become my feather. I relied so much on sharing that with him I haven’t been able to feel it on my own. Now I must take the steps to reclaim that. To connect with him on the other side of the veil. To figure out what it feels like to have that wisdom to myself. I’ve realized that this is something I’ve never done. When I was younger I shared that with my dog, Daisy. I wandered lost after she died for a couple years until I found Benji. Now I have to put on my big kid shoes and find this feeling without an aid. It’s scary. My wife asked me I wanted another kitty because Luna is not wise. A familiar, yes, but wisdom is not this girls strong point. By the gods, part of me wants to scream yes, but the other part of wants me to try it without my feather. The wisdom is within me, not without.

So now I sit here and am forced to reflect on the relationships I make with the animals in my life. I sit here thinking about how I try to say “It sounds silly…” before I speak of my mourning process to deflect anyone else minimizing my pain. So I’m writing this for anyone mourning the loss of their pet. For anyone who feels like no one understands how hard it is to lose those furry babies who love us the way we love them. For those of us who feel lost when the house is suddenly quiet and no longer what it was. We have to stop saying it sounds silly. It isn’t. I have to stop diminishing my experience because he wasn’t a human like you or me. We must make space for our mourning, not reign it in for anyone’s comfort. We allow our furry friends into the spaces we can’t let other people into. We let them be a part of us in ways a person can not. There is nothing silly about that.

  *The feather I refer to, and often do in real life, is Dumbo’s feather. He held that feather in his trunk and believed it was the feather that helped him fly, but it was always him. We hold our own feathers like he did, but we must always remember that our feather isn’t the source of our gift, just a representation of that gift. Without the feather it’s still there.