Trying to take it all one day at a time lately. Not really wanting to write because it seems so rude to write about mundane things, but at the same time, I don't want to keep writing about sad things. My Love and I have a wedding to go to this evening, so that's the mundane side of things for you. The rest....just isn't worth talking about right now. It seems so trivial. I just miss him and it's hard to work through it to say the least.

~ flowers bloom near Memory and Dream at 4/26/2003 01:35:11 PM ~ ~

Stupid, sad moment of the day...

I washed some clothes tonight and I just now took them out of the dryer. I'm folding them up and putting them in piles for where they need to be put away. As I hold an assorted pile of shirts and shorts to go in the armoire, I get down to the last shirt and I look at it a moment and realize it's the simple grey teeshirt I wore on Tuesday when I took Kush to the vet. I hadn't realized I had washed it and now I'm standing there, holding it, and I start to cry as I think I washed away the fur from holding him that day and I didn't even realize it. And even that stupid thing was enough to make me start to cry.

It just keeps hitting me...I'll be going about my day - mostly in a fog - and suddenly, something just triggers the reminder that he's gone. I look for him out of habit, or I go to do something that I used to do and he's not there. It feels like someone punches me as hard as they can in the stomach and I just start sobbing at that moment. It hits me all over again that he's gone; forever, and that he's never coming back. Fuck I hate that thought and I miss him so damned much. It just hurts so badly.

~ flowers bloom near Memory and Dream at 4/25/2003 03:31:02 AM ~ ~

It's over. I'm home, he's gone. I feel like I've been run over by an 18-wheeler and the hurt has only just begun. I still can't fathom it's forever. That he's not going to be coming back. It's not really sunk in yet. I don't want to ever be used to a world without him in it. It was quick. My mom stayed with him since I couldn't. It's done. I hate the world today and my tears just hit me like wounds, I just cry until it hurts, then it goes away for a time. I think I'm going to try to sleep a little, but I don't know if I can. I expect to see him and I can't and that's so hard. But it's over and supposedly, it'll get easier, though it doesn't feel like it from here.

~ flowers bloom near Memory and Dream at 4/22/2003 06:05:42 PM ~ ~

Today's the day. Just four short hours from now it'll be over forever. Gods, that's a harsh word, isn't it? Forever...? He'll just...be gone.

I didn't sleep well last night, going to bed like 5am and getting up like 10:30am with all kinds of weirdness inbetween. I think I'm going to just sleep for a day or two when I get home today. My mom's meeting me at the vet and she already said she'd stay with him until the very end. I don't think I can; I don't want to remember him as being actually dead. I don't think I can handle that. I feel really bad about that and really weak; like I'm leaving him when he needs me most, but I just can't do it. I can't actually watch him die. It's just too cruel in a day that will already go down as being horribly cruel. (To me anyway, the point of this all is to free him from the cruelty of his cancer, though it still feels too much like I'm just killing my cat. Logically, I know the cancer is, but...)

I really have to thank everyone for their supportive comments and while I don't have the mental state to write coherant thank-you's back, know that I really do mean thank you nonetheless.

This is all for now, for probably a few days unless I feel the need to write more about how I feel afterwards. I'm not sure yet, I might want to get some of that sorrow out, or I might not. If I go silent for some days or a week, I'm not gone, just in mourning. If you need to reach me, you can drop me an email.

I love you now and always Kush, you're a friend, you're family and you've been there for me for thirteen years. Thank you for the gift that is your life. It's touched mine in so many ways, I couldn't even begin to count them.

~ flowers bloom near Memory and Dream at 4/22/2003 11:05:29 AM ~ ~

What does one do on their last day with their loved one to ever make it mean enough..? To make it fill the years to come...?

I find myself milling around today, just mindless in my attentions and actions, not having any answer for those questions. I find myself daydreaming of reasons to stall or put it off; to delay it for another day, week, month...to not face it. To now know it hangs there bloated and menacing for tomorrow. I look at him and I know that everyone else sees it's time. They see how he's done to bone; they see the unbelievable size of the tumor; they see his difficulty in laying down. I see that too, but I also still see Kush; I see him jump up on my lap; I see him follow me around the house like he always has; I see him seek me out to lay down and have me pet him like he enjoys. I see so much of that and so much of him and I wonder how it is that tomorrow I kill him.

I think on the fact that it'll be $153 tomorrow including putting him to sleep and the private cremation so I can get back his ashes and I think how I don't even have that much money (and how I'll be letting my phone get disconnected in order to even hope to cover it) and I try to validate that as a reason to postpone. Is that selfish? Is that wrong? Or do I know it's not yet his time, but I hear the words of everyone else so convincing, who just see the bad that they don't see the daily actions and inherant Kush-ness still left in him? How do I know I'm doing the right thing?

The clock just keeps ticking and the answers aren't coming, but time is running out. What do I do and how do I make sure it's the right choice? And how do I hold on enough to keep him in my heart and mind when he's gone?

~ flowers bloom near Memory and Dream at 4/21/2003 02:24:31 PM ~ ~

I don't really want to write; it all seems so trivial to say anything when this with Kush is looming over my head. At the same time though, I've grown so used to writing regularly and I can only spend so many hours a day wanting to/actually crying...

Went up to my grandmother's for [Easter] dinner and told my mom and sister today that the day had been set. My mom will either be meeting me at the vet on Tuesday, or will be driving up with me; I'm not sure yet. My Love took the day off so he can be there with me and so I won't have to be alone at all that day.

I find myself second-guessing my choice; seeing so much Kush left in his eyes when he looks at me that I worry I'm doing the right thing. Then I see him try to lay down and the fucking tumors getting in the way - the one, larger then a grapefruit, just dominating his fur-and-bones body. He's just such a fighter, and he managed the last seven months when the vet predicted about six weeks, that I worry about waking up Wednesday morning and realizing I killed my cat and questioning if it was the right thing to do. He comes by and sprawls on my lap like he has everyday for the last thirteen years and I wonder how I can even think to do this and stop having that... I try to tell myself I'm being brave and doing for him what he can't do for himself, but the words sound hollow and meaningless in my heart.

So many people have been supportive; sending me emails and leaving comments and sharing their thoughts it makes me realize how much he's touched my life and the lives of those around me. He's just an amazing little guy and he has such a personality about him, you can't miss it. Except I'll be missing it from now on, for the rest of my life, in the next day and a half. How cruel it is; this bloody cancer; this stealer of lives and love and hope. This monster inside that eats from within. This healthy cat; vibrant, full of life; full of love and happy, lost, gone, taken from me by something none of us could fight and none of us could foresee.

Watched some of the NHL playoffs today and though I didn't get to see the end (had to leave to go to dinner), I understand the Lightning won today and are going to the second round in the first time ever of the team's existance. It's nice to know sometimes that outside our pain, the world goes on and that someone shed tears of joy; not sorrow.

Tomorrow...tomorrow will be hell I think. Spending the whole day knowing it's our last together. Even now, when technically it is tomorrow (as I write this, I've yet to go to bed and I think of it still as Sunday), I can't accept it. I blather here instead to try to stave off those final hours. The last night he'll sleep on my bed...

My little gift. My precious, patient, beautiful, brilliant kitty. Who taught me the concept of unconditional love and gave that love no matter what I looked like, wore, how my day went, if I were rich or if I were poor. My little grey feline who taught me beauty and grace and showed me the simple joys of togetherness. My beloved little boy who found me when I cried and purred with me when I laughed. Just a girl and her cat and the world was suddenly a little bit better.

I'm stalling. I think I'll stop, go to bed and let tomorrow come since it will no matter what I wish for. I just don't want to lose him. And I just don't want to be without.

~ flowers bloom near Memory and Dream at 4/21/2003 02:36:22 AM ~ ~