Yesterday I visited the cemetery, not because of Halloween, but because Lin is going to be buried this week and I wanted to make sure everything was ready for her. This is the place where my Mom and Dad are buried and also the final resting place for my sister and me.
When I was a child my family visited the cemetery in our neighborhood often. It was only a few blocks from our house and my Mom’s family was buried there. In the summer Mom and Dad would bring a large planter full of geraniums to put on the family plot. It was carefully maintained until the winter snows hit, usually about this time of year, and then it was stored in the basement until the next year. I loved exploring the cemetery when I was a kid. I liked to read the tombstones and plaques and imagine who these people were and what they might have been like when they were alive. This is a bittersweet time for me. It’s good to know that Lin will be in her final resting place, but it’s another step on the road to accepting the permanence of death and the deep loss I am feeling. I am happy she will be close. At the time my parents selected their burial plot we arranged for another double cremorial (that’s the cemetary's name for the bronze container with a plaque on top that they put your ashes in). Our ashes will eventually spend “eternity” together in this little box next to Mom and Dad. It’s a little weird seeing my name on the plaque with an empty space for the death date, but that is part of the process of aging. I have watched other people go through this deep acceptance of the fact that we are not immortal and that death is actually a part of life. I feel OK about it, not happy, not sad, just OK. Of course this cremorial only holds the dust of who we were. Our spirits will be someplace else. But there is something comforting about having an actual physical place to visit, like I did as a child when we went to see my grandparent’s and my Uncle’s graves. It makes me wonder if there will be people in the future looking for the stories on the gravestones the way that I did. Will they notice that my last name is the same as my parents and realize that two of their children are buried next to them? Will they figure out that Lin and I were twins, born in the same year but with different last names? How long will this burial place survive and what will the world be like when even this futile attempt at leaving something permanent disappears? We certainly won’t be studied like the Egyptian mummies. They tried a lot harder than us to leave something permanent and even their graves are a mystery. There isn’t much to be learned from the small piles of dust we will be leaving behind. Only the names on the plaque say something about who we were and they don’t say a whole heck of a lot. I’m good with that. I’m happy to just be on this planet right now. Tonight I will hand out cutie oranges to the handful of costumed kids that make it to my neighborhood, happily wearing my leopard ears and shoes and my tiger striped top. I am still a “cat woman” even though I am cat-less at the moment. It’s a good reminder that despite these mind bending realizations of what life and death are all about, life is good.
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Kitty is gone. She went peacefully. The vet came to my home so she was able to “transition” while remaining in her own familiar space. I am now officially a little old lady without cats. Kitty was a one-person cat with absolutely no social skills. She came into my home with one of my housemates and her companion cat Mario. Mario was a friendly, curious, and adventuresome cat. Kitty, on the other hand, spent the first month in the closet. Eventually she came out into the living room cautiously crouching along, with her belly touching the floor. She was lured by my housemate’s nearly empty yogurt container. Kitty was very skilled at carefully licking the remaining yogurt from the container until her head had completely disappeared into it, and then emerging without a single speck of yogurt anywhere on her. Eventually I adopted Mario and Kitty when my housemate moved to live with a person who was allergic to cats. By that time Kitty had gotten used to me and was battling with Mario for lap time. She became a total lap cat and survived until the ripe old age of 18, outliving Mario by two years. I will miss the comfort of her warm furry body curled up in my lap as I watched the latest PBS Masterpiece Mystery. I will miss the way she slid her little head under my hand and pressed her forehead into my palm for “pets.” I will miss her loud yowls that sounded like she was actually saying words. They were words I couldn’t identify, but they had a variety of distinct vowel sounds like, ah, ow, oo. I know she was trying to communicate but I was never able to translate it. What masterful thoughts were in her little walnut-sized brain? She was certainly opinionated. I find myself sighing as a walk around my house. There’s no cat hair on the furniture, sigh. There’s no fluids in an IV drip bag to be administered subcutaneously, sigh, no cat box to be cleaned, sigh, no fishy smelling cat food to be dished out, sigh. I didn’t think I would miss those things but I do. It made me feel good to take care of her, but she doesn’t need anything from me anymore. Now I only have to take care of myself. Somehow it doesn’t give me the same feelings as taking care of someone else. I need to find another outlet for giving, and caring, and loving. It just seems uncomfortably self-centered to only be taking care of myself. I don’t think I am cut out to be a little old lady without cats. Kitty’s motto to live by: Naps are essential and seek the sun![]() Life is tenuous. Too bad this realization didn’t come earlier in my life, but I sure get it now. Kitty, my last remaining fur baby, is slipping away. I made her a comfortable spot in the living room, snuggled into blankies in the recliner by the window. Her most desired needs are close at hand, her food bowl and litter box. Although she can still get up and walk, she can’t go very far. I am nursing her with pain meds and subcutaneous fluids, which she is not too happy about, but they make ME feel a lot better. And I really want to feel better. It’s hard to deal with another loss right now. In the mean time my cousin and her daughter have made a special 70th birthday visit to California. My cousin’s trip is a birthday gift from her daughter and I feel honored to be a part of it. Sometimes I take living here for granted so it was good to see the beauty of this part of the world through someone else’s eyes. We did the grand tour, driving along the ocean, checking out the surfers, shopping in cute little beach side shops. It was a joy to share this wonderful birthday gift with them. It’s good to have fun and celebrate life. This really is what life is about, joy and sadness mixed together. I don’t always experience them so close together so it is a good reminder for me. My natural tendency is to avoid throwing myself wholeheartedly into either one, but I’m learning to do both - sometimes at the same time. In a way this is my gift, going through the experience of loss. It’s not a gift I ever wanted but I can accept it. The idea of unexpectedly finding those mixed emotions reminds me of an experience I had with my family in the mid 1980’s. Mom and Dad were on their way to California and had stopped off in Detroit to see my sisters. Mom ended up in the hospital having surgery. It was a gut wrenching time. My Dad and sisters and I were having lunch in the hospital cafeteria while Mom was recovering from her surgery. As we talked about Mom, someone remembered that she always wanted to get her ears pierced but she was too afraid to do it. She used to tell us that if she was ever in the hospital under anesthesia to ask the doctor to pierce her ears. We all started laughing hysterically trying to imagine actually doing this. “Oh by the way doctor, while you’re in there removing the tumor could you please just pierce her ears too.” We were in tears and they weren’t tears of sadness. That moment when we were able to break the spell of grief with laughter was something I will never forget. I am my father’s daughter and I inherited his tendency to avoid expressing feelings on both sides of the spectrum, but this journey through grief and loss is a new adventure. I am learning to embrace every part of the journey, the joyful “good” celebrations, the not-so-“bad” challenges, and even the difficult “ugly” crying times. It’s what life is all about and it’s all OK. Although the frost is not on the pumpkin in California, October means that Halloween is just around the corner. It was always a special time for me. I loved the thrill of being out at night trick-or-treating and the massive quantities of candy piled up on the living room floor to be admired, sorted, and stuffed down. But most of all I loved the COSTUMES. It was an opportunity to be someone or something different. Mom made my twin sister and I matching costumes when we were little. One of our favorites was our rabbit outfits. Even after Halloween was long over we liked to put them on and eat carrots. As we got older we planned and made our own costumes. It was usually cold with snow on the ground when we went trick-or-treating. In 6th grade I decided I was sick of having to wear a winter coat that hid my costume but kept me warm as we plodded through the snow. So I went as Santa. Sure enough I was toasty warm, although I think it was confusing for the little kids. Being a teacher gave me a lot of opportunities to get creative with my costumes. I was never into anything scary. Even though I was from Minnesota, a Hockey mask did not appeal to me in any way, shape, or form. Usually my costume was a reflection of my internal image of what I wanted to be or how I was feeling about myself. I was a pointy hatted Gnome when my self esteem was in the basement and I felt short, fat, and small, and I was the Statue of Liberty after my divorce, a statement of freedom and power. Sometimes my school’s faculty had a theme for Halloween. When we did Harry Potter I was Hogwarts’ custodian’s cat, Mrs. Norris. I won “Best Oompa Loompa” the year our theme was “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” I think I had an advantage being the shortest person on the faculty. I already had the stature of an Oompa Loompa nailed. Cats, of course, were always a great option for me. Besides being Mrs. Norris, I made a really cool three-dimensional cat hat that fit like a bonnet and wore it in several different versions with sweats or overalls. I also did a semi-sexy leopard outfit. I don’t have a cat-suit friendly body so I made a long flowy leopard print dress and matching cat ear headband that I wore to a couple of singles group dances. I still wear the ears when I hand out stuff for the local trick-or-treaters. Since retiring I haven’t really worn a costume, except maybe my cat ears to an exercise class. I sold most of my old costumes in a yard sale many years ago. I do miss the creative energy of deciding who or what I want to be. I guess I have been exploring my internal self and transforming in other ways. This year I think I would like to be an open heart. Costume Gallery |
Leslie Masona woman in search of her post-retirement future Guess what! By subscribing, you get notices about the latest Little Old Lady with Cats posts sent to your mailbox!
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WHAT IS A LITTLE OLD LADY WITH CATS - REALLY?
(from an entry posted on 5/1/2015) “I definitely fit some of the characteristics of a little old lady with cats: Retired - check, Single - check, Like to knit - check, Have cats - check. . .I do not want to get stuck in my Little Old Lady persona, however. In fact, this blog is a risk taking experiment in exploring and redefining what I want my retired life to look like.” Categories
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