She was way ahead of me.  She already had a boyfriend when another guy took one look at her and said, “She’s the one.”  She didn’t cotton to the interloper at first, but that didn’t deter him.  He won her over, as I discovered while watching the documentary that covered their impending marriage and new life together as a young couple.  The bride and groom both had down syndrome.  And I was jealous. 

This had happened to me before.  Feeling lonely and depressed (in part because I was single, but mostly because I was alone since my mother’s death) had been a way of life for me for years.  Depression was my default mode.  I was on a crosstown Manhattan bus at night going nowhere.

In the midst of feeling sorry for myself I caught sight of a young lady sitting across from me.  She had down syndrome.  My heart softened as my mind switched focus from my woes to thoughts of her lonely life.  Now, there was someone who’d never find someone.  I, at least stood a good chance, being “relatively” normal.  In fact, I knew I’d find someone someday.  Or year.  Or century, as I liked to joke.  For a while I wasn’t even sure in which millennium I would be mated.  Since Y2K came and went with me still solo, that answered that.

As I took in the young woman on the bus, my heart compassionately aflutter,  my eye was startled by a glint of gold on her left hand.  By God, that did it!  Even she was married!  She was a member of the club and I was still out in the cold.  I couldn’t believe it, though I could see the humor in it, too.  I fluctuated from depression to compassion to exasperation.  Sigh.  Maybe her husband had a brother.

The documentary was called “Monica and David” and I heartily recommend it.  The short film captured the unconditional love bestowed upon Monica and David by their respective mothers and Monica’s generous step-dad (Monica’s bio-dad split 6 months after she was born).  This was a beautiful, inclusive family that did everything  to give their kids a full, happy, adult life.  Complete with a beautiful wedding. 

I started crying almost immediately watching the film.  The love and affection between the couple was sweet as could be.  They called each other “Honey” and “My Love” and touched each other tenderly, with happy hugs and kisses aplenty.  And they were surrounded by a warm, loving, watchful family. Which I was not.  

Netflix, in a stroke of cruel genius, delivered this flick to me on my wedding anniversary.  Not that I cared, but it added a bit of salt to the wound given the subject matter (a happy wedding), since my marriage (not so happy) ended many years ago, and, 13 years into the new millennium, I find myself still single.  My cat had died just days ago, mother’s day was around the bend, and my mother had managed to die the day before mother’s day, making mother’s day doubly depressing ever since.  If I were a lesser person, I’d be maudlin.  I was only crying because of the movie.  

When I finished watching, I got an email from my publisher posting my first quarter earnings. My first book, RAVING VIOLET, came out four months ago.  After 18 months of work, great fun, excitement, enthusiasm, my financial compensation was, well... small.  I started crying again. 

Weeks before I’d been fretting about money and my cat’s health.  I went into my local Catholic church (it’s modern, peaceful, and seconds from my house).  My dog comes in with me, unbeknownst to anyone but God (who, by the way, adores her).  My dog is utterly silent and sits patiently in her bag.  I can talk to people elsewhere for an hour and they have no idea there’s anyone in my purse.  She’s a stealth pup.  The peace of God is for all Her (well-behaved) creatures.  Why shouldn’t I bring her to church?  She needs a respite from the noise and grit of the streets, too. 

I was surprised to find Jesus this fine day covered by a drop cloth.  I’d never seen such a thing. Were they painting?  I saw no signs of it.  But the “drop cloth” was purple, so I quickly discerned that this was a fashion choice, not a renovation.  They must have been playing some Catholic game I wasn’t familiar with, like “Pin the Tail on the Crucifix” or, better yet, “Hide and Seek”.  Jesus was playing peek a boo, but I couldn’t imagine why.  Who was He hiding from?  Perhaps He was sick of everyone staring at him non-stop.  Mimi (bagged) and I took our spot on the bench and heaved our usual sighs of relief upon settling in.  Here was respite from the noise of the city and reprieve from the stresses of daily life.  We softened into the silence.  

I’m no Christian, as most of you know by now, so I’m not up on the rules, regulations, and past-times of the Church.  I’ve always referred to the Eucharist as “cookies and juice”, so you shouldn’t be surprised that I thought (with a smile),  ”Oh, he’s just hiding.”  He’s pretending to be dead cause it’s almost Easter, then he’s gonna jump up and surprise us on Easter morning!  Jesus was the original Jack in the Box.

When I realized he was playing hide and seek I decided that I could go along with it.  Guy wasn’t really dead, anyway, was he?  Son of God and all.  That “dead” act was a big ruse to see if we were all really paying attention.  Well, Jesus’ message via the resurrection is ours as well.  I’m due a resurrection, I don’t know about you. 

My cat had been sick on and off for about two years.  A urinary problem here.  A dental problem there.  This past December she was gravely ill, just as I was entering the hospital for surgery.  This was a double whammy scary sad “ouch”.  I begged her to stay.  She stayed.  But she was on the fence since, oh, November, and since the doctor’s medicines didn’t cure her, I decided to take the law into my own hands.  I treated her with herbal tinctures to support the three organs which were inflamed.  I force-fed her since she was hungry, but wouldn’t eat.  We were stuck between a rock and a hard place.  I believe in miracles and kept waiting for her to turn a corner.  She never did.  Her last week I took the day’s morbid evidence into account and considered whether “today was the day”.  It was not.   Yet.  

Two days later, it was.  There were tumors all over her body.  They had sprung up overnight, like mushrooms.  Her now obvious lymphoma went undiagnosed in January.  I put her down. 

The last few months of her kitty life Angela manifested some of my mother’s dying symptoms from pancreatic cancer.  The same organs were afflicted (liver, gallbladder, pancreas).  And there were "messes" everywhere.  It took me back to my Mom’s sickness which lingered and worsened over two years to the point that I could not wait for it to be over.  The thing I dreaded most in the world, the loss of my mother, became preferable to the daily hell of watching her suffer and fall apart (we worked with a hospice and I took care of my mother, and her messes, at my sister’s house).

My mother died on a supremely gorgeous May day.  Everyone around me seemed quite happy.  In fact, everyone around me (at college) was graduating in a few weeks.  Including me.    The disconnect between my daze of endless tears and the brilliantly beautiful day was cavernous.  People celebrated life, spring, and happy transitions while I steeped in sickness and death. 

Angela died on just such a beauteous day at the same time of year.  Spring had finally sprung in Manhattan and everyone was out with their sunglasses, boyfriends and shopping bags, laughing and having brunch at sidewalk cafes.  I passed by them while on the bus to the vet and cried the whole ride down as I stroked Angela in her carrier.

Never fun on a good day, I’ve grown too familiar with the sad procedure of putting a pet down.  As I spent my final moments alone with her, I stared curiously at the repeating purple infinity pattern that kept swirling across the computer screen in the examining room.  Infinity.  There it was.  Angela was at the Gates of Infinity.

While I believe in “forever”, the unlimited nature of spirit and consciousness, saying goodbye to the mortal form of our loved ones remains a bitch.  I wish I could say I’ve conquered that one.  But I gave her Angela a good death.  She was held by me and aided by three gentle muses, the lovely staff at the vet’s office I went to.

For the first time in 28 years, I am without a cat.

As quiet and gentle as my girl was, the silence produced by her absence is pointed. 

One of my teacher’s used to say “Always, always, the comings and goings.”  Yes, this is life.  Someone comes in.  Someone goes out.  Things are always in flux, though it may not seem that way for times at a stretch.  Yet I’ve been hit with an inordinate amount of goings since I was five.  And the comings I have wanted haven’t come.  More feeling sorry for myself, here and there, even decades after the last human death.  Well, that’s my cross to bear. 

But my experience of Angela’s death has been unique.  It seems I have made some progress in dealing with grief over the millennia.  I did most of my keening and wailing before she died.  I was not as bowled over by her death as I was by my father’s, mother’s, grandparents’, and my many cats until now.   What had changed?

Mimi and I went to church again while two people were tuning the organ, a woman at the keyboards and a man on a ladder.  We listened for a few minutes.  Easter lilies were everywhere.  As we left I saw the sign, “He is risen!  Alleluia!”  Like a good loaf of bread, Jesus rose.  The drop cloth was gone. 

As with Jesus’ good friends, I have heard from Angela since her passing. 

But there’s a little something called “discontinuous change” I want to discuss with you, first.

While change, or “evolution” may seem to go on at the same, invisible, plodding speed, there are some exceptions. If you look at water getting colder, the temperature drops steadily until something “magic” happens and all the water crystals freeze.  At once. Not one at a time, but “whoosh”, otherwise known as a quantum leap, (or discontinuous change).  Everything steady and predictable leads up to that magic moment of transformation.   Or transfiguration, a complete change of form or appearance into a more beautiful or spiritual state.  Like a butterfly from a chrysalis. 

When laying the groundwork of our lives, it’s pretty much brick by brick, day after day.  Sometimes it rains and we don’t lay any bricks.  Sometimes there’s a mudslide and it sets us back some.  Perhaps we stop because we realize our blueprint isn’t right.  Back to the drawing board we go.  One day it’s sunny and we lay the whole foundation.  Day by day we build with our thoughts, feelings, choices, changes and behaviors.  Everything we read, eat, listen to, everyone we talk to, how we spend our time, what we say.  Every choice is a building block.  

The fact of the matter is that most change IS continuous, even if we don’t see it.  Life is constantly in flux, our cells die and renew.  We don’t see seeds growing beneath the frozen earth.  We don’t see buds of new leaves on trees in January.  We don’t see the surprises, both “good” and “bad” that await us tomorrow.  But they’re there.  Slowly, inexorably, they respond to the call of the Sun, fulfilling our destinies.  Some days, seemingly “overnight”, those changes burst forth.

The week before Angela passed away a halogen bulb blew in my kitchen and my toaster went up in smoke (I thought it was the toast, but it was the toaster, black smoke billowing forth). Spirit communicates through electricity, since both are energy.  One morning, a day or two after Angela’s passing, I was in the kitchen preparing breakfast and heard her meow, loud and clear.  I turned to look for her.  The day after she died I plugged my iPhone into my computer to charge and sync them and got a message from iPhoto regarding the importation of 35 new photos from my phone to my computer.  This was clearly a software glitch, as I’d not taken any photos in weeks.  Not wanting to lose any photos either on my phone or computer, I agreed to the download.   Once the transfer was complete, photos of Angela taken on May 30^th, 2012, popped up on my screen.  There she was, looking up at me from my screen. I didn’t freak out; I accepted it as normal spirit communication, though it wasn’t normal computer behavior.  In all my years as an iPhone user that has never happened.  And of all my hundreds of photos, the shots that popped up were Angela’s. 

I’ve heard Angela’s spirit engaging in an old, formerly tiresome habit, that of licking my plastic bag collection as she protested her hunger, very often in the face of food I’d given her.   Since her passing I’ve heard her little feet walking on the newspaper on the floor (a backup bathroom option for my small dog) and general “unexplained” movement, including some plastic lids spontaneously and noisily sliding/popping/dropping off of my storage container collection when nothing was near the pile of plastic to disturb it.  She’s just playing. 

Today is mother’s day.  I’m spending it with my dachshund.  My mother died yesterday, May 11^th, 28 years ago.  Happy mother’s day, Mom, and love to my spirit kitties, apparently all in the custody and care of my mother, according to a medium, who accurately described my cats, and my mother. 

Life is always in balance.  Some things are seen.  Some are unseen.  Some seem to be missing or hidden.  We must focus on and love what is here, and gracefully embrace the existence of what is “not here”, as being elsewhere.  “Hiding”.  Hibernating.  Transforming for its next rendition.  Who wants to play the same game, forever?

I’m single for now, but now is not forever.  I told Angela to come back in another kitty body, and I can’t wait until she does, someday, somewhere.  My “starter” royalty check was just that.  A start, not a finish.  Like Jesus, I’m ready to spring out of the box.  Alleluia.   

©2013.

RAVING VIOLET the book is available in print, e-book and audio (recorded by me) from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, Audible.com, SmashWords, KOBO, AllRomance.com, and Black Opal Books.