Passing On

It was a small service attended only by my son and I. He was the last of three, surviving the longest well past normal life expectancy. The weather had just started to change to autumn with a brisk breeze but somehow still refreshing after a long hot humid summer. The grave was dug hastily in the morning and the body just as hastily covered with only a rock to mark its location. I made sure to bury some victuals for his journey into the world to come. I don't know what possessed me to connect with the ancient traditions of burying objects or food that the deceased may need in the afterlife, but I did. I spoke of how he was loved by us all, especially my son and how he would be missed. He was like family and the parting was painful and laden with tears. We hugged and cried together over Dubby, the last of three hamsters.

 

The night before I returned home to learn that he was bleeding out of one eye and lying on his side. I thought of bringing him to a vet but they would just euthanize him. I stroked his neck and back telling him all will be OK, just find rest and let the pain go. And thank God he died that night so that my kids wouldn't see him suffer excessively.

 

That night I had a dream with Dubby. First he appeared as ill as described and then suddenly he woke up with strength to climb out of his cage, filled with vigor and ready to go. I wonder if some forces exist out there that signify the passing of a soul and I do believe animals do have souls. Was he saying goodbye and letting me know he will be OK out there, no longer confined in body and time to our home? Unbeknownst to me, at 3:15AM my wife woke up to a bright flash. She looked around and there was no rain outside and she wondered if that was Dubby passing.

 

Goodbye dear Dubby thanks for  all the special moments with the kids. We will miss you :(

(for related posts on dreams of animals passing see here).

Cataclysmic Discovery

I really was surprised by the letter I found in my son's backpack. He is in first grade and by all the teachers accounts, he is the bottom of the class but he shows diligence. I was expecting another scathing commentary on my lack of parenting skills that contribute to his delinquency. Well, this letter was not from the teacher but something he wrote on his own, for himself. It struck me how much my own actions can have a profound affect on others. I'm not even going to mention the recent fiasco that you have been so avidly following. Instead, I refer you back to this post. I made a decision I felt was in our families ultimate physical best interest but without realizing its long-term detrimental mental impact. Unfortunately, there are choices to be made that hurts, where either choice has its undesirable consequences. I can only use all the information I have to make the decision I feel is best for me and my kids. I originally decided not to type out what he wrote because I scanned it in, covering his name but in case your linguistic interpretive skills are infantile, here is what it says: I love my cat and I miss my cat and I wish my cat came back and my cat is so cute. Love....

Exile

It has been said that exile is a form of death. You are uprooted from your family, friends, from familiar surroundings and a predictable environment. Things and people that brought you comfort and support, disappear in a flash. Image being kidnapped, blindfolded, and transported for what feels like an eternity and dropped off in the middle of some unknown city with just a candy bar to get you through the dark, rainy night. You have no shelter and no hope. Perhaps you speak the local dialect, perhaps not. How will the locals treat you? With suspicion, perhaps as a competitor for resources. Will you survive the tougher elements of the street? What's worse is you suddenly realize that it was someone close to you, someone you have always counted on, that did this to you. But you can't fathom why and you just want to get home but which way and how long and how many untold obstacles stand in your way? What if you never get home and if you do, how will you be welcomed? Hope fades fast as all these thoughts cross you mind in an instant.

I had a choice. I could take the cat to a shelter where they said he would be destroyed because he was sick with worms or I could send him into exile and give him a fighting chance. He is a tough outdoor cat and I want to believe he will find another family to help him or at least survive. But what kind of life will that be, going from all food cares handled to utterly on his own? He has brought me presents of mice and birds in show of appreciation for the food and affection the kids and I have shown him and this is how I repay him??? It tears my heart out that I had to make a living being especially one close to me suffer but he has brought a plague upon me and (some of) my children. I gave him worm medication but he will keep getting reinfected by his contaminated feces and other critters will be our next woe. So if I had to choose between my children's health and the cat. As much as I love my cat, I chose my children. (See if I say this when I tear the last hair out of my head when they go bonkers).

Last week, I tried to put him in a box but that effort failed so today I purchased a pet carrier and off we drove in the pouring rain. Cats hate car rides, in case you don't know. He was moaning and crying for the half-hour ride. I cried with him albeit not as loud. I just drove. I had tried to make a plan earlier in the day as to the best drop site but nothing materialized so I just let the car take us. Tali lent me moral support for the journey if I may name-drop. I let him off in a residential area and poured some cat food by the curb. He was happy to be out of the car and cage. Before I turned around he was gone.

It struck me on the way home that I had let him off in Babylon, of all places. The namesake of our first exile. And so it was, I displaced my beloved cat as the Babylonians had displaced our forefathers oh so long ago. How they must have felt, how my sweet cat must be feeling now. I cried the whole way home and my computer screen is a shimmering fog right now. Do you know, that now that I come to think of it, I might not even have a picture of him? I was going to put him here on the blog as a lasting memory but I can't. I'll be able to conjure his image but will the kids forget him? No, not him but at least how he looked. Will they ever forgive me if they find out? I'll have to make my own peace with this but I tell you it really hurts.

What went through his mind when he watched me drive off into the night leaving him stranded and all alone? He was alone and scared. His hopes faded, replaced by dispair. As I pictured him looking at my car driving off into the distance, rivulets of water streaming down by the curb, I could not help hearing the words (In Hebrew) "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat and wept as we remembered Zion..."
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Dream Believer

"I had a dream," my pappy told me. That, of course, was long after MLK Jr. had his unrelated vision. It was a relatively mild summer the year my brother was to be married. I was just a kid then, but I felt the need to instruct him in all things sexual that I had only recently learned. He smiled and messed my hair a bit and said thanks. He gave me a coke and I smiled.

Just after his engagement, he came down with hepatitis so graciously shared from cup to cup at a rebbe's tish. Even though he was feverish and weak, thankfully he was able to drag himself to the Brooklyn HIP center. There the top notch physician wrote him a script, which he diligently went to the pharmacy to fill. The pharmacist told him this was an Rx for a placebo because the doctor thought he was a drunk. Instead of accepting this miracle cure, he chose to check into a local hospital where his condition deteriorated. That's when pappy had his dream.

As I recall it being told to me directly, pappy had seen his friend, Joe, appear to him at night in a dream. Joe was the first of his childhood friends to pass to the other side. Joe solemnly informed my dad that tonight Joe was to take his son (my bro). I don't know how my dad comes up with this stuff so fast, I guess he was FAST asleep but his response without hesitation was, "Take the cat as a Kaparah (atonement)." With that the dream ends and the laws of the universe are forever altered.

Come morning, the cat was found dead. Zoinks! I have a sneaking suspicion my dad sleepwalks but I have not seem this myself. When talking with my brother, he claims that, that night he gave up and prayed to be taken away but somehow things took a turn for the better the next day. For him, that is. I'm sure the cat would have an entirely different perspective and now after umpteen years of marriage I don't know if my brother would have taken that deal.

Many years passed. I was dorming at YU when I noticed my next cat crying outside by my seventh floor window. I was dreaming of course. I let her in and she seemed relieved to see me and climbed on my bed and went to sleep with an apparent grim as if she was comforted being my presence. There was a knock, so I opened the door only to find two cats, looking just like her, beckoning her to come with them. She did. They walked down Rubin hall together and just faded away.

A few days later, I got a call that my kitty had disappeared (coincidentally) the night I had the dream. Can you figure it out yet? Not only had the cat died but my uncle was mysteriously cured from an ailment that no doctor could successfully identify or cure! He had suddenly developed an uncontrollable diaphram spasm causing him to hiccup incessantly. They actually had to start his heart a few times as a result. Apparently my dad had a dream that night as well. In his dream, he was saying to himself, "As much as I love the cat, I choose my brother."

The only thing my family could figure was that my grandfather, the butcher, used to feed all the neighborhood cats to rid the area of mice. As a zechus (merit),these cats have come back to sacrifice their lives for our holy lineage.

I'm not a big believer in stuff like this when people tell me but there truly is something about cats and my family. The main thing really is that if you're a cat, stray far far away. I do have sleepless nights wondering if someday, if we are not careful, they may issue a cat-wah against us.

We are finally coming to the real point of all this. I told my son that I was feeling very ill because of the cat-asstrophy. I apparently made a bit of the show of it to discourage him from playing with the cat. He took it to mean that I was seriously hurting. And out of the mouth of babes..."Dad, if you want to feel better, someone should dream about the cat and you'll be OK!"

That'sa my boy (Italian inflection)
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