Goodbye Gabby

Sadness permeates and settles into the soul really.  Like a dark cloud descending upon a day that was once full of sunshine and happiness.  It moves in dark and heavy.  The weight of it settling into your bones making movements heavy and awkward.  Rains come and pour down washing away everything in its path like a tidal wave coming on shore and taking everything the shore has to offer back out to sea with it.   It is so heavy and burdensome and yet....

Storms end.  Sometimes they seem to last forever with no end in sight and the heaviness seems almost crushing under the weight of it all.  Sometimes they are gone almost as quickly as they arrived.  But storms do end.  One way or another the end comes and with it the sun does shine again.  It breaks through the clouds in brilliant light.  It shines down through lifting and moving the clouds away.  At times when you look up you can almost see a robe through the sun's rays.  As though the Son has come to clear it all away and stand and survey the wreckage left behind.  For from wreckage can come great beauty.

I wrote the above last week when I was told that my seventeen year old cat was running out of options.  While once before she wasn't a good candidate for surgery because of her age, now she is in need of surgery to try and improve her life.  It was going to be a gamble but if it could improve her quality of life it was worth the risk.

Today my Gabby girl went in for surgery.  She had to be there between seven and eight in the morning and would be staying the night.  We took her in and brought her two cans of food for her stay.  We told her to be good and we loved her then we left.  We went about our day, dentist appointment, take the boy to school, go to the beach....

When my phone rang and I heard it was the vet I honestly thought, "Wow, my girl did so well that they are calling early to tell me about it."  I thought she was going to be fine and would have a weeks worth of recovery and then she would be good as new....at least that is what I had hoped.  I just wasn't prepared, you know, I don't know how you prepare really.  Can you get use to losing those close to you?  I wasn't expecting the vet to say that when they opened her bladder it was full of cancer.  That there wasn't anything they could do for her.  There were stones sure, but the bladder was full of cancer and it would be the most humane to let her go while she was still under the anesthetic. 

She once scared a dog from our yard just by hissing and raising her back up.  That was at least fifteen years ago but that is what I remembered.  My oldest child was three and my middle child was about two when I brought Gabby home. My son doesn't know life without Gabby in it.  I don't know how to live in this house without keeping the doors shut because she's been old and sick the entire time we've been here and we had to keep her out of the bedrooms so she wouldn't pee on our beds.  I don't know how to do this.  It seems as if Gabby has always been in our lives, a part of our family and now she's just...not here.

As I rode in the car with my husband I could feel the walls going up.  I could feel myself disconnecting and shutting down.  I don't want to be that person though.  Not really.  I just, it's easier to shut down.  It's easier to disconnect to try not to feel.  I'm pretty good at it.  I shut down or I feel all the things all at once...and then I shut down.  I enter hibernation mode and crawl into my pit.  I thought about that but then I remembered what I had written down not even a week ago.  I realized that the heaviness doesn't last forever, the clouds do part, and the sun will shine again.  I know this from experience. 

It is supposed to rain tomorrow for most of the day and I keep thinking that even the angels are sad and they are going to cry rains of tears tomorrow just as we will for days to come.  I believe that God knows and feels our hurt.  I believe that we are not going through this alone because God will never leave us alone.  I also know that God has a way of making beauty from ashes and I don't understand how that is going to happen but I never do and yet he does.  I did not want to say goodbye to Gabby today. I didn't want to go home and tell my kids that the pet that has been around them almost their entire lives was now gone.  Today I did all of those things and tomorrow we make more decisions about her final resting place and we'll breathe in and out and pretend that our hearts aren't broken until we are back home when we can join our tears with the angels tears. 

Goodbye sweet Gabby girl.  We love you and we'll miss you always.