Just Like When the Cat Died & Saying Goodbye

We just said goodbye to really good friends, one of which has personally seen me through a decade of life. Dear friends, that have walked us through marriage and babies and this past excruciating year of loss and heartache. I am happy for their new beginning and the adventure that awaits them but the process has been brutal, even though packing their truck and cleaning their house were simple (but sweaty) projects. It's the matters of heart that have a way of inducing exhasution. It's stuffing tears while trying to engage each last moment that takes its tool. 

I wake up today, without the torture of pending goodbyes but with an empty space I'm not sure how to fill. At the goodbye dinner, otherwise known to me as The Last Supper, my friend's mom had a complete breakdown and through tears and little comic relief, started talking about how this was JUST like when the cat died.

I couldn't help by stifle a giggle at the oddity of the comparison, but what she said gave me tremendous insight into my own sadness. She said that when her cat died, there was a lot of turmoil and grief in other aspects of her life. Turmoil and grief that hadn't quite been processed or resolved or fully healed. In that place of un-dealt-with sorrow, the death of the cat became an epically emotional moment. 

It was one more loss. 

Even if it was an old cat.

My friend's move is much more than a long-distance complication. It's not just the end of an era or a sad goodbye. For me, it's the cat dying - un-processed grief. It's one more loss. 

Uncontrollable public(ish) sobbing isn't my regular M.O. But grief doesn't seem to give a shit about running mascara or embarrassing sobbing sounds. If permitted, grief will roll out, on and over, every proper public persona and onto whoever and whatever it can.  Grief is leaky. And sometimes inappropriately epically emotional.

But it's a choice. Engaging is always a choice. So today, I sit in the sadness. And for once, I'll feel it without anesthetizing or dissociating. My friends are worth feeling for - they're worth rejoicing in and grieving over. I don't want to drown in a waterfall tomorrow what I am capable of bathing in today. I'm tired of giving dead cats more tears than they deserve.   

So today sucks. And I'm going to sit here for a while, in it. And just be. Sad.

And think about buying a cat.