I tell myself it was werely a freak accident--one in one hundred chance that they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, but was it, really? Was it irony that they died within 24 hours of each other, hit by a car on the same road, within a few yards of each other? My Dad suspects that they were after the mice-abundant fields on the other side (they were ardent hunters, having enacted a massacre of voles on our own lawn). Still, I like to think Carmen went looking for her sister the night after she didn't come home. I was worried about how Carmen would fair without her sister, her constant companion and playmate. We thought she'd be so lonely and bored.
I told myself, as I let her out for the night, since she was just dying to go--that it was highly improbable that they would both be hit on the road--it was a stroke of bad luck for poor Rizka. And Carmen wasn't as sporadic as Rizka, and more brave, less easily spooked. Did chance really take them away so suddenly? I feel like I'm reenacting Where The Red Fern Grows. I think of Lucky, how I consider his long, slow decline to be a blessing in disguise for me. One that taught me the skills of caring for the ill, as well as a chance to say a long goodbye, tocome to terms with something I dreaded for years. I guess these are all fishes in the air, but I do want to say this. These two cats were not equal to Lucky in my heart. When he died, I went into my room and cried. I sobbed. My heart caved; there was an enormous chunk just and nothing could really fill it up. I talked to him as Dr. Waddups inserted the needle and I carried his body--for he, I knew, had already moved on; I could tell the moment his spirit left--all the way to the cottonwood trees between our garden and pond. Many an afternoon, he and I went out there. The last time we went was a few days ago when I carried him out in a blanket and let him rest on my lap in the shade of the cottonwoods and lone Pine tree (for a stroke had paralyzed his hind legs and was slowly consuming the rest of him). He used to like to wander around the willows there and through the raspberry bushes in the garden while I helped to harvest and weed. I knew it was a secluded place, protected by trees, where it was unlikely that his body would be affected by any renovators who bought the house from my parents after they decide to sell it when I leave the nest. And it was pretty there, in the shade, and I thought it suited his laid-back, simplistic disposition.
Sunny, our "demonic" cockatiel died a few weeks ago of blood feathers (as we assume) after a run in with the afore mentioned playful sisters. I figured that there should be no better place than near Lucky's body, so I choose to have her buried under the pine tree, that will hopefully grow to a great size and cover her grave completely.
After Rizka didn't come inside all night--which was very much unlike her, who was so skinny that the cold affected her too much--my Dad went looking the next morning, since his semester of teaching was over, and found her, sure enough, on the side of the highway. This time he didn't even ask, and buried her underneath a cottonwood a little apart from Lucky's grove. This morning, after discovering Carmen's body near the same unhallowed spot, she too was buried and I haven't seen where yet--I haven't had the emotional stamina. Dad calls that patch of the yard under the cottonwoods "the pet graveyard." I think it sounds horrible, although I didn't say so. I know he does so much to try and spare me more emotional pain, being very much aware of the close bond I easily make with all our pets. I consider it more of a homage to friendship, of faith, of hope in the Resurrection. I pray for more faith, because otherwise I'd give in. There is the Atonement--Lucky helped me learn that when he first was sick and I sobbed every night for answers. I believe in it; I cling to it. I guess there is only one way to learn some lessons, and it's a very hard way.
But still, even though I know that they themselves are not under those cottonwoods; they are in heaven, I believe, doing who knows what with who knows who, but I like to think they--Lucky especially--are waiting for me. and i will be met by them as much as family and friends when I go. I hope that will be so.
