Today I vacuumed my mother’s floors, did four loads of laundry, emptied the trash, fed Seraphin the cat his last meal on earth, then ended the day by burying him.

There have been times in my past when people I cared about were taken from me because of unexpected circumstances. Simply, they disappeared from my life one day… An awful misunderstanding between two very close friends. A cutthroat power play in the workplace with collateral damage. But there was a reprieve: in the first case, I surreptitiously spotted the former associate—looking lonely and withdrawn—on board a subway train eight years after our acrimonious parting; and in the latter, a budding friendship continued long after the job had already ended.

Just like that. He was gone. I will never again see his furry face or feel him rub against my leg at my parents’ doorway. My heart is bleeding, like the liquid redness oozing from his mouth.

What does it say about the value we ascribe to life in a civilization that is on the verge of deterioration? The careless and unnecessary loss of life diminishes us all. The hit-and-run driver didn’t even stop. When I lived in pastoral New Hampshire, following a rainfall the country roads would team with wildlife…I always swerved to avoid hitting a stray animal—whether chipmunk or tiny frog. Why was this unwelcome stranger using our street as a thoroughfare? It is common enough to see dead mammals alongside the highways, but not in an established family neighborhood populated with children and pets.  Continue reading Bereaved