We got Loki’s ashes back yesterday evening and the profoundness will never escape me.  How can an entire life, all the energy, the love, the looks, the weight of an entire being be reduced to a bag of grey ash?  There is so much to life and in the end that is how we all end up.  We want to talk about the ripple effect, that is it at its finest.  Action is profound.  Connection even more so.  Energy is unparalleled.  Energy forms those connections and motivates the actions and interactions we have with others.  It doesn’t matter how big the physical being, their impact can reach out and touch us for ages.  Of course there are people who understand the depth of a relationship with an animal but I am aware that there are some who don’t feel that way—that is fine.  For me, this is a before and after moment.  The reason this has hit so deeply is because 1. It was unexpected on every level and 2. I’ve never experienced the level of connection and understanding with any other creature like I have with that cat.  When I talk about in sync with every one, that animal was almost supernatural in identifying need—right up until the end.  The last night we had together, he pulled himself out of that carrier to come to bed and I picked him up and put him in the bed.  I wrapped around him and held his paw like I always did and he put his entire face in my hand.  I’ve held his face before but this was different.  I knew he knew that was it.  I knew he was in pain and he didn’t come out of that carrier entirely for himself—it was for me.

Cats are notorious for hiding their symptoms and I feel he did that for us too.  He has been around all of this turmoil for a while and every night he came to us and made sure we were calm and centered with him.  He did that for myself, my husband, and my son.  EVERY day when I’d get home, no matter what time it was, no matter where he was in the house, he would come and greet me.  He tried his best to do everything he always did-until he couldn’t.  He didn’t want to let us know he was sick because he was taking care of us.  Animals operate differently.  They act on instinct and they have 0 ego with anything.  For those who aren’t cat people, I just want to assure you that they absolutely form bonds like any other animal and for those they love, they do anything.  Maine Coons are particularly well known to form these bonds with their people and that was my Loki.  I know at the end of the day I gave as much to him as he gave to me.  I always protected him no matter what.  I got up in the middle of the night to syringe feed him, to give him water, I took him to all of the vet appointments, I begged for help to fix him.  In the end it wasn’t enough.  In the end he simply put his head in my hand and went to sleep.      

It’s hard for the brain to reconcile what we know we have felt with something when all we see is a pile of ash.  We know that life was so much more than that.  But all we get back is ash in a box.  Time will heal all of this and the pain will continue to lessen—that is the gift of time.  But this will happen again and again as it is the nature of life.  We are here briefly, some even briefer than others—and no amount of time would ever be enough for those bonds like I’m describing here.  So the lesson really becomes about appreciating what we have while we are here and being fully present.  The fact that we are reduced to ash is somewhat poetic in that the physical is never a real representation of the energy something carries.  What we see is no match for what we feel, and even in death, the echoes of a life lived are still felt far and wide.  The pain gets easier but the absence is always there—so the brain finds ways to carry that energy with us.  My little box holds the ash of a life that I will always remember and appreciate—the first time I held him, when I named him, when he first slept in my bed, when he met my son, when he sat on my lap and I cried a million times, the way he curled up with me at night, the way he gave me his paw, his purr, the actual weight of him (he was big lol), the way he played, how he crossed his paws, how he stared to let you know what he wanted (and somehow you always knew exactly what he was saying), all of that.  It will always be there.  So don’t let the ash confuse the significance of a life we shared: let it hold the weight of the love we felt and the memories.  Let it be as big as it needs to be in our hearts even if it only holds a little space on our shelf.