This first appeared as the author’s note in The Glass Forest and Other Tales. Click to learn more.
The last twelve months have been… complicated, for lack of a better word.
We moved from one state to another, built a rescue sanctuary (well, we started the process but it’s a long one), lost Rowan, our 20-year-old cat (among other creatures), and helped my sister and nephew move in with us. I worked an honest-to-dog, real-life, grown-up job for about 9 months (it was terrible; do not recommend), and Josh lost his job and found another.
We’ve had bad weather and good weather, bad health and good health, bad animals and good animals. Turbulent might describe this period of our lives, especially looking out beyond our immediate situation and into the world at large.
Just the other day, I was at the SPCA meeting two Maine Coon brothers who were surrendered from a loving home due to extenuating circumstances. I petted them and listened to their deep purring as it rumbled loudly enough I could feel it in my own chest.
And in that moment, I realized I was having an existential crisis. Was I really considering adopting two adult male Maine Coon cats when I had eight of my own cats back home? Even though we had just lost Rowan, our beautiful 20-year-old Norwegian Forest Cat mix, did I really need two more cats to fill the hole in my heart?
No. Because truthfully, there is no other animal who will fill the hole left by Rowan. She was a beautiful, wonderful cat who lived with us through so many adventures. Our current cats will live with us through new adventures. And if, at some point, we do get new cats, they will live with us through future adventures.
I realized I didn’t need to bring home two more cats—especially not these two, who were adopted by someone else within minutes after I left.
I was just sad. What I needed was to give myself time to grieve.
None of these stories are about grief and loss, particularly. But what they are about is navigating change. Sometimes the change is of their own making, and sometimes it comes from the outside world. But in every case, they must bear the weight of adapting to those changes, grieve the loss of life before, and look forward to the adventures that come.
And it turns out, that is what I needed, too.
Time to grieve: not just the loss of Rowan and all our other beloved creatures that left our lives in the last year of rescuing (Tornado the cat, Gretel the goat, Goatotiller the goat, Roxy the foster dog, four foster kittens, several ducks and chickens), but also our life before. The life we left in Pennsylvania, and in Baltimore, and our childhoods.
Time to accept the changes we chose and the changes in the world around me we have no control over.
Time to envision a new future filled with love and sorrow, joy and pain, and the effort of building something new.
