Grief Poppets for Samhain

Without death, there would be no Ancestors to revere. With death comes grief. Ancestor practitioners spend so much time playing crossing guard and messenger that we need to have a tool box of ways to work through, accept, and integrate grief.

At Samhain, I tell people not to call on those who have not been gone for at least a year. That is partly so we do not hold onto spirits who were ready to move on. But it is largely an act of self-care. We humans need time to process our grief before being able to experience our friends as part of the slipstream of Ancestral Dead.

Some people need less than a year. Some people need more time. There’s no golden rule. It’s natural to fear and struggle with death. Humans cling to our science for answers to give us comfort. Death is perhaps the ultimate mystery for which there can never be any concrete veritas Truth. So we gather our personal truths and experiences with death in an attempt to flesh out the hidden image.

I have a simple but potent magic I use when I have a personal grief that sits heavy in my heart. I make a Grief Poppet.

They are not Voodoo dolls, although I consider Voodoo dolls to be a kind of poppet. Use of poppets in folk healing is old and crosses cultures. When I make a poppet for healing, I make the figure of it similar to the being it is meant for. They’re usually human silhouettes but I have also made cat-shaped dollies.

I always use cotton fabrics, something that can be burned or buried without further harming the Earth. I cut two shapes and put them wrong-side together, hand stitching them. While sewing, I focus my thoughts on happy memories of the one I grieve. I leave an opening in the head so I can fill it, then turn it inside out. This is poppet magic 101, for all poppet workings. Now I have a shell for the magic.

I use flaxseed as the base herb for grief poppets. It adds a weight to the fetish that feels good in my hand. I add lavender and rosemary internally for scent. I recommend investing in lavendin for grief purposes (not to be cooked with). It is a hybrid of two strains that produces more essential oil and has a potently soothing aroma to it. If my grief has sharp edges I add some nettle for protection.

The key piece of magic happens when I add the heart stone. I often use a piece of resin incense, sometimes a lotus seed, sometimes a small bean, or a small chip of a gemstone. The important part is that it is meaningful to the person I am crafting the poppet for.

Then I finish it off with an invisible stitch. I make it small enough to fit into a pocket but large enough to be weight in my palm. I carry it around with me for as long as I need. It is not a cure for grief. Grief is not a thing to be abolished or denied.

The depth of our grief is a reflection of the depth of the love we felt, lived, and lost.

Part of what makes the emotion difficult is the intangible quality of it. The poppet is something I can finger in my pocket. It’s less permanent than needing something to remind me of my lost loved one on a daily basis. It becomes a conduit for that grief. It becomes a container but it does not contain it. It takes in the excess but does not retain it. I use copal for grief poppet heart stones because it is a cleanser and purifier.

The nature of time is to lessen the hurt of grief. I will carry the poppet through my workings this Samhain, and burn or bury it at the next one (if I am ready), sending the remnants of that love back out into the world. Love is something death cannot take away.

Love is something death cannot take away.

When grief ebbs at your heart, feed it love.

Feed the world love that none will be hungry for it.

Honor the dead by caring for the living.
Be a good ancestor now.

Christmas Without Patricia

This holiday season I am reminded of the past, of how much time changes. I am reminded of how much the passing of time changes everything. My grandmother died this year. For most of my life she was Christmas Eve. Only Christmas Eve, our once a year visit.

No judgement anymore. It's just truth. It was her choice.

I don't think saying the truth is necessarily speaking ill of the dead. Because the truth-of-what-we-do is not always kind. I mean no ill will, which I sat because I am not sure everyone in her life feels the same.

My grandma and I managed a relationship at the end. The death of her second husband freed her in ways she may not have seen, but we did. I did. I met and got to know the better version of her. It was a true gift.

I smile at that notion, as gift-giving was not her strong suit. I'll come back to that.

O Holy Night is playing in my office. I am not Catholic anymore but I have always loved this song. I remember a Christmas Eve, captive in the back room off of my Grandma's basement. where the cigarette smoke was so thick and constant we sat in a cloud. Some of her inebriated friends were there. Sweet enough as they meant to be, there was always drama associated with their drinking as the night progressed.

Some years were hard.

One of the hard ones, I was pushed into entertaining, into singing for everyone. I didn't want to. I never liked being myself at the center of attention. Give me a different skin, a glamour, or let me hide in the light of a spot.

I sang through every holiday song I knew. O Holy Night was one I sang well and really enjoyed singing. I think about that night, now that I cannot aspire to singing anything so grand yet. That register may never be mine again. I try to be grateful that I can sing at all. I mostly am. But I still think about it. When you can no longer do something you loved to do and could do well you're bound to think about it.

The song is over but now I am thinking about that night and my complicated relationship with the loss of my Grandma. Now she is gone. Now she is everywhere.

After my accident, she sent her stuffed Santa Claus along with my mother, to cheer up my rehabilitation room. I've put it out every year. After my Nancy Drew books and this one black, pink, and teal sweater I got from her circa 1989, that Puffalump Santa Claus is one of the best Christmas gifts I ever got from her.

Gifts were not her strong suit and she was always nervous about it, apologizing almost before you had the box open, eager to both defend her choice and dismiss it as a viable present. It was like she considered a test of how well she knew us from our annual visitations. The last thing she did every night was give my mom the envelope of receipts for everything.

I didn't live home after college so I didn't go over to her house for Christmas Eve anymore but she didn't forget about me. My present would be waiting at my parents' house. They were always a little random. Sometimes I couldn't even get my coat off before everyone would be pressing me to open it. What ever would it be this year? One year there was this super soft pair of leather gloves but I liked but they reeked so strongly of cigarettes my parents had banished the bag to the outdoor porch and I--oops--left it behind.

One of the last gifts was a pair of crocheted-to-look-like-ballet-shoes slippers that I returned to the store. I figured I would use the money from the gift to buy supplies for a womens' shelter. I was angry. The gift felt thoughtless, next to what my siblings received. Like she didn't know me at all. And at that age it hurt. I was taking it out on the slippers. It hurt because it was true. It was also true that she was okay with that at the time. We both were.

I got $1.25 in exchange for them.

I may never have laughed so hard in public. The hurt melted away. Why should she spend more money on someone who hadn't maintained contact with her? What part of her actions had taught me to expect more from her? That laugh was sobering. I grew up a few years in that moment. I humanized her as more than just Grandma. She was also Patricia-who-was-trying.

Maybe it's only funny with forty years of context. I laughed so loud the cashier thought I was having a breakdown. She apologized that it wasn't more. I shrugged it off and told her it was fine, that I was lucky to get anything at all.

I know my Grandma cared. I know she worried for me after my accident. She started sending me holiday cards, which I tucked away, not knowing last year's would be the last one. I even have a birthday card from her, which I got on my actual birthday.

I'm smiling, thinking of them.

My wife and I have a little tradition that originated with my family. We'd go out to dinner, a treat for us, and in between the restaurant and my Grandma's house we would drive through residential areas and look at the decorated houses, listening to holiday music on the radio.

As my wife and I drive through the West Side, looking at the houses, I think about all those years of looking at lights on the way to her house. I realized this year that we bring our ghosts with us, wherever we go. They're not always bad. And I'll happily carry her ghost with me on those drives, something meaningful to me.

I'll talk to her know when I want to, even if they're just words spoken to air. There is power in words spoken and unspoken. I will change the pattern. There's still time to get to know each other a bit better.

A Dream Visitation From Zami

One of the easiest methods for spirits to communicate with us is through our dreams. People with vivid and active dream lives are extra sensitive to this energy and more likely to experience and recall them. Everyone perceives the sensory nature of visitations differently. In sharing my own, I hope to help others discover their own methods of connection.

A year ago our 22 year-old tiger cat passed away. Zami was with me for most of my adult firsts. She was our companion, more like a third partner. Even the cranky-old-lady-who-slept-twenty-three-hours-a-day's loss left an emptiness in our home. It ebbed when I wasn't looking. The new silence became the new normal. And life continued on.

Then I had a dream last night. In it I was walking through our living room and I looked over to see her curled up and sleeping beneath our tree. I got halfway across the room before my sarah-brain noted that I wasn't having a hey-look-my-dead-cat-is-in-this-one, but rather a Holy Shit Spirit Zami is Visiting! 

For me the difference is obvious, like the difference between the quality of a show shot on videotape versus a movie shot on film. Only the spirit visitor is one version overlaid atop the main dream. They're impossible for me not to notice.

And there Zami was. I approached her tentatively, afraid she'd vanish after I noticed her. I called her name and she opened one eye at me before closing it again, ignoring my presence. (That's another way I knew it was her, lol.) And then I touched her. There was a pang for a moment, as if I had forgotten how she felt beneath my palm and the memory woke again in me. 

I touched her and she leaned into it as her fucking-loud-ass-purr-machine revved into overdrive. When she was alive she could purr so loud for so long that when she stopped in the night it would wake me. 

In the dream I was crying. It hurt. You move on but you never get over it. I forgot how visceral her loss was until I was touching her again. For a moment it feels like a horribly awful trick, not a gift. I miss her so much. 

My heart hurts thinking about it now. But I wouldn't change it. I wouldn't wish it away for I am reminded of how much I loved her and how much I love her still.

Preparing the Way for Spirit to Come Through

Autumn has finally found us here in New York State. As we turn towards All Hallow’s Eve it feels as though winter will not be far behind. Indoors, I make preparations to honor my Ancestral Dead and welcome them into my home and hearth. I do this every day but at this time of year I will do it more formally and intently on a night when the lines between the living and the dead blur.

I see movements out of the corner of my eye, things tucking behind chairs and bookshelves that aren’t there when I look for them straight-on. I feel people entering the room behind me but no matter how certain my body is that I am not alone I cannot see anyone with my naked eye. And my scalp prickles as if a hand has gently touched me. It warms beneath another palm. I no longer reach up to check because I know it is not a physical presence.

This is how I live every October. The blurs are what I refer to as wayward spirits, harmless travelers drawn towards memories of being alive. The closer we get to Samhain the brighter my inner lighthouse gets. The room lurker is currently The German Guy who has made another appearance. I know he belongs to my maternal Grandma Art’s side. As she passed this last spring I am not surprised to see him come to sit with me. And the hand on my scalp is my Great-Grandma Elsie. Always. She is my spirit traffic cop. She is never far.

I leave her cups of tea and horribly salted chicken wings. She lived with us in the summers and was alive until I was seventeen. There is a space in my heart that was shaped by her, a part of me that remembers how she molded me. She saw what others in my family did not see and now, from a grown-up perspective, her experiences with a difficult son dictated her advice to me.

You can’t let the bullies stop you from living your life.

That goes for spirit bullies, too. Sometimes, if you are sensitive to them, they can crowd the room and demand attention. So when I clean my Ancestor Altar and refresh it for the season I call in peaceful spirits here that do not wish us harm. I take a shot of some pungent liquor and make an offering at the edge of our property for those spirits seeking offerings with no regard for the living.

There is room for them all to be honored…just...out there. Not in my home.

On Samhain we feast a Dumb Supper with our ancestors, setting a place for special guests and one place for all the rest to come and join. Together, the collective of us living and dead will say a final farewell to those who have passed since last year and I will ask the Ancestors to safeguard those who may not yet be at peace and to watch over their families.

Some years the names of my Recent Dead are few. This year, the list is long, and the losses are heavy. My Grandmother. My Uncle. One of my wife’s closest friends. My primary doctor and friend. Three members of my spiritual community, the loss for one of them is still rippling out through our hearts. It will be felt for years.

I wish them peace even as I grieve the loss of them, the loss of their physical presence, of their wisdom, of all the time we’ll never have to repair or strengthen wounds and hearts. And I am left to figure out how to move on from unfinished work.

But not alone. Those Who Have Gone Before aid me in my grief. The Ancestral Dead, the centuries of others who have felt such loss, have been deceased long enough that they can hold space for my sorrow. When I am open to it, in my darkest moment, I do not feel alone.

For some people the thought of ghosts is isolating and frightening. We often feel such a way about things we cannot explain. I’ve always trusted what I am experiencing more than just my eyes. We do not see everything and we do not see everything the same way as everyone else. It makes our personal experiences valuable.

Open your heart to the thinning of the walls between this world and the next. Do not try to quantify or qualify. I will tell you that yes, your loved one is gone. And they are alive. And they are reincarnated. And they are with you. All of that is true, all at once, right now.

Now they are gone. Now they are everywhere.

How will you honor them this year?

The Beginning I Saw in the End

Grandpa and me

I was speaking about my accident this morning, and about how my Grandpa Riddle came to me just before I woke in the hospital ICU. And I thought about how it’s almost the day he died. I always think of that when spring first comes, because that comes next. And I wanted to revisit this post, as it’s timely.

My Grandfather's Crossing Over

It’s been fourteen years since I sat in the hospital room with my Grandfather, watching him dance with death. There is no winning in the dancing, just an end of the music, the last pulling of strings humming in the air, becoming vibration with no sound, and then… memory. Waiting with my Grandfather, my heart was already heavy with the loss of my grandmother, three years gone. I could tap my grief out for you in my own soft shoe, but we all know the face grief wears, and the mask grievers don.

This story is not about the darkness of the waiting and unknowing. I saw the light in the death. I saw the mystery of the unknowing. I saw the hope in the grief.

He was struggling to breathe. We were painted in the room, separate tableaus across the same canvas. What happened to me did not happen to them. I was not ready to say goodbye to him, our rock, but I was ready for his suffering to end. I didn’t think he would be better off without us but I was ready for him to be free. I was ready to deal with my grief on my own time, not his. Being ready to accept the death made all the difference for me. In that room, with the clicks and the whirrs of the equipment and the slow, low rattling of his lungs, I was prepared to wait.

I was praying in my head, words my heart couldn’t bear to speak, telling him it was okay, that we would be okay. I don’t know how I knew he wasn’t going to wake up. I think we all did. But we hoped. Sometimes when death comes, hope is a dangerous blade. The fact was we were there because he had decided he was ready. Cancer may have claimed him, but his death was on his terms.

We never really talked about death as a family, as a neighborhood, or as a culture when I grew up. Someone died and everyone put their funeral outfit on and we were sad and gave those grieving some space and then life went on. It tells a lot about my family that they allowed the soft chanting from the corner of the room where I sat. Music helps me move through emotion more easily and we were all doing what we needed to do in those moments.

When it happened it was quick. One second. It felt as if someone opened a door in the wall beside me, soft wind rushing in, and that second stretched into season as winter welcomed in spring and spring turned to summer and the smell of tilled earth, warm with worms, tomatoes and cucumbers, filled the air around us. I was ready for what was coming. I felt the shift as it happened.

One person turned away. One person died and one person cried out. I was aware of two realities. The air in the room stopped moving and I heard the sound of a toe tapping as a green light stepped into the room through the wall beside me. I held my breath, afraid to shatter the moment. On the bed, my grandfather smiled and lifted out of his body. Whatever you want or need to call it, his spirit, his anima, his soul leapt towards the light that smelled like my childhood summers and blinked away.

I was back in the room and the warmth that held us there was gone. He was gone. The sudden cold sterility of the room was disarming. So quickly, the heat from his body was dissipating. I stood apart from the moment and the grieving. I wanted to stand in sorrow but I was left in wonder.

When I remember that moment, what I remember was that it was not awful for me, but left me full of awe for my experience and the gift I was given amid such a welling of sadness. Somewhere in the universe, in the ether, in the springtime around me, the energy I saw leave that room still lives, whether transformed, absorbed, scattered or inhaled, and the warmth of the man I loved became something new.

[Original post published March 23, 2011.]

Our Attachments to the Things That Belonged to Them

Today we put our couch to the curb to make way for a beloved piano. Our apartment is small. We’ve lived in it for over fifteen years so wall space is hard to come by. Letting go of the couch was my immediate thought when we were trying to decide if we could take the piano or not. We only had a couple weeks to decide.

Easy peasey. Couch out. Piano in.

It's an old couch. It was once white with pink and teal slashes of color, an overstuffed beast. I remember when my grandparents first got it. It was when I was in my early teens and it was like sitting on a cloud.

When my grandpa died in 2004, a few years after my grandma had passed, my brother and I carried the couch and matching loveseat out the sliding glass doors and into his van. They came home with me.

Over the years the couch has sagged. The cats attempted to tunnel through it. I sewed patches of fleece on it as it dried out and frayed so that they couldn’t. It’s pink and teal slashes paled. It has been so hard to get off of since my accident, and so low to the ground, that I didn’t use it anymore.

Today we put it to the curb.

For a moment, for just a moment, I felt like I was putting my grandparents to the curb.

I just wanted to note that. Of course I did. I didn’t let it stop me from doing what needed to be done. I let myself cry as our friends dragged it to the curb. Just for a moment. The sudden emptiness in the living room reflected the emptiness I still feel in my heart for them. And I always will.

Grieving This Holiday

"Here is one of the ways grief works in our minds… I fall asleep thinking about my new cat, and how quickly she slipped into her own night time pattern. And how different her pattern is from any of the other cats I’ve had. Had. Because they’re dead now. Bella died in June. Bella hasn’t even been dead for a year. Bella’s only been gone for six months. And I miss her. As cute as Mara is, she is an addition, not a replacement. And I want to have them both. Then I want all five of the deceased and alive cats all in one space. In one time. Right now.

And then I remember that time is a cycle of wheels and gears interlocking and pulling away. Some return to meet over and over and some gears only touch once before travelling onward. Our lives are these wheels within gears, within circles of family and friends. We need time and distance to distort the powerful emotion of feeling all that love at once or we would explode from the wonder of it. But sometimes, in the wake of the awe, we forget that these cycles and shifting circles are what our lives are made up of. And grief is part of that cycle.

I remember Bella’s night time pattern. Every night, before sleep, a kiss on the nose. If I forgot she would cry at me, kneading her feet angrily or worriedly on the bed. It was never the same emotion. And I remembered them, every one of those separate occasions as if they were a flip book of images in my mind until they became the same still. A thousand emotional moments becoming one feeling, one memory, and bringing her back to life. I could hear her tinny, obnoxious cry. And I could feel her coat under my hand. I could feel her push her face against my lips. I started to cry with a kind of grief I haven’t let myself feel for months."

I wrote that four years ago. Rereading it stings at my heart. I remember like it was yesterday. The house is decorated for the holidays. We give our cats a stocking of toys and catnip in the morning. It was hard enough when Luna died. And then, Bella... This year Zami won’t be there either. I know our holiday morning will be bittersweet, making new memories while being haunted by old ones. It’s why learning to be in the moment is important. This year, more than any other, I have a long list of friends who are dealing with the loss of a parent or pet, most of them within the last few weeks. It’s the cycle of life. And it’s heartbreaking.
             It's only been two months since Zami died. Mara is part of this family now, having found her niche. But Zami was the last of the originally babies. Her loss is still palpable. There are three boxes on my altar of cremains. At least they are together again, in a way.

It’s hard to lose someone at the holiday season. And it’s hard to be missing them when we are focused on family and loved ones. The weight of our grief directly correlates to the weight of the love we held for the lost. And when we are surrounded by family, by joyous, loving emotions like the holidays evoke, some of that grief will seep through. The most important piece of advice I can give you is to be gentle with yourself. The holidays are about compassion and you have to start with yourself.
             There’s no timetable for grief. What takes some people months, takes others years. Even then, it never truly goes away. The loss is always with us. So go easy on your grief. Allow it to flow through you.

Four years ago, sitting with friends, I realized that I would never say to Bella again, “Nobody wants your anus,” as she was prone to presenting it to people in greeting. Insistently. I cried for a minute, out of nowhere. They asked what was wrong and I told them and immediately laughed through my tears, because it was such a strange thing to miss. I said that it was stupid and my friends said, No. It wasn’t.
             And they were right. The tears gave way to smiles and funny stories and the day went on. I didn’t ruin it with my grief. I allowed it to move through me.

So who cares if you’re at a holiday party and you think about your dad and you cry. Everyone loses people they love. Everyone understands. And if they don’t, maybe we need to make them. I cry for my Grandpa every Christmas morning when I eat my orange, because he’s not here.

The last Christmas with the Original trio, 2009.

It’s when we hold our grief in that it eats at us and it hurts. That’s when keeping it behind walls until it bursts ruins our days and moods. At the holidays, it’s impossible not to think about our fresh losses. We’re afraid of our grief. We’re afraid to bring it up because of the tears that threaten to follow. But what doesn’t work through us lives within us. So those who are grieving need to be able to be sad so that we can push through the crust of grief to the happy memories underneath it. The swifter you allow the flood, the sooner it ebbs.

If you aren’t the one grieving?
             Give your friends a break. Invite them to your festivities even if they’re dealing with a loss. Remind them they still have you. Be understanding if they choose not to come. Be understanding if they show up and are not the life of the party. Holidays are not about how things look. They’re about brotherhood and sisterhood and compassion.
At least they should be.

I spend a lot of my time hanging natural ribbons on trees in memory of those no longer with me. So I both make and collect ornaments that do the same thing. I have an angel cat for both Luna and Bella and now, Zami. A hummingbird for my grandparents and an owl for my grandma. You could also get some heavy card stock and cut out suns and snowflakes. Write the names of your Recent and Beloved Dead on them and hang them on your tree.

Drink a toast to those you miss when you are all gathered together. Have everyone raise a glass and speak their name. Speak their names. Invoke them into your joy. Share funny or heartwarming stories about them. Set a favored cocktail out on a clear space as an altar and offering for them. Bake the cookies they loved or used to make themselves and share them.
Cry when you need to.

Put out a bunch of tea lights and candles, unlit. Throughout the day, as you remember a happy memory, light another candle. Literally allow the love and memories you had to bring light into your holiday. The darkness of winter seems to last forever, but this is when the light begins to return. I use the holiday as a reminder that there is joy after the sadness. Grief may pull at our hearts but love will win out in the end.

Blessings to you and yours this holiday season.



[Originally published December 18, 2013 as Grieving at the Holidays, after the loss of Bella.]

A Last Thought on This Grief

I have this one last post in me regarding my grief over Zami. And then I need to move on, as it will otherwise likely be the same feeling cycled over and over again. The house is still quiet.

Mara, our tuxedo, the last-cat-standing, won’t invade Zami’s claimed spaces. I see her eyeing them, and then her little head darts around like she is trying to spy out where Zmi has hidden herself away this time, waiting to pounce on her.

It was always a trap and Mara learned that well.

So the house is quiet and at the same time, nothing has changed. Nothing at all. Zami slept twenty-three hours a day. So the silence and stillness are not new, but the void is.

We all have energy. Our energetic bodies take up space in the home. You always feel it when a partner goes on a trip or the kids are at Grandma and Grandpa’s. Sometimes it’s a needed reprieve. But every day that void exists and the loved one doesn’t come home and that void just sits and stares at you…it begins to taunt you, to hold you in a place in time that has passed and longer exists.

You need to stay there because your heart is still trying to figure out what it has lost. You also need to leave it behind because you are losing precious time of living the life before you.

There’s a difference I feel keenly right now, between the grief over suddenly-losing Luna and Bella at ten years versus losing Zami at twenty-two. If I think about the veterinary technician telling us that we had to put Luna down “now” a chasm opens in my gut and I want to vomit.

I had the same reaction when I walked in the front door and my partner was holding the note that said Zami passed while we were gone. I fell to the floor as best I could being crippled. Raw grief tore it's way out of me and I let it.

The house is quiet and there is a void but…I do not feel cheated in this grief. I am hurt I wasn’t there. I am hurt she was alone when she died. But she would have preferred it that way. For the last five years, every year we got with her was a blessing. No, I do not feel cheated. But I do not feel good. And that is grief’s normal mask.

Everything feels kind of wrong. It should. It will. And then that will feel normal and that void won’t be a void. It will just be space.

I’m glad pregnant and sick Zami found her way to that barn door in the middle of a horrid winter in Western New York. I am glad she wouldn’t take no for an answer when we were trying to look at the grey cats. I am glad she liked living with us. I am glad for the twenty years she spent with us, under five different roofs. I am glad for these years.

My heart will make room, when it is ready, for more lives that need a loving home. But for now it will be three of us, holding each other through the grief and sitting in the not-quite-rightness together.

Zami is Home

There is a small box on our table. It’s comical almost, just how small it is. I even pulled the bag of ash out and rolled it between my fingers. It’s the smallest of the three cats to come back.

I thought of the fire and the heat and how much of my moisture it took from me in seconds. And how we harnessed the power of fire to put our loved ones to rest, and how it sucked the moisture from her corpse. My beloved cat and I fed the same elemental the oxygen hidden in our water.

She was such a large presence.

Now, nothing.

For a twenty-two year old cat who slept twenty-three hours a day, her absence is deafening. I have sunk into the busy work of rearranging the spaces in the house to reclaim them from her ghost.

She was ready to leave us. We weren’t ready for her to go. It’s Samhain and time to release her. My grief is not her burden.

I cleaned out the window seat where Zami lived. I vacuumed Zami’s dander and dust and hair and whiskers up. I fought the urge to keep the-bits-of-her-that-were-not-ash. Okay, I kept the whiskers. I have whiskers from all our cats in a jar. Ones they shed naturally. Because magic is real and sometimes I need to weave stealth into my wardrobe.

I saved her whiskers, her tools of Sensing.

I spent the rest of the morning fixing the first afghan I ever made- it’s still the only one for myself I ever finished. It’s been Zami’s treasure in her old age, full of holes from where she clawed it. I fixed the holes. Mara, our tiny tuxedo, kept trying to climb on top of it while I was doing so.

The afghan is made up of a bunch of remnant yarn balls. It was so hard to make too, because yarn was always Zami’s kryptonite. She used to lay in wait until I pulled more yarn loose and she would fly out of nowhere and grab it in her mouth and keep running. Or she would sit in the open and watch the yarn. Back and forth between my fingers. And just glaze over until it got creepy.

It’s amazing the things we miss about those we love after they are no longer with us. 

I can hold the box but I am not holding her. It is what remains of her body but it is not her body. But I will hold the box in my hands until I no longer need it as a crutch. I will hold the twenty year-long memories of her in my heart. 

To those cats who come after, I will tell them stories of her multiple feats and extreme acrobatics. I will tell them how there wasn't a closed door she couldn't get into. I will tell them how terrified she was of kittens and how she hid behind the old bread box on top of the kitchen cupboards without disturbing anything. Or how she used the counter in our first apartment as a launching pad to twist in mid-air and grab a feather off the ceiling... over and over again.

I hold the box in my hand but her stories are where she lives now.

Raw Grief

I got to hold Luna and Bella in my arms.

I held their gazes while they died. It cut me, deeply, but I wanted more than anything for them to see how much I loved them in that last moment. It was painful to watch the light dim. It does. One micro-second the engine is on and the lights are working and the next all goes dark.

And they were gone, into the ether. I watched. I witnessed. I saw it happen.

I said goodbye.

Zami'd been not-herself for a while. She doesn't... didn't remember me much and often stared at me like I was a stranger in her home. Over the last three years we became aloof. It hurt but I understood it wasn't personal. My heart broke every time friends came over and Zami woke herself up to be sociable and get love from everyone. Everyone else. Not me.

I lived for the moments when Zami would stalk into my office and cry at me. I would look at her and she would see me. Me. And it was Zami, my cat, wondering why everything was different. I never knew where she was in her fugue but she saw me. I would drop everything to talk to her and get love from her. And hold her and she would tuck her head into my elbow crook and I would sit like that forever. In her case, forever usually lasted less than seven minutes.

But those seven minutes here and there were everything to me.

She was our night prowler, our sentinel. It was just like her to wait till we were gone.

I resent her for that just now.

*

We have one of those cheap fridges where every time the door slams closed the freezer door burps open. And every time it burps open I remember that she's in there, in a sealed garbage bag, in the freezer. And a madness at the bottom right of my skull tries to squiggle in. And I erase it. But now I know it's there. Even if I supress it I know it exists. Waiting.

I cannot unknow the mad, sharp broken window of death.

*

We had a plan with our cat care people. Every time we went away for the night we took turns saying goodbye to her. This last time I was running late. I was scatterbrained. I was clutching my final five lists and reassuring myself that if I didn't have it I wouldn't need it. Which was true.

What is also true is that I forgot about her. I forgot to say goodbye. I forgot to tell her how much I loved her and how special she was to us and how it was okay if she was done now. I know she knew it. But all I keep feeling is this wave crushing my chest cavity reminding that I forgot about her.

*

It matters, somehow, that we came home to an empty body, void of spirit. Just a thing that tried to mimic our beloved, tried and failed. I had to close my eyes to touch her. And then I felt her. Just a whisper left above the surface. But I found her.

*

We are waiting for her ashes to come home. This year we will have three cat spirits ate our table for Dumb Supper, the only time they are allowed up there.

I am waiting to clean out her window seat. She was a bully. She had shared it with Luna and Bella but when Mara came along she said, "nuh uh." I want to clean it all out and open it for a while to encourage Mara to claim time at the front window. But I am waiting until it feels right.

I caught Mara sitting on the floor in front of the front door, looking out the window. That's how she watched when Zami was up there. I thought she got it. Maybe she does. Maybe she doesn't. So I'll wait a little longer, until I can bear to open it up and see for myself that she's not there.

Farewell Zami

                    

            We came home from a weekend retreat to find a reality we have tried to prepare ourselves for had come true. Our twenty-two year old cat had passed. Part of my heart constricted. I couldn’t breathe. I don’t know how we unloaded the car.

We just did.   

On a snowy afternoon in January 1999, Kelley and I made our way to adopt a cat in Fredonia, NY. I had had a dream the night before about an all grey cat, so I thought we knew what to look for. But in the kennel with all the grey cats was a grey tiger with Bengal markings. She met me at the door and, when I picked her up, she tucked her head into the crook of my arm—and the purring! I tried to meet some of the other cats but, each time, she got there first and it was her head beneath my hand. I called Kelley over, repeat. We took her home.

They didn’t know much about her. When the caretaker came out to feed the cat he found Zami waiting outside the barn door, waiting to be let in.
            When we got her, she came with a free spaying. The vet said she was at least two years old. When I called the next day to check on her, they told us that it was going to cost a bit extra for the abortion. I panicked. I knew what a pregnant cat looked like and it floored me. She had been pregnant, though she was so malnourished and skinny even the humane employees had not suspected. For reasons. She had a litter of five kittens. All but one was dead and three were being reabsorbed by her uterus for food. But it would have killed her in the end. Because we picked her, because we took her home, she had a fighting chance.

She was never sick again.

Zami was a great cat. So thankful to be indoors and have snuggles. So grateful for a dry space with couches and cushions. Over the years she has made many friends. It was hard not to love her, even when she kneaded your kneecap in her joy. With her claws. It was her speciality.

            I barely remember an ‘us’ without her.

            She’s gone now.

Best buds, Luna and Zami

            Her name was inspired by Audre Lorde’s biomythography of the same name. It means “female husband” and we knew when we went looking for her, we wanted more than just a pet. Zami was never our kid. She was more like a third partner, one who greatly disapproved of our choice to bring other kittens into the house. When we brought tiny Luna into the house, Zami hid under Kelley’s altar for weeks. The kitten was undeterred and Luna became her greatest friend and companion. Zami never recovered from her loss.

When Bella came into the house Zami was like, “Another one?!” She tried to ignore the tiny presence, but the tortoise shell never went away. Zami spent some time hiding on top of the kitchen cupboards until Bella got bigger. They became unwilling siblings and there were so many moments we would walk in on the two of them, after Luna died, almost-touching and Bella would look at us with big eyes, asking us not to fuck it up, and we would back slowly out of the room to give them that space.

(front to back) Bella, Zami,and Luna on Christmas morning 2008

            Zami never really recovered from losing both of them. She and Mara never really connected, but they tolerated space together. These last few years were hard for Zami. She was old, but otherwise healthy. She walked stiffly around the house and slept on the heating grate in the winter. She slept most of the hours of the day and only got up to pee, drink water, eat, or when one of her friends came to visit.

She loved people. She loved being social. She was a lap whore and she could dead-weight her body in seconds. If you wouldn’t let her in your lap, she would not-make-eye-contact and slink in at a snail’s pace, truly believing that if she didn’t look at you, you couldn’t see her. She was ¼ Bengal cat with long skinny legs and a long skinny tail. She had serious ninja skills, unfortunate for us. She was a night prowler. It was how she kept us safe. I have so many photos of her but they’re all pre-digital images. That says something to me.

(All this past tense hurts.)

She also had a string of special friends, which speaks to her longevity. She had the loudest and most prolific purr. She could go for hours without stopping. Depending on her level of excitement there were also chirps and coos. Somewhere I have a video of her purr, from before Luna died, because we were already wondering when we might lose her. That video is at least six years old.

She was also a hunter of all things rodent and a consistent closed-door-opener. Keeping her out was never a successful venture. I caught her in the act once, and watched her jump up and wrap her arms so she was hanging from the doorknob. And then she hitched her shoulder up and down, redistributing her weight until the knob twisted and the door clicked open.

I don’t know what happened to her on the streets, but she did not suffer the presence of dogs or male cats. Not for a moment. She would cut-a-bitch so quick. That side of her scared me.

            Her eyes would glaze over and she would be a blur of motion. If I was fast enough I could catch the end of her tail and deter her momentum. Food was always a trigger. She wasn’t interested in people food but if there was cat food anywhere she could smell it and she would do whatever it took to get to it. She had some periods of being a big girl. It’s not uncommon for strays to have food issues. 

She had such a long life. These last few years she developed some form of dementia. She barely recognized me and fixated on my partner as a touchstone in a very creepy, Renfield-like manner. She often got lost staring at a wall and would yowl until we found her and turned her around. She spent most nights isolated in a room with her cat beds and a light on. After that she started sleeping through the nights again. She’s not in pain anymore. She’s with Luna again.

I’m sure that will soothe my heart soon. But not yet.

There was one morning, more than a decade ago, where I was dreaming that I couldn’t breathe. I woke up to a house full of smoke, and Zami head-butting my face and caterwauling at me. I got the small fire out and the windows open thanks to her. It wasn’t the only time she saved me. But I’m thinking about that moment especially right now.

I worked till midnight at a grocery store when we first moved here. One night the phone rang while I was counting out drawers in the back room and instead of my normal can-I-help-you greeting I simply said, “What’s wrong?!”

My partner was hysterical. Zami had leaned against the screen window and the screen had given way and she had fallen out. By the time Kelley got outside, she was gone. Everyone was telling us she would come back. I spent days without sleep. I wandered the streets with cat treats. I made a lot of new cat friends. No Zami.

I put up missing signs. A few days later I received a whispered phone call from someone who said there was a cat matching her description inhaling food on his porch. Where was he? Right across the street!! She’d been there the whole time, right under the porch, listening to me calling for her. I’m certain she thought that since she was outside, she assumed that she had done something wrong. She never wanted to be outside again.

When I ran across the street to scoop her up, my heart was so relieved I cried. She hesitated between running to me and leaving the bowl of food, lol. When I picked her up she put her arms on either side of my neck and hugged me. I cried so hard out of joy.

Today, my bags sit unpacked. My eyelids are puffy and swollen. My heart feels trapped in limbo and I am allowing this floaty feeling to calm my grief. She owned one place in the house, the window seat where she watched the world outside.  On one hand, I am already thinking about cleaning it out so that Mara can have a place all her own, but on the other hand…

Not just yet.

But very soon.

Mara is all right. She doesn’t understand why mommies are so sad, but she feels something is amiss. Zami slept most of the day and spent nights in isolation, per her preference. It may take a couple of days before she understands that Zami isn’t here anymore. So even in the face of death we keep our eyes to the living. It gives us something to focus on other than loss.

Now all of our original kids have passed, an entire generation of our life together is gone. As a pet owner you know to expect it. The reality of it is brutal. Our lives changed in her death, more than we can be aware of at the moment. So we must stand in the doorway, at the gateway of death, and say our goodbyes. And we must open ourselves up to what-is-to-come and allow it room for entrance and purchase.

We had to choose to put Luna and Bella down when they were ill. I wished, more than anything, that when it was her turn to pass, that Zami would slip away quickly. And she did.

            After Bella died, and Zami was the only one left, a stray visited me in the garden. I was still in grief and wanted her to go away. We ended up taking her in. I realized this morning that if I hadn’t opened to love, the house would be completely empty right now. For whatever that's worth.

            Hail to the traveler. Zami has earned her rest.

How I Keep the Dead Alive

Snuggling with Luna the day before she passed.

I used to go to the local zoo when they housed Bison. I have a special affinity for the buffalo and would sit with them, sharing the day. I spent time telling them stories about their ancestors. I told them about the giant aurochs and the time of the mammoths.

"Your ancestors were giants," I whispered.

When it is quiet at night and my tiny tuxedo cat Mara is curled in my lap, I tell her stories of the furry sisters she never knew. I tell her about Luna's moth hunting skills and how she once drained milk out of a cup without knocking it over or off the side table. I tell her about how Bella had vision problems and lived under the bed for eight years. I tell her about how Bella concussed herself twice slamming head-first into furniture. I tell her how Zami was kinder before her two younger sisters died. I tell Mara that Zami, known at 22 as Crazy Grams, would miss her if she died first.

And then we talk about how she's going to live a very long life.

But no one lives forever. I have a list of loved loves lost to time, some recently inked in. And we miss them forever. We ever get over the loss. We're not meant to. We miss them forever. It just hurts less as time passes. We add more to our life stories and some experiences begin to fill in the cracks.

We become repaired, healing things, more beautiful for the new joys.

When I am feeling insecure I talk out loud to my Great-Grandma Elsie. She used to make sure I knew that I was fine just the way I was. In fact she loved me for it. She would try to explain why people treated me the way they did. She gave me their perspective while affirming that I had a right to be hurt. So I talk to her and I smell her in the room and I feel her sitting beside me.

When I am lost I talk to my Grandpa Dick. He was beloved, the only Grandpa present in my life. He had a way of telling me how reality was while not making me feel wrong. He could help me break down a situation and logically show me where I misunderstood. And I would know I had to apologize, and he would squeeze my hand with pride. And then he would tell me he was sorry I had felt hurt. And he would set his mouth and look at me and I always felt like he really understood.

I was in the room when he died. I felt him leave. But I talk to him still. I ask him for guidance, for help in knowing what the right direction is... and I smell the inside of his Cadillac and I feel like no matter what choice I make, he's along for the ride with me. I'm not alone.

I share the stories of my beloveds. It's how I keep the dead alive.

Grandpa Dick and me during  family generational photo, around '87.

Spring Equinox Cleaning

Equinox is the mid-point between the longest night of the year and the longest day. We already feel the effects of the lengthening days but we can finally bask in the warmth of the light. We’re itching to throw the doors and windows open and air out our living spaces. We’re ready to shake out the cobwebs and clear out the dust.

In our lives we are constantly shedding skins and starting over. Shedding skins and reinventing ourselves. Shedding skins and letting go of what is no longer needed. I’ve been living that through my recovery.

I’ve found it extremely helpful to take stock of the layers of things I surround myself with, to see what I no longer need. Every spring equinox I tackle a room or two, going through my possessions and furnishings, culling what has gone unused or forgotten. It invariably parallels as a spring cleaning of my emotional house as I evaluate my attachments to the items I consider letting go of.

Two years ago, it was my office, my nest. Included in that room was the dreaded storage closet of doom. It was full of boxes that hadn’t seen the light of day in over a decade. I re-organized. I put hands on everything. I stopped to read through old letters and cards from specific places of my life, which revived memories I had previously left to whisper and rest.

I am at a crossroad, roughly halfway through the years I expect to live. Sorting through that closet, my life unfolded behind me, mementos of everywhere I have been and everyone I have loved. And I felt the firmament of those choices beneath me.

I smiled joyfully through most of it, as the memories rippled through me. What a treasure it was to remember, in my body, the friendship and love of such innocent times. It helped buoy the box of painful things that had been tucked away. But those memories didn’t sting so badly this time. Even that box held lessons for wiser eyes, ways to not repeat those mistakes. I read and I culled, and as I culled, I re-organized.

I found the hole the mice were using to get in and sealed it. I found the alien spider’s secret corner of egg sacks. I found a box of crafts and stories I thought had been lost. And I found the last card my Grandpa gave me before he died. Which made me pause again… He’s been gone 13 years and I find it hard to believe so much of my life has been lived without him, when he is such a firm part of my identity as a grown-up.

I still have so much life left to come. I will never stop missing him. It wasn’t just spring cleaning and de-cluttering. It was time travelling. I walked through who I was and the choices I have made, making more decisions about what to hold onto and what to let go.

This year I have been sorting through my clothes. I have a drawer full of fun and kooky socks I can’t wear because the elastic cuts into my scar tissue pretty bad still. I’m packing up my favorites for a couple of years, in case I can wear them again. I’m going through and taking out the clothes made of synthetic fibers that irritate my new skin. I’m getting rid of the shorts I am unlikely to wear for at least five years. I am accepting the limitations of this new body. I am grateful for this new body.

Shedding skins is a journey of healing.

I don’t regret the path I took to get here. I like who I am. I don’t regret the obstacles I have pushed through, climbed over, or swam under to get to today. I like where I am.

[Updated from “Spring Equinox Cleaning” originally published March 19, 2014.]

Remembering Luna

This is a post I first published March 2, 2011, about the grief I felt over the loss of our middle cat Luna. Her death was the impetus for me to star my ancestor blog. She was my spiritual companion on the physical world and she guides me in the spirit one still.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how I almost died last year and what that means to me. I’ve been thinking about it while I’ve been working on my book over the experience of it. I found my thoughts drifting to grief, and as Luna’s anniversary is near, she came into my heart. I wanted to update my thoughts on the grief of her loss. Here’s the quick of it.

I didn’t realize it had been seven years. In two years, we will have lived without her as long as we lived with her. And that hurt. It stung me. It was a dagger in my chest. It hasn’t been that long. It’s impossible. But it’s true.

Our fourth cat Mara never knew her. Bella, the baby, was still our under-the-bed monster. Bella didn’t bloom and come into herself until after Luna died. And now Bella is gone. So it must be that long.

It still hurts.

What I said in 2011:

A Year Ago

Two days from now will mark a year to the day that we took our nine year-old cat to the emergency vet. She was listless, having difficulty breathing and hadn’t been eating or drinking. In three days she had lost enough weight to appear suddenly skeletal. At the vet she perched like a rabbit on the floor between us while we waited for test results, so normal that we thought we worried for nothing. Two hours and a drive across town later, she came back from an x-ray in serious distress. I stared at the abstract art they were calling the x-ray film, her body obscured by a black mass where intestine and stomach should have been. I marveled at the sheer size of the darkness that swam towards the boundaries of her tiny body.

I wish, in retrospect, that I could have carved time out of bedrock and stilled her pain for a few moments more so we could have said a proper goodbye. She was audibly gasping and her tongue was lolling out. The earth mother in me who is wiser than my heart knew what we had to do and my partner and I were in agreement. It took a moment. I held her head and her gaze in between my hands. I told her she was the best girl ever and that we loved her so very much with as much stability as I could muster. My partner cradled her body. In less than three seconds she was gone. It was the hardest moment of my life. But it was the most decisive. It wasn’t about me. It wasn’t about us.

We gifted Luna death. The separation of the spirit from the body is one of the hardest Mysteries for humans to work through and the way our society distances us from death leaves us little tools to help with the working of it.

Luna was the first Household Loss I have ever experienced- the kind of loss that affected and threw hiccups into my day-to-day routine. I didn’t realize until after she passed how much she spent my whole day moving through the house with me, talking to me, sleeping on me, so much so that my skin holds memories of her the way my heart does. There were hundreds of new firsts I was unprepared for, like the first time we didn’t fill her food bowl, the first time Luna didn’t come running for treats, the first holiday without her, the first of every night she has not slept curled against or on me… The first time we called her name out because we forgot she was dead.

We allowed ourselves to grieve when we were sad and to cry when we felt like we would break from the loss of her. By giving into those moments and not trying to repress them because maybe it wasn’t a good moment or might make someone else uncomfortable, they passed quickly and offered us moments of reprieve. We took turns helping the other two cats through their own grieving, walking with the baby while she wandered the house checking all of the places where Luna used to sleep. My animal grief spoke the same language as their animal grief and we were bonded in the loss, stronger than before.

I’ve had dreams of holding her and feeling her weight against me and being able to recall perfectly the sound of her purr and the way she used to wrap her paw around my index finger like a baby- and not let go of it. And then I wake to morning, reaching for her, and then I remember all over again.

I have seen her running in the house when the other cats were sleeping beside me. I have felt her crawl into my lap and settle down only there is no cat there. I cannot say if it is her spirit or if it is the energy current and echo of a pattern she had established within our home, or both. Spirit visitations can be cruel when they remind you that you can never touch them again. Not the way you used to, skin against skin. And yet, the gifts she gave us in her life have not been diminished in the grieving.

We are all animals. She was our family. Luna was my first experience in the joy, love and fear of being responsible for a defenseless living being. I discovered much of myself in raising her and accepting the bits of behavior that were her way of exploring the world, and not mine to control.

Missing Luna

We go on the best we can. We move forward and keep our hearts open. I will set her ashes out and light the ancestor shrine on her death day. I will set her food bowl out on the altar with her favorite treats and toys inside it. I will write down all the stories I remember about her in the journal I have been keeping throughout the year. I will take a moment to reflect on the changes in our lives since she died, without judgment or preference, and I will acknowledge the gratitude(s) this year has brought me. I will cry if I feel like crying and I will laugh because she gave me such great joy.

She worked us from the start, this shy, scared, trembling kitten who popped out of the cardboard carrier like a demon seed. As a kitten, she was a bloody hellion who dug up the chicks and hens from Sicily every day. She chewed on all the electrical cords and liked to hold her catnip mice under in the water bowl. 
I found her curled up sleeping in my closet one day, totally cute, just before realizing she had chewed all of the buttons she could reach off of all of my shirts. One time, she somehow drained a tall skinny glass of milk dry without knocking it over, disturbing the table around it or spilling a drop. And yet, she always ran through a doorway at the same moment I was and I stepped on her tail a bajillion times. Her totem animal was a Jackalope.

She was the first of the cats to catch a mouse and she could leap off the back of the chair and catch moths in mid-air. Apparently, moth-wing dust was a special delicacy. She liked to bathe in the winter mornings in the fishbowl of warm water we kept on the grate for moisture. She slept curled in a ball behind my knees under the covers. If I said no to something she wanted she would sass at me with this staccato back-talk and I loved her for it. Her favorite two toys were this little gingham fabric mouse and a pink bouncy ball with a rainbow around the middle.

She ate through my plastic bag of valerian before I understood it was like heroin to some cats. I found her rolling in it in my office, her eyes glazed over. Luna always helped me sew by holding down the pattern pieces for me. She hated the wood floors and dreamt of a house lined with wall-to-wall sleeping bags. She always knew when I needed a break from work and would come tell me so. She sat with me through all my meditations and often appeared walking beside me in them. She was afraid of ants and plastic bags. In the winter time, she liked to sleep behind the bathroom door, where the v-shape trapped the heat in. When she was really mad at me she’d cuff me along the jaw with her cupped paw, no claws, and then run away out of reach- boy did she have a mean hook.

We have little prisms hanging in the windows and Luna used to run back and forth over the bed chasing the little rainbows. When I think of her now, even though there is still sadness at the loss of her physical presence, I see her chasing flashing prisms across the quilt and I know she loved us as much as we loved her and that she was happy, and the pain of loss is well worth the price of the time we shared together.

Back to the present:

It hurts to read that again. We have lost two fur babies, two members of our familial pack. But they live on in the memories of this house. I wonder if we will carry them with us when we eventually move. Will it be hard to leave those memories behind? Will I find the strength to let them go? Will I always feel them with me?