I Surrender! Options

[I miss mouses]

I miss u mouses...

Tomorrow you will have been gone for 8 months. When I first joined this site I remember reading other pet memorials. As the months went on, the memorials got shorter and shorter. With tear filled eyes I could see the light at the end of the dark tunnel. There was such a difference between the first posts and the 7, 8, 9...month posts. I often use to think it was sad too, like maybe some people really did move on. I didn't want to move on, not yet anyway. Many had new pets and were enjoying life again. I had just lost you, it seemed impossible. My baby gone....FOREVER. I couldn't breathe. I did not want to live one single day without you. Death had found us, and I was so angry. I lost my best friend. I lost my happy place. How was I to face this world without you? I continued to read those posts, and hung on every word. Pages and pages of people who lost a bond as strong as ours.

When I first went to write today I was going to write a simple, "I love you Mouses." I paused at the blank screen, and remembered what I had thought of people like me at the beginning. I was now them, but I realized something. We aren't writing so little because we love or miss you all any less. We didn't forget you. From my point of view, I have decided we write less because we have been defeated. Death won. I don't quite call it acceptance. I accepted your death a long, long, time ago. I call it surrendering. Surrendering to death. I wrote before about how exhausted I am. I am exhausted Mouses. I have cried endless tears, lost too much weight, lost too much sleep, and have been trying to save you for the last 8 months. I can't save you. I can't bring you in sooner. I can't do anything. I have said, thought, and wrote every single thing there is to say. I can't change one single thing. I lost you. I really lost you. I stand alone in a big world without you. I wish you didn't have to go, but you did. I wasn't done, but somebody else decided I was. I guess that's why it hurts so much. I didn't just lose you (which alone is awful enough). I lost my closure with you. Where is our long goodbye that I assumed we would have? Why my soul kitty? Why out of all my cats, did you have to have the sudden ending?

I love you Mouses. I miss you. I have been through all the stages of grief. I am now left with just missing you. I finally learned to be happy for you. I am glad your tummy no longer hurts. I am glad you can breathe again. I am happy your legs aren't collapsing on you anymore (you looked so confused). My kitty, my baby, I wish there was another way to ease your pain, but there wasn't. When I hug Buddy it is for you sometimes, can you feel it? You have passed the baton. Your job of emotionally supporting me is now over. Did you send him to me? Did you die to save his life? You knew I would be the person to bring him back to life. He is very happy now, he is no longer hurting. I would rather have you, but he is a wonderful substitute for you. I sometimes feel like he now shares his body with your soul. He has brought back so much of what I missed about you. He sounds like you, looks like you, and now acts like you. He hounds the pantry like you. He runs around spastically like you (and hops around like a bunny). He is food and water obsessed. He wakes me up in the morning. He sits behind me while I type (he is behind me right now...exactly where you would have been). He gives me that stare, like I am supposed to read his mind. He is a chicken like you were. Like you, he flies through the house when he hears the dishes make that sound, or when a can is opened. Best of all (like you) he follows me everywhere. I miss you by my side. When you died I felt like a part of my body was missing. I had lost my shadow. Buddy has brought it back to me.

I will never be over the loss of you. I will never forget you. You are very, very close to my heart. I love you my sweetheart, always and forever. Goodbye my Mouses. I love you. I miss my old life...I really do.

8 months closer to seeing that face...

[patricia]

i too cried as i read your sweet letter to your soulkitty. your words were so beautiful and epxress exactly what we all feel. i love what ken said. i couldnt agree more. My heart is so scarred. i imagine it to be taped up, tied up and just barely beating sometimes because it hurts so much. but we do go on, whether we want to or not and we do share the love we have with our new furbabies. there was a time when i just didnt care what happened to me. the pain was so intense, but as i look back on it now, im so glad ive made it. not a day goes by that i dont miss my fred and riley and all my other babies but having lucy has brought back the life into this torn, beaten up heart of mine. we all move forward, one baby step at a time and we remember our loved ones with smiles instead of tears. but forgotten? never!!!
i pray that all of our hearts continue to heal.
patricia

[I miss mouses]

i too cried as i read your sweet letter to your soulkitty. your words were so beautiful and epxress exactly what we all feel. i love what ken said. i couldnt agree more. My heart is so scarred. i imagine it to be taped up, tied up and just barely beating sometimes because it hurts so much. but we do go on, whether we want to or not and we do share the love we have with our new furbabies. there was a time when i just didnt care what happened to me. the pain was so intense, but as i look back on it now, im so glad ive made it. not a day goes by that i dont miss my fred and riley and all my other babies but having lucy has brought back the life into this torn, beaten up heart of mine. we all move forward, one baby step at a time and we remember our loved ones with smiles instead of tears. but forgotten? never!!!
i pray that all of our hearts continue to heal.
patricia

I pray that all of our hearts continue to heal as well. I like your words. These days I am finding myself on a downward spiral. I am stuck in a countdown to Mouses death (Jan 25th). I remember her so much last Fall. I think of the Fall, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, the New Year, and everything in between. I still can't believe she was sick that whole time. I was just living my happy life, and her death was around the corner. I wish I was just thinking back on her life in a good way. I've been looking at pictures of her, I keep wondering if she was sick yet. I keep wondering what she felt like last Halloween.

Today is a hard day for me. Since Mouses died, a picture of her sits by my bedside. I look at it all throughout the day. It is dated 10/21/08. I remember this day so well. My son was taking a nap, we had just gotten a new digital camera so I took some close-ups of Mouses. I kept thinking about my cats of the past. I had pictures of them, but none of them were close-up. I would try to look at them in their photos, but never felt like I could "feel" them. I wanted a picture of Mouses I could "feel." I took lots of pictures of Mouses that day. I kept 3 and deleted the rest. I sure wish I would have kept them all. Anyway...it is so hard to look at that picture today. I was taking that picture to have something to remember her by. I put the camera away thinking, "I'm going to get some really good close-ups of her over the next few years, so I can really "see" her when she goes." Three months later she was gone. I never took any other close-ups. While I am grateful for those (she is so real and clear in those photos), it creeps me out a little to know the end was just around-the-corner of that day.

It was such a nice day. I can feel the moment. It is a nice memory. For now, it is a little overshadowed by her death and all of the changes. This time last year I had no idea a year from then I would be living in our new house without her, and I would have a new cat. On this day last year, I would have no idea I would have a new cat for 3 whole months and she would be gone for 9 months. Although the new boy eases the pain, I sometimes feel so guilty for how fast I got a new cat. Sometimes I wish I had just stayed alone for awhile.

I hope your broken heart continues to heal. Chris
P.S. I am glad your still on here, sometimes I feel like I'm almost the only one on here from before. This year is just too hard to go through alone. Thanks for listening.