On February 22, 2011, I drove home from Sardis in typical fashion: on the phone talking with Michelle about lunch, life, liberty and the pursuit of General Hospital. I don’t much care for talking on the phone, so I get it all done in the car when I have nothing else to do but drive. (Don’t say it. I know… Driving’s pretty important). The day, however, would turn out anything but typical from the moment I walked in the front door. I hadn’t even shut it when, in the middle of a sentence, I let loose the most blood curling scream I’m pretty sure has ever left my lips (this includes my first ride on White Lightning at Carowinds).
There was no
intruder… no crock-pot explosion… no ransacked apartment suggesting I’d been
robbed… no overflow from the dishwasher or washing machine to soak the floor
and the apartment below mine… none of that. All I had seen was something on the
floor just inside the living room that shouldn’t have been there and somehow I
knew, before I even turned on the light and got a better look, what it was,
just by the stillness and emptiness of death that seemed to be pervading the
apartment.
 |
| Buffy |
My cat Buffy
(not the Vampire Slayer) lay on the floor, his little body facing me, almost as
if he’d been trying to make it to the door, perhaps waiting for me to come
home. I was screaming because he wasn’t moving and I knew beyond a shadow of a
doubt that nothing I did would ever get him to move again. He was the first cat
I really ever owned myself. All our other pets had been family ones and I had
been in college or grad school when they’d passed and had been removed from the
immediacy of their deaths. I’d never had to deal with it myself. Though Buffy
had started out his first two years being passed around from one family member
to another, for the last 12 years of his life, he was truly mine.
I continued
screaming into the phone at Michelle for what couldn’t have been more than 5
minutes, though it seemed forever, incoherently alternating the screams with
crying (to this day I often wonder why none of my neighbors came to see what
was the matter). Michelle was panicking, not even able to tell for the first
couple of minutes exactly what I was screaming about. Once she figured it
out, she didn’t know what to do. She even asked her brother’s girlfriend, a
cat-woman like myself, to see if she could do something about my hysteria… all
the way from New York. Jen tried her best to get through to me, suggesting I
try CPR and a number of other things, but nothing worked. I just kept
screaming. I knew Buffy was gone. The animal that had just the night before,
lain on my pillow with me to sleep, would no longer meow, purr, try to trip me
or leave me gifts of hairballs or Palmetto Bugs (that’s a cockroach for those
of you not from South Carolina). He was just… no more.
 |
| Shadow |
Later in the
day, my brother came and helped me take him to the 24-hour Emergency Vet to lay
him to rest and I tried to make it through the rest of that day and the next
day, grieving and searching for one ray of light in the darkness. Over those
two days, many people sent me the Rainbow Bridge poem and other consolations
and would tell me that since all dogs (and cats) go to heaven, one day I’d be
reunited with not only my family and friends, but Buffy too. And by Monday
night, I had already begun feeling the guilt of wanting to immediately go to
the shelter to get another cat… or five…
I needed something to cling to. I couldn’t replace Buffy but I could
adopt a sibling (or five) for him. It would help me cope, I told myself. It would
help me move on. I settled for two; a 12-week old kitten and a 2-year old cat.
Michelle
would tell me in the coming weeks when the new kitten, Sunny, would climb the
curtains, run races over my head at night or beg for food 12 times a day, that
her big brother Buffy was looking down from heaven and laughing. I clung hard
to that idea. Four years later, Sunny and her sister Shadow are still bringing
me joy (and hairballs and sometimes spiders).
The night
Jesus died, the disciples and His followers must have experienced the same
emptiness and despondency of death and I would imagine, so much worse. They had
no such assurance that they would see him again, or if they should have, based
on things he’d told them, none of them seemed to recall His teachings in the
heat of the moment. They thought him to be dead and truly gone from them. A
brief life snuffed out too soon and for all they knew, they were next. The day
he died and the next day were their hell; their belief that what once was… was
no more. No poetry, no condolences from anyone outside their immediate circle…
just… death. They huddled hidden in a house contemplating how to go on.
 |
| Sunny |
And then
Easter morning arrived. He was ALIVE. He had RISEN. What was once no more… was
more than it had ever been! Still, yes, He’d eventually be leaving them in body
again, but this time they had something to hold onto. They had a solid
knowledge that they’d one day see and be with Jesus again, forever and in the
meantime, He was entrusting them to carry on His work until that time came.
Monday morning must have brought them their “Rainbow Bridge” poems and the
ability to remember, without screaming hysterically or gushing tears as they
clung to one another, memories of His time WITH them and His words TO them…
encouragement from Jesus Himself. It had to have been a needed calm after the
storm… a peace in their hearts giving them the ability to get back on track to
do His work and to begin a new, exciting chapter.
This
morning, as you remember the events of Lent, Holy Week and this Easter Monday,
let the peace that all Christians have and that passes ALL understanding
pervade your hearts and souls. That peace says that though there are times our
lives are filled with Friday’s despair, loss and grief, and the emptiness and
despondent hopelessness of Saturday, we know we can expect the blinding joy of
Sunday when Christ rose in new life… and the blessed assurance that we will one
day have the same. It’s Monday. We’ve mourned and now celebrated. It’s time to
get to the business of doing Christ’s work.
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