Update (mourning)

Thank you everyone who contacted us — via blog, IM, text message, or good old fashioned telephone — to express condolences. We are both doing better.

I posted to this blog Tuesday morning shortly after we found Ernie.

I had planned not to go into work that day anyway (though I did work from home in the afternoon), and that was the right decision. Feeling out of sorts, Eric and I decided to take a walk before doing much else. We stayed home long enough to contact the vet and cancel the appointment, figure out what to do about burial, and put Ernie into a box. Then we walked all the way down to Julius Meinl where we decided to have breakfast.

Two Austrian breakfasts later we headed back to the house. We did not have a regular vet, which is how one normally arranges cremation. We didn't want to bury Ernie in the yard, because we don't know how long we'll be here. I said, we could bury him in the front yard and plant a rhododendron over him as a memorial, but then what if we moved, and came back years later, and the rhododendron was gone?

So we found a pet cemetery in the suburbs, all the way out by Hinsdale, that offered (among other things) "Memorial Cremation", which meant he would be cremated in a small group, and the ashes scattered around the cemetery. It seemed like a nice idea, and I couldn't help but feel that a 45-minute drive each way would feel somehow appropriate, like a ritual act.

I sealed the box up, and Eric and I each put a flower on it, and we loaded Ernie into the car and drove off.

They had everything you can imagine available at the pet cemetery: urns, caskets, plaques, stones; you could even have the ashes compressed into a diamond. "Memorial Cremation" is the simplest option they offer. The woman there asked us if we wanted her to take Ernie out of the box and put into something nice for a last viewing, but we said no. We'd already had a last viewing, and we'd spent a long time with him the night before talking to him and saying goodbye before bed. We didn't need an open viewing. Plus, I didn't want to see him again. I didn't want to remember the skinny sad thing he'd become, I wanted to remember the cat he used to be. (Eric felt the same way; we found that we agreed on everything, and even things we didn't discuss, we later found out we'd agreed on for the same reasons.)

We did sit in the little viewing room for a moment before saying goodbye one last time. We cried some more, and we drove home crying some of the wjavascript:void(0)ay. But I haven't really cried since then. I'm still sad, but I think the ritual helped. Monday night, Tuesday morning, I was afraid I might never stop crying, but pain does pass.

I miss my little kitty, but I'm OK.

Rupert misses him too. He's a bit needy, but we snuggle him a lot and he seems to be getting better. Which is good: I think we need the snuggles too.

Labels: personal

posted by Tony at 10:16 PM