I am losing Finn.
Advanced kidney failure, and rapid decline.
My heart is breaking, broken. He is only 7, barely mature for a cat… and I am stunned by this news, nearly breathless with it. A day with a bite of food makes my hopes soar. And then, today, a quiet day, where he looks at his food then walks away, over and over and over. I can feel myself coming apart.
Grief, grief. Yeah. I get it. I will drown in you slowly and quickly and over and over and over.
But there are shifts this time. I am not doing the frantic avoidance dance. I am feeling horrid and allowing myself, at least sometimes, to fully be with my horrible sadness.
I also have a child, who declares, Finn, you are DYING, many times over and over in a way that is both funny and not funny at all, but reminds me that this time, I guess this time is about the anti-avoidance. It is about witnessing and being present and holding space and being compassionate as I flail about wanting to do anything possible to change what is.
Losing Finn. Unimaginable. My relationship with him opened my heart to risking true connection, true relationships. My choice to first seek him out at the shelter, and then bring him home as a companion… a companion who spent the first year torturing me with nights of fierce attacks on my feet and head, of knocking things off, of being almost entirely nocturnal and naughty.
My ordered life needed to be knocked about, broken open. I needed randomness, chaos, Finn. I needed this once enormous now skin and bones being.
And now, here I am, facing the loss of his amazing companionship. days maybe, or maybe weeks. It is just so raw.
