Sometimes time stops

And it’s okay, right?

A Substack writer I deeply admire and am grateful for,

Tom Cox

, reposted something on Notes yesterday that I needed to use today for my own purpose. And with everything I have in me, I hate that I have to.

Ralph is (was) his beloved cat.

“I began to write this piece about Ralph on the afternoon of his death but then I stopped myself. I’ve done it a few times now: written in celebration of the life of cats, in a flood of grief, and published that writing online only hours after their demise. I have done it because I feel a huge obligation to people who have never met them but grown fond of them via words on a page and photographs. It was something I never stopped to consider, fourteen years ago, when I decided to write some books that were kind of about my cats and kind of about lots of other things as well: that I had set myself up with a duty of public mourning, for years to come. What am I supposed to do? Just casually pop a photo of Ralph on social media in September, with a caption saying “Oh, by the way, my cat Ralph died a couple of months ago. Hope everyone is having a nice day!”? Or maybe just not mention him at all, kind of pretend he is still here? Not possible. I chose to write a series of books featuring Ralph and because of that I owe it to the people who came to love him through those books to tell them as soon as possible about his death. But I did decide to hold off, this time, just for a week or so, maybe not a fortnight, but enough time to live with it privately for a while. I decided I would selfishly limit my bereavement to myself, my family, and a few friends who knew Ralph in real life. I needed it, needed to go easy on myself: something I am not always very skilled at.”

(Bold emphasis mine)

Thanks for these words, Tom. I’m borrowing them because I need them now too.

[Tom’s entire essay can be found here: Remembering a Very Special Cat]

It wasn’t supposed to be time

Time does stop at times—most often, I guess, when you least expect. And it is ironically during those times when you find yourself wishing time would speed up—that you could jump forward into some indeterminate future when you know the pain won’t hurt as much, where everything will return to its more normal and bearable existence, because you know that’s what time does as well. Time does heal, time will comfort. Time can make us “able to bear” just about everything. It just takes time.

It’s just…

this wasn’t supposed to happen now. It wasn’t time. We weren’t ready even as we were getting ready. Now just wasn’t supposed to be the time.

If you’ve ever invited a pet into your life, it is inevitable you come to know this too. Because when you invite their lives into yours, and allow your initially separate hearts to meld and melt into a singular, shared heart, through the innocence of unconditional love, you come at some point to realize you’ve also invited their death at the exact same moment of their arrival.

My family is right here, now, in a time of shared lives where time has breathtakingly stopped, even as we know time must still march on for everyone else, but also ourselves, too. At some point.

Now’s just not that time, yet.

I’m taking Tom’s wise advice to “live privately for a while” a grief that has found us anew. Even as I try to grow my own skill of understanding the places dying, death, loss, and grief must play in all lives, I’m choosing right now to “go easy on myself.” Go easy and simply grieve in a manner that honors the little being that Sammy (aka Samual Langhorne Clemens) was (is) for our family.

Sammy vanished from our family this week.

That word, vanished, is an odd word in this context but it is the only word that best captures things right now. Because of who he was as a part of us, I want to share more about him, and about this fragment of frozen time, both of which will come after this period of private bereavement. I need time and space to place him properly in the overall context of our family, to find the right words, to honor his dignity and his legacy. I just simply don’t have the words for it right now. Finding the right words takes time. And time has stopped for me right now. And that’s gotta be okay, right?

In trying to make sense of it all, I’ve been asking and trying to answer an important question for myself. That’s, I guess, how I’ll start when next I give words to this.

But only when that time comes.

This post, written and shared back in September of 2022, when my Dad was still living with us, allowed a glimpse of how Sammy fit within our lives. Just a glimpse. He was so much more. This post is also one of the most popular I wrote.

More later. If you’re a lover of pets, you understand. I know you do.

Hurry up, time.

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Live, Laugh, and Love

Always and Ubuntu,

~ k

And with Ahimsa!

🙏🏼