Posted by Klokka on September 20, 2004, at 21:55:33
In reply to Re: My cat (long, ranty) » Klokka, posted by artemiss on September 20, 2004, at 18:17:05
Artemis,
Thank you for the kind words. I can't believe it's been over a month since all of this happened. The grief, when not hushed by the stress of everyday life, is just as fresh now. I still find myself looking for him, expecting to see him when I walk in the door... it's been especially rough now that depression's kicking in for the winter, because I turned to him for comfort far more than I realized. I'm still haunted by the memories... and by the dreams which came before it. My pdoc asked me to record my dreams over the break so we could discuss them later, and I was just reading them over... the role my mother plays in the two I wrote down, in light of what happened just days later, is eerie. And the dreams after have been awful. I'll dream he's somehow alive, my parents just took him away for a little while as punishment but it was okay now... and when I realize I'm dreaming don't have the logic to grasp that maybe what I'm dreaming isn't true, so I wake up foolishly expecting to see him curled up on my bed. When I'm more detached I can remember more fondly, but everything I look back on is so tainted by the circumstance of his death. It didn't have to happen!
It's sad to hear when animals are thrown away like that, especially when the cause of the problem is inaction on the part of people anyway. I can appreciate the feeling of being glad your cat is away from family who would harm her. I'm approaching the age where I could move out, and I remember thinking for weeks before what happened about how I might justify and manage taking my cat with me when I left. I felt more certain that I wanted to take him with me, when in thinking over it before, I thought I could handle either situation. I remember his last vet visit just two weeks before, for allergies... he was changing his diet, for crying out loud, how could they condemn him for normal digestive upset? Maybe I changed the food too fast, maybe -I- condemned him. I remember the hope that he would get better, have a few more good years ahead of him, preparing myself for the possibility of him needing medication if his weight wasn't reduced, thinking of ways to pay if my parents refused... vain hope. Is that all there is?
Wow, I wasn't expecting tovent like that. It's really strange how suddenly this comes up. I think I need to bring this up again in therapy, at the beginning of the session before a topic more prone to make me too uncomfortable to be emotional comes up.
poster:Klokka
thread:378586
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/grief/20040811/msgs/393183.html