In The Arms of the Angel and other things that make you sad

Do you ever think about what your life was like before a drastic change occurred in your life?  I think about the days leading up to the fire that took our house.  I remember Liz had a massive migraine and had collapsed on the couch while I spoke softly on the phone with a friend in the kitchen…talking about some challenges my daughter was facing at school.  I stay close, checking on her frequently, grateful she is resting comfortably.  I remember complaining about the seasonal time change and how much I was hoping to catch up on domestic things since the busy summer season had passed and we had successfully celebrated Liz’s 10^th birthday.  I remember going to work that Tuesday morning worrying about how I was going to put oil in the tank to keep us warm and with hot water.  I remember barely settling into work when I got the phone call…the call that would change everything.  The call that would ultimately defeat my typical ability to keep moving forward no matter what crisis befell us. 

I had romantic thoughts, as I was sprinting from my car a ways down the road from where the police were stopping traffic.  My thoughts centered on many concerns, but were driven by the concern over what had become of Alex.  Alex, a beautiful, soft, enthusiastic black and white cat – 14 years old, had been with me from kitten-hood.  Honestly, Alex was a pain…he never stopped meowing to be fed and was rambunctious, to say the least, about wanting to be patted.  I hadn’t given him the time he needed as of late and was trying to break him of the intense begging habit he had adapted, unsuccessfully.  Wow, did I feel guilty later about those last few months.  It flashes before me the memories of the day Suzi died.  Suzi, also 14 years old and with me from kitten-hood had died on November 6, 2009.  To say the morning of her death was difficult is like saying a morning where the temperature is around -20 was a little cold.  I sobbed that day until my eyes were swollen almost shut.  The point of the memory is that I sat on my bathroom floor with Suzi in my lap, trying to keep us both calm and semi-comfortable until Liz got on the school bus and I could make it to the vet, knowing full well Suzi would not be coming home with me.  Alex came in and walked up to us, bent his head and nuzzled Suzi, as though to say “good-bye friend”.  He knew she wasn’t coming home too.  They pretended to hate each other.  She acted as though she couldn’t stand to have him around and he acted as though she was an intrusion on his meal times and food ration.  Of course, there was no mystery about how they felt when they were always curled up together on my bed, mere inches apart when I would look for them.  After she died, Alex looked for her for days and moped around the house.  I didn’t think I would survive.  But life has to go on, right?  No matter how we hurt, right? 

Suzi and Alex enjoying their favorite spot in our first house...bird and squirrel watching out the slider.

Fast forward to Alex and to November 9, 2010.  I didn’t realize until later that we lost Alex a few days from the day we had lost Suzi, one year later.  Maybe he got out, I think as I walk into my yard…my yard which is invaded by fire trucks, rescue vehicles and police officers.  The neighbors are watching the scene from their front steps and I wonder what they would think if they knew what I had been thinking as I drove up the familiar road.  I hoped, I prayed, I pleaded that that massive cloud of black smoke in the sky was coming from one of their homes and not mine.  I prayed it was a mistake and it was someone else who was about to lose everything they had.  But it wasn’t someone else…it was our house and it was most certainly on fire.  As I walk into the yard, I have no idea what to do first.  Surely, I can rush forward and find Alex and it will soothe the hurt of losing the house and everything we had.  I know when I walk into the yard and take a good look, the smoke burning my lungs and the dampness of the wet and fear making me shiver in my light, tattered blue coat.  I am sure I knew then that there was no hope for Alex, but really, I tell myself there is a chance and I cling to that.  Maybe that will make this disgusting scene a bit more tolerable.   It’s then that my first friend shows up and I tell her that’s it, I give up.  This is the straw that broke the camel’s back...I am done.  I can’t deal with this.  Of course, there is no way for me to know then that this confession will be my salvation.  That the admittance as I look skyward is heard and noted and that I will be saved.   

When I collect myself, I ask the fire chief about Alex.  He says he didn’t find him inside the house.  For a moment, I let hope surge in my heart.  Maybe, just maybe, he got out.  Then the commitment of “motherhood” takes over and I am struck that maybe he is out there somewhere, hurt, scared, alone.  I circle the house again and again calling his name.  What a sight I must have been and what people must have been thinking.  I don’t find Alex and more people arrive and they tell me everything is going to be fine.  I nod and shrug, honestly defeated by both this latest crisis and the exhaustion of the past several crises.  At some point, calm takes over and I feel trust…I even vocalize in a rare moment of solitude that I trust Him.  And believe me, I wasn’t in a trusting mood.

In the hotel room, I listen to the noises of the night, to Liz trying to sleep through a terrible cold, and to my mom toss and turn while I pace like a caged animal.  I can’t get the visions out of my head – they are burned into my memory like the smell that clings to me… a smell I wonder if I will ever put behind me…rank, damp, vile.  I beg, plead, reason with God to help me find Alex, no matter what that means.  I have to know what has become of him.  I can’t rest if I don’t know.  This is a process that will go on for two full days and two full nights – because no sleep can overcome the fear, the sorrow, the frustration and defeat I am feeling. 

Suzi and Liz curled up together.

Alex comforts Liz as she is recovering from poison ivy.

Thursday afternoon, two days after the fire, my mom and I are at the house, sorting through the ruins of my life; tossing treasured possessions into a trash heap, discovering in the most vivid detail that there really is next to nothing left.  I am exhausted and know it is nearly time to pick Liz up from a friends’ house and call it a day when I see a vision in my head.  It’s very much like a thought bubble above my head like in a cartoon.  It is a vision of Alex, and he is near his favorite chair in the dining room.  The dining room is destroyed – broken glass, burnt landscape; this was one of the most shocking scenes early on for me as the paint is bubbled and blistered from the obvious heat – as the fire had started in the kitchen which adjoined the dining room.  I was standing on the deck with my mother when this “thought bubble” appeared.  I turned and headed back inside the front door.  Later, when my mother brings up the subject, she tells me it was as though someone had tapped me on the shoulder and asked me to follow.  She doesn’t realize how accurate that is, but of course, I am not ready to talk about that.  I carefully walk over and around the broken glass, wood shards and debris that is my dining room.  There is nothing left…no hint of the sunny yellow walls, the pretty lace curtains, the antique table given to me by a friend.  The chair is in the corner though, nearest the walkway leading toward my front door.  I hear the thump he always made when he would see me walk by the window and toward the front door…eagerly anticipating being fed.  He would be in this chair, waiting for us to get home and inevitably, he would hop down off the chair, creating a thumping sound when he hit the floor that I can still sometimes hear in moments of grief.   I know where he is now, before I even get there, before I even bend down, pull up the fabric at the bottom of the chair and find him.  I feel disgust and my throat tightens and I think I might be sick.  I go back outside as quickly as I can and I tell my mom, I just found Alex and I drop to my knees.  I am angry…angry that my loyal, sweet, enthusiastic Alex, my beautiful boy, has been taken this way.  I feel hate in my heart and anger and don’t know what to do with it.  I know he can’t stay there and I want him out; I bury him myself, letting the shovel hitting the dirt express to the universe that I am angry.  I can’t give thanks yet that I have found him – even though that is what I have been begging for.  I do later, but now, I am empty, lost, fragile, broken. The day Suzi died, I held her in the vet’s office until she was gone – and when asked later how I could manage to handle that, I explain that it was my responsibility to stay with her to the end; it had been a peaceful moment and no matter how it hurt me, she didn’t die alone.   I console myself with the knowledge that Suzi and Alex are together.  I can’t push away the guilt and the misery I feel knowing I walked away that day, closed the front door and left Alex with no hope of escaping what was to come; and he was alone.  And then I vow never to love an animal again.