Loss

It's been a busy week, as the weeks after Mother's Day always are, it seems. Once graduation rolls around there are all kinds of things in the kids' lives--tests, parties, special assignments due--and in ours as well, as our friends all come out from under their busy semesters and want to get together, as do we. I also "went back to work," in a manner of speaking, this week, with two days of workshops to jumpstart a fall project. So there's been a lot going on, most of it fun.

But it was punctuated by sadness. Our beloved and beautiful cat, Anna, had been ailing for a while, and this week we finally let her go. We knew as of Monday that the end was near, and we said good-bye to her yesterday. This is the first pet I've lost in this way; only one of our childhood pets died when I was a child, and I was almost completely unaware of her passing. I'd left home by the time my own childhood cat, Misty, died. This is also the first time our kids have lost a pet, and it hit Mariah hard. She chose Anna from the Siamese rescue society eight years ago--or Anna chose her--and they had been companions ever since.

Today I see her food bowls and the hair that she shed on the couch and I expect to see her come around the corner, but she won't. She had a good life with us, but--as my mother said earlier today--there will always be a hole in our hearts for her.