Fall and Honey

Fall is here. I don’t know why they wait until September 21 to call it autumn. I can feel it weeks before. I always sense it first in the sky: the light gets low and melancholy long before the temperature drops and the leaves fall. I sensed it as early as the end of August. It feels like earth must hit a particularly sharp curve in its lap around the sun, where it loses more time each day than in, say, June or July.  I'm not an astronomer, just guessing.  At any rate, I could sense it from Labor Day, that low achingly sad light in the afternoon sky, the slow slipping down of the temperature.

And now, finally the leaves are beginning to fall (what leaves actually fall in LA). The pepper trees shed their seeds, the maples are beginning to turn. And our wisteria vine is losing its leaves.  I've only now been willing to go into the back yard.  The gladiolas died off completely, but I haven’t had the will to pull them from the ground. I haven’t been able to go into the back yard. There’s too much of Honey back there.

I've always loved fall the best: that time to be thoughtful and beautifully melancholy.  It prompts a time to reflect, take stock, then hunker down and get to work. It's no surprise to me that the Jewish New Year and the Day of Atonement occur in the fall.  Except this has been a particularly sad season. Too much loss this summer; so I'm not appreciating the melancholy of autumn this year. (Then again, if the sun were blazing happily above me I might resent it mocking my sadness).

I haven’t watered in the yard since the day before Honey died.  I'd been “gone” working on a movie for nearly a month: either pulling 16 hour days in town, or gone completely on the road. That Friday was my first real day off. So I went out into the back yard to pull the dead gladiola flowers off their stalks. Honey padded over, trilling “burrup” the whole way. She kneaded her paws into the grass, then lay down at my feet and rolled over. I sat down and petted her for a while, then scooped her up, held her for a while and brought her inside. Thank God I did.

Just a few days before I’d groomed her, which she enjoyed. In retrospect, I must admit that thought that crossed my mind, “if she Is in pain, this must be a welcome distraction, t his pleasure she has in getting groomed.” I’d noticed her complain when I picked her up the wrong way. I worried she had some undiscovered mass, but when Larry took her into the vet, he said he didn’t feel any masses at all, and her blood work was fine. So I was lulled into believing. Still, grooming her a few days before I wondered … if she did in fact feel any kind of pain, perhaps the grooming made her feel better. Funny, the thoughts which float over the transom of your mind. Funny how you wish they’d lodged in your brain and made you pay attention. Made you ready.

Thank God I scooped her up that day. Thank God I’d made sure she went to sleep on our bed that night. It would all be over ad she would be gone less than 24 hours later. Thank God for one last memory of Honey.

Death turns everything into an affront. I winced at the violets in the window box: “How dare you go on living? How is it you can still be here, pulling life out of that soil and she’s gone?” I remember feeling that way when my father died. How could people go on, driving their cards and shopping for food and bickering and, well, living?! How could they go on living like the world was the same; when it was so horribly altered? That’s what it felt like when my father died. That’s how it felt when Honey died.

Every time I went out into the back garden it ached; it hurt from her absence. Today I walked down to the bottom of the garden and noticed how ragged the roses had become, rust on the leaves and trapped with spider webs. I didn’t care. Let them die for now. Maybe I’ll think about the roses in spring.

There have been more tears for Honey than I've shed for anyone else, and it was more than my midsection could handle. Everything from my neck to my pelvis hurt. My arms hurt. That was an odd, my arms hurting from grief. Like something had been ripped from them and the vacant space just made them ache.  The hole she left made my arms hurt. My chest hurt from crying. My heart hurt. Everything hurt.

There were things to put away or to hide: bags of catnip, her scratching post, her winter bed and her summer pillow. I couldn’t even throw away the unopened cat litter I’d bought just a week. Larry got rid of the things he could see, but there were always more things to find. More things to remind you of a friend who’s been with you for what seems like most of your adult life. I had to reach back into memory to recall a moment before she had been around. She was in every place I lived for the past 13 years: the first place I got by myself, where I drank my way into sorrow and then got her to heal my way into sobriety. The house in New York, where I moved when she was only two years old. That house had about eight women come and go over the course of five years. They all knew Honey. And then there were all those house-sits and sublets and flats I’d lived in up until the day I got married. I couldn’t bring my mind to recall that last studio apartment I lived in alone. Because I didn’t live there alone; I lived there with Honey.

A friend emailed me. She recalled the writing groups we had at my house, and remembered how Honey plopped herself in the middle of the room, or the table, or the couch, and made sure she was part of the group. She was special, that cat. That soul. That little girl I loved so well. And miss so much.

I miss her more than I miss my father; perhaps more than I will miss my mother when she goes. My mother has been leaving us, bits at a time, to the point that there’s little left of her. I marvel to think she stood up and watched me get married four years ago. She can’t walk anymore. She doesn’t remember anything. When Mom goes, of course I will cry and miss her. I’ll ask Mom to look for Honey when she gets there. I’ll ask Mom to tell Honey I miss her.

I tell that to God a lot: that I miss Honey, and that will he please let Honey know that. I’m more than convinced she’s made it to heaven. She’d make it before I would. She never sinned or disappointed God or told him to “go away,” the way I had done. She was just her true, loving self: more of a completed soul than I’ll ever be this side of heaven. But I wonder what she knows, what she sees? Does she ask around, “where’s Susan? When is she going to be here?” I pray she finds my friends and family and they look after her until I arrive.

You don’t really notice when grief finally leaves. It just gets a little easier every day. I don’t recall when I stopped crying every day. But I did. Still, all I need is a little prompting. Just last week I was sitting in a coffee shop and cried. Larry and I were sitting at the kitchen table, and I noticed her waxy ear-mark on the corner of the fridge. I had to stop eating. Her collar hangs on my corkboard, next to the many photos I finally had printed off my computer. The collar hangs in such a spot that my lamp usually obscures it. But I moved the lamp just a few moments ago, and there it was: the black braid, the gentle bell, the tag with her name and my phone number that told people to whom she belonged. Only once in her life did someone have to call me. I’d been working all day, and Honey had been sitting out on the front lawn, waiting for me to get home. The kind neighbor called to let me know “your cat is on the lawn, looking around.” I came home soon after. I remember several nights back at that last apartment, coming home late, and seeing her little silhouette next to the driveway. Patiently waiting. She never strayed beyond the parkway. Never once saw her run across a street. She knew where home was. Home was the only place she wanted to be, except when I wasn’t there. And now it’s hard for me to be home, when she isn’t here.

Our dog is little comfort. He’s young and arrogant, and he’s Larry’s dog. He adores Larry; he only tolerates me. I’m still his biggest competition and he lets me know it. It’s tiring. I want my cat.

Larry and I talk about getting another dog, mostly for Wally to have a playmate to run around with all day. Cut down on our doggie day care bills. Larry says, “We don’t need to get another corgi. Get the kind of dog you want.”
I say, “I want a cat.”

My friend Katherine has had many cats. She grieved over the loss of every one of them; but there was one special cat. Miles. Katherine has never forgotten Miles. Katherine says you never heal adequately until you get another cat. Maybe we'll get a dog for Thanksgiving. Maybe I'll get a cat for Christmas.

But it's only September. I’m not ready.