Maud

 April 17, 2023

Perfect cool spring morning

Last night I watched Maud have a stroke, I think. She couldn’t walk. I lifted her up and she lay beside me all night, making a noise between a purr and a howl that I hadn’t heard before, and never want to hear again. Today before noon she crossed the Rainbow Bridge and began the next leg of her journey. I’ve noticed before that grief is different from other emotions, for wrath, fear, even love can be controlled for a moment, for a span, but grief cannot. I caught myself moaning as I walked through the house. Did that comfort me? Perhaps it comforted the animal that abides inside before reason. She came into my life on November 11, 2007. I wrote this in my journal: Titus is mature and Jocasta is old and Theseus and Conrad are gone. But Circe and Maude rumble and tumble, and I smile every time they do. Circe has a magic streak down her forehead and a passionate disposition; Maud is pale and beautiful, and if there were a Yeats cat, she would be his Maud. I needed something to take my mind from the sadness I don’t completely understand, and they are it.

I dug her grave in the west garden, and planted over it evening primrose. 

Before, when a cat died, there was another cat. The house is empty now. For more than thirty years one cat spirit or another dwelt with me. I have no where to turn. 

As I stood I the garden I suddenly had such compassion for God. Every second of every day He hears lamentations rise up, most from those whose cause is a thousand times greater than mine. How can He endure it? I cannot endure even my little dirge, nor the thought that I’ll be singing it sadly, wearily, until it simply wears away.