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