Thursday, March 21, 2013Tonight's picture was taken in November of 2008. Mattie was home recovering from his second limb salvaging surgery. Our living room was transformed with a hospital bed in it and as you can see Nurse Patches settled in on Mattie's bed. One could say that she was there to enjoy the new bed and blankets, but knowing Patches, I realize she was there because she deemed herself part of the family and wanted to lend her support.
Quote of the day: Cats do care. For example they know instinctively what time we have to be at work in the morning and they wake us up twenty minutes before the alarm goes off. ~ Michael Nelson
It was a challenging day for both Peter and I in different ways. Peter had a morning and night time routine with Patches. Like Michael Nelson's quote points out about cats, Patches was better than any alarm clock. She always woke up minutes before Peter's alarm clock would go off. Mind you Peter's wake up time wasn't always consistent. So the question is how did she know? Peter always joked that Patches must have checked his alarm clock the night before to know when she had to rise the next day. Waking up without a Patches greeting today was unsettling for Peter and certainly there was no furry friend to greet him by the door when he returned from work.
Before Patches recently lost her hearing, she had an instinct and could hear/sense Peter climbing up the staircase in our building to get to our unit. In fact, I could always tell when Peter was coming home from work by Patches movements and her circling by our front door. In many ways I think Patches thought she was a person.
As Peter had his Patch routines, I too had my own. As soon as I woke up and my feet touched the floor in the morning, Patches would be there in a flash to greet me. She watched, almost frustrated at times, as I made the bed, and then quickly shuttled me downstairs for a snack or a treat. This has been our routine for over a decade. Since January, when she began to be noticeably sick, our routine began shifting. She became more sedentary, however despite that, she was ALWAYS watching me. This morning as I was gathering things to do laundry in our complex, there was no Patches around inspecting what was going in the laundry cart and later in the morning as I was putting laundry away, there was no Patches watching me as if I was a tennis ball in a tennis match. Patches used to watch me going up and down the stairs carrying laundry. I took it for granted, but today, I found that I missed the furry observations and commentary.
I spent the entire day at home working. I am knee deep in literature reviews for a Foundation think tank working group that I am a part of. Doing this kind of work reminds me of my days in graduate school. It is easy to get absorbed in computer searches and before you know it the day just drifts by. Later this evening, Peter and I got together with my friend Annie. I met Annie while doing advocacy work on Capitol Hill two years ago. Annie lost her daughter Eloise in May of 2010, eight months after Mattie. When I met Annie, we instantly gravitated to each other, and whenever she comes to town, we get together. Tonight, we had the opportunity to meet her husband as well and I was happy Peter got a chance to connect to another dad who lost a child to cancer. I always appreciate my chats with Annie because our perspectives are similar and we both call things as we see them. It is always comforting to me that when I experience the world a certain way and think something is off or wrong with me, that Annie can share or email with me how she is feeling. Then we quickly determine the issues don't lie with us, but they lie within the situation or fate we have been dealt. That doesn't resolve our issues, but it does make a difference to know we are not alone!
1 comment:
You are definitely not alone, keeping busy is good therapy and your work has great purpose.
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