Losing Molly

For fourteen years, I’ve spent my time with one of the most beautiful creatures ever created.

For fourteen years, I’ve had the privilege and luck to share my life with not only a cat, but also a familiar.

Molly.

And now, she has passed.

It’s been a quicker process than I would’ve wanted. Suddenly, she stopped eating kibbles. She became tired and went hiding in another room. Few days later, I found a lump on top of her head. That’s when I started worry, for real.

All in all, I think it’s been some ten days or so, from when I first noticed something was off with her, until she was gone.

It’s been painful. A cat like her, you don’t let go easily. She and I have had one of those really special relationships – just like I’ve had with one of my first cats, Saga, and my first dog, Ella.

Including Molly, I have lost four cats and one dog, so far. With Saga and Ella, the losses were excrutiatingly difficult for me. Saga was my first pet loss, and I was in an extremely bad shape myself.

Losing Ella turned into an identity crisis for me; with her I had to be something very specific, without her, I was something else.

When Saga and Ella passed, my grief was of the sort I found it hard to live without them. I couldn’t let them go, and tried my hardest to keep them in my present for as long as I could.

Weirdly, this is not at all how it is, losing Molly.

I’ll give myself this; I have expanded and learned about myself, I’ve turned myself into a self-regulating, mentally, emotionally and spiritually functional being. This, all by its own, has given me tools to deal with loss.

I have also been through chemo. This has taught me to leave the past behind me, so I can deal with what is right in front of me.

All these things (much of what can be read about on this blog), have made my mourning process very different this time. I am unaccostumed to letting go of someone I love as deeply as I’ve loved Molly, this quick and easy – and at the same time, grieve deeply and painfully.

I am confused.

Yet, like I told her in the last moments – I may not be perfect, but I have loved her well. Our relationship has been very, very special, to us both.

And with my view of how life, death, the universe et cetera, works, I know that we’ll be together again.

The funny thing is; yesterday while crying my eyes out, I found myself mixing up pet names between Molly and Saga. To the degree where I wondered what the hell that was about.

Late at night when I went to sleep, I recieved an image of Molly and Saga together, and I realized that they clicked together in a way that made me think that they belong together, somehow.

I think that they are either two halves of a whole, or maybe twin sisters or something. Whatever their relationship is or has been, it felt like they’d been looking for each other without knowing it, and now they are where they’re supposed to be – together.

For some reason, that makes me feel a lot better.

Especially since I also know that I’ll be with them one day, too.

And not only them. Ella, Sotis and Zoe will be there, as will Boyo, and all future animals who’ll be in my life.

I am fortunate.