Not knowing what That Is

I looked up at my mom as she hung up the phone.  I may have been three or four years old.  She told me that Mister Gurkey died.  (40 something years later I remember his last named rhymed with turkey.)  As the family of a local pastor we got prayer requests and information sooner than others.  And for the past several nights when I said my prayers before bed my mom had asked me to pray for Mr. Gurkey because he was in the hospital.  I don’t remember if I asked why he was there but I think that he was an old man near the end of his days.  So I had been dutifully praying every night for him. 

After my mom told me what they said on the phone I imagined the person at the other end of the line.  They were frantic and busy.  Whatever had put Mr. Gurkey in the hospital in the first place had gotten worse.  Now the doctors, who had been working on him for days, were busier than ever trying to fix him.  I expressed my thoughts to my mom and she told me that the doctors were done trying to fix Mr. Gurkey.  When someone died, there wasn’t anything the doctors could do anymore.  I considered that and I was doubtful of that finality. 

Death to a preschooler was just too big and way too long to imagine.  That night when I said my prayers I added on: “and help Mr. Gurkey up with you.”  Again my mom had to explain something.  Once someone was with God in heaven you didn’t need to pray to help them anymore.  Everything was okay once they were with God.  Despite those joyous tidings, I still did not care for the idea of death. Each night when I would say my nighttime prayers, just before the “amen” I always said “and thank you God for everything…”. It may have been right around then that in my mind I silently added: “except dying.” 

Our family dealt with the death of a pet over ten years ago when one of the four pet rats we had died after only a few weeks.  The four children, Harrison, Naomi, Benjamin and Sarah, were devastated.  We buried the dead rat in the side yard and had a whole funeral.  We knew that rats had limited lifetimes and saw the loss of several more rats over the years.  Prajna and I didn’t seem to learn our lesson when we got Sarah a beta fish for her birthday which didn’t last a month.  By then we owned Pumpkin.  The animal shelter had already named him when we got him.  He grew to a big orange cat and survived two moves and saw the passing of 4 other cats. 

When I got home from church yesterday Sarah was digging a hole in the corner of the yard.  Prajna told me that they found Pumpkin dead.  He had no signs of injury or poisoning.  We don’t know why he died.  I went out and finished digging the hole.  I let Jamie take a few shovel scoops.  Then we all gathered around, put the cat in the ground and took turns filling in the hole.  Prajna said a little prayer thanking God for Pumpkin and we put flowers in the fresh dirt.  It was the most elaborate pet memorial since Darcy the rat.  It wasn’t quiet for a moment when Nathaniel walked away saying he hoped his lunch hadn’t gotten cold.

Sarah was the one who took care of Pumpkin the most.  Most of the Facebook posts express sympathy to her.  I kind of want to say that I liked him a lot too.  And as I write this I can look directly to my right and there is the windowsill with Pumpkin’s food dish.  Some mornings around this time he could be there.  Now he’s in the ground or in cat heaven, we can only wonder. 

All my kids are older than I was when I first grappled with the notion of death.  They are all older than any were when our first rat died.  Today, Nathaniel is a few months shy of how old Harrison was when we lost Naomi.  And after Naomi, a ginger tomcat might seem insignificant.

And I think it is.  For better or worse, dealing with loss has toughened me a little bit.  The loss of Pumpkin doesn’t hurt too bad.  I think I can get through this.  However, even after 40 years, I still think of death the same way I did back when I was very young.  I’m not as afraid to fall of my little bicycle for fear I might die.  But  death is a great big unknown.  No matter how much I believe God’s promises, I still don’t know exactly what to expect.  And me, someone who gets bent out of shape when I don’t have a precise floor plan for a weekend event, like to know what to expect.  I think that faith has to be a mighty stepping stone in the walk I take.  The passing of a cat reminded me of that.         

    

           

Eric the Cat

The first pet I remember having was a family cat. We go her from a shelter and named her Sparky. I really don’t remember much about Sparky except that she was a tabby and likes to chase strings. She slept with my parents mostly. They gave her to me at bedtime once but I kept giggling at her walking over me so that ended that. We gave her away when we left Arizona for Hawaii.

Once in Hawaii we got a kitten from a litter. Waldo was a grey tabby with a stubbed tail. I don’t remember where he slept. My main memory of Waldo is my mom poking his nose into the cat mess he made exclaiming that he was a naughty little kitty. One day Waldo was gone. I never had the chance to become terribly attached to him. But that was what sometimes happened with indoor/outdoor cats.

It was a few years before we got Sublease. She was already middle aged and wise. Sublease was a brown tabby and a cat’s cat. She slept where she wanted and became the queen of the house. One of her favorite places was on the hood of our car in the carport. But she wasn’t shy and became by confidant it the times I felt like I had no other friends. Sublease died of old age. In the time we had her two more kittens showed up at our house. One of them was still with us and bore the name, Kitten.

We moved from Lahaina to Wahiawa in 1988 and took Kitten with us. The cargo compartment of a Dehavolend-7 airplane is behind the passenger cabin. We could hear kitten yowling above the propeller engines all the way to Honolulu. Kitten lived with us for two more years and disappeared when I left Oahu to move back to Maui.

When I lived in a bachelor pad there was a cat that came around we named Mooch. I fed him meat in the morning and when he was still alive in the evening had some of the meat for supper. When Prajna and I were married we named our first cat Frank. Prajna liked the name and I did not. I named the cat Frank so none of our kids would ever have that name. Frank disappeared along with Jem and Scout years later. We also had a ginger tom come around sometimes that Naomi called Linda.

When our family lived on Wildwood Canyon Road in Yucaipa we had pet Rats. They were the first pets I ever had that weren’t cats. Then Mike showed up at our door one rainy night and we went through a lot of cats over the next decade. I also owned a dog for the first time. The dog we have now we’ve had about 5 years. Mike lasted a long time but the only cat we still have from that house is Pumpkin.

Now as I write this there is a 5 week old kitten on my lap. Some friends gave him to us. I gave him some breakfast and he used his box right away. He was being very playful for a while. Then he managed to get into the fireplace and needed a bath. He’s very subdued now and looks like he’s going to sleep. I do like dogs but I’m definitely a cat person. He followed me around the house this morning. That delighted me.