I was listening to my card reading on Friday and he said that I would get an apology that day.  I’d been working on a tough case with another team for nearly two days, and in the midst of that, one of the team reached out later at night and I had missed the text—it was unusual for her to reach out regardless so I replied back as soon as was reasonable.  When I saw it the next morning and responded, I got a message back that something had happened with one of her animals.  I felt awful and we talked through what she was going to do next.  Later in the day we were still working through the case and when it resolved I asked her what was going on with the cat, and thank goodness, all was ok.  I knew that she had lost one of her other cats right after we lost Loki so as we were discussing what happened with this new kitten, I asked her to tell me what happened with the last cat –and she did.  Her experience was just as traumatic as it was with my cat and I understood she had significant guilt over how it played out in her house just as I did with mine.  Through tears we both said how sorry we were for the loss and she added, “I had never really liked cats before but now I completely understand how you felt.” 

That was enough for me to qualify as an apology.  See, when I had lost Loki, I was beyond emotional about it and I still tried my best to keep it under control but I was so upset I at least needed to let the group know why I was upset.  So hearing her say she finally understood it made me understand that they didn’t get it at the time and there was probably significant shit talking at the time.  Look, I would never wish that type of loss on anyone, and frankly I was hurt by the lack of support from friends closer than my coworkers.  I had kept the information as casual as I could at work and still had eyes on me thinking I was nuts.  But I lost my cat first and went through it without support from the people closest to me—and then it started happening to them and when it did, the story/demeanor/behavior changed– as soon as it happened to them, it was different.  The support I never got flowed freely toward others experiencing the same thing.  Sometimes things happen so people can understand how others feel, and sometimes happen so we understand who is real for us, who is really there for us.  Sometimes things happen as they do for reasons we don’t understand, including apologies that lead to understanding between people we aren’t sure would ever understand us.  Life isn’t always easy and it doesn’t always make sense, but it always comes together as it is meant to.