Monday, December 14, 2009

Why?

Let's see...Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance.

I'd say I have one foot in bargaining and the other in depression.

Death is like a an infinite weight on my back...when I think about it, even for a little bit, the weight crushes me. It is so abstract, because no one really knows the details.  All we know is that everything that lives must die.  What happens after death is a mental free for all. 

I wish I could chop up my fear of death into bight-size little pieces. Until then, it is a concept that I cannot (or refuse to?) swallow.

Maybe I'm just mad because the overwhelming sadness I feel about my mom and my cat bars me from accepting/understanding/not understanding death.

How do I even go to see my cat tomorrow? It is simple- spend time with her. Everytime I look at her, though, I just see this huge clock, and every tick-tock is one second less that I will have her in my life.

Friday, December 11, 2009

Laments

My cat is dying. That is, she has 6 months to a year to live. I found out today and I exploded in emotion over everything- my mom, my cat...why must everything that lives die? I selfishly want to keep every soul that touches me away from God. I want my cat to live a healthy age of forever and my mom, an eternity. That, like most other things, is out of my control. God's will is out of my control. I take comfort in knowing that I know nothing- I don't know what God's plan is, what he/she wants, what I need. If I do not know, I cannot control. Yet, my heart is still crying. There is a lump in my throat that I cannot swallow. My emotions exist. They demand that I get tattoos dedicated to my cats and my mom and that I cry and cry and cry until I have nothing left. I want a better perception of death. I want to be able to accept this natural step in the circle of life. I'm just like Oedipus or Willy Loman or Hamlet...I'm arguing with a fate I cannot fight.

Stop fighting, Kathryn.
Stop fighting, Kat.
Stop fighting, little girl.
Let go.

"Now if you suppose that there is no consciousness, but a sleep like the sleep of him who is undisturbed even by the sight of dreams, death will be an unspeakable gain. . . . Now if death is like this, I say that to die is gain; for eternity is then only a single night. But if death is a journey to another place, and there, as men say, all the dead are, what good, O my friends and judges, can be greater than this? . . . What would not a man give if he might converse with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer? Nay, if this be true, let me die again and again. . . . Above all, I shall be able to continue my search into true and false knowledge; as in this world, so also in that; I shall find out who is wise, and who pretends to be wise, and is not. . . . The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways--I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows." - Plato, from The Trial and Death of Socrates