Three years. 1,096 days since I felt his waning heartbeat in my arms. My soul cat. 

The months after were dark. Waking up in the morning and remembering was re-traumatizing. 

But Mary Oliver writes 

“maybe death
isn’t darkness, after all,
but so much light
wrapping itself around us–”

And that’s what grief is: a love that transcends mortality. 

In the hospital, I kept telling Linus that I was ready to let him go. That was a lie, of course, but thought it was something you were supposed to say. Claiming you’re ready, though, implies there was a period before that moment to prepare, the lead up and anticipation. His loss was sudden, surprising, and fast. I wouldn’t even say I’m ready now. 

Just the other day someone asked me how many cats I have and I replied, ‘Two.” 

Everyone who knows me, knows Linus. He’s here with me, with Lucy. When his heart stopped and mine broke, she kept it beating. Three years later her suffocating love sustains me. She’s nothing like him but when the grief is unbearable, still, she’s there to smother my tears. Lucy is my heart cat. 

Linus is here, he’s everywhere. Three years later, he’s everywhere. 

”I would recognise you in total darkness, were you mute and I deaf. I would recognise you in another lifetime entirely, in different bodies, different times. And I would love you in all of this, until the very last star in the sky burnt out into oblivion”.” ― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles