mourning

The pain of losing Lucy and Mac seems to come and go. It times I think I've come to a place of acceptance and even gratitude that they are no longer in any pain, but other times the pain of missing them completely takes my breath away.

My parents sent us these beautiful flowers today. Receiving them was bittersweet - we basically haven't been able to have flowers in the house for the past 13 years, since both cats would eat them all and then throw them up. So I welcome the beauty of the flowers (and appreciate that I won't have to wipe up cat puke any more) but it also makes me miss them so much!!

I even caught myself thinking at one point, "oh, I need to cut that ribbon off the vase, otherwise Mac will eat the ribbon and throw it up later." I can go from realizing the cats are gone and thus the flowers are on display, to a split second later thinking I need to keep the ribbon out of his reach?! I'm just having a hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that they really are gone.

There have been a million other times that it has caught me off guard:
-when I came into the house after work yesterday and automatically lifted my foot to keep a cat from running out the door while it was open
-when we had pizza for dinner last night and didn't have to close the kitchen door to prevent Lucy from eating it
-when I didn't have to shake the can of treats to get Mac out of Rose's room at bedtime
-when no one came to sit on my lap as I was reading yesterday afternoon
-when I was able to leave an unwrapped stick of butter out in the kitchen while I took a break from baking in order to help Rose with something
-when I rolled over in bed last night and realized I didn't have to worry about accidentally kicking a cat at the foot of the bed
-when I wasn't awoken by hangry cat meows after I slept in a bit this morning
-when I dropped a dollop of yogurt on the floor while baking and realized that no cats would lick it up for me
-when we didn't have any cats circling us, demanding the scraps of our fish dinner tonight

I could go on and on. I miss them terribly.

I've been coping by spending lots of time with my family.   Rose, Mike and I have enveloped ourselves in baking, artwork, and family excursions these past couple days. We'll get through this together.