Jackson

Some blogger I turned out to be. After all the moaning I did about universal health care you'd think I'd have weighed in when it was finally, finally passed. So here's me weighing in: whew. It ain't all I hoped for, but it are something, a "big fucking deal," as Joe B. would say. Did say.

My granddaugher continues to delight, amaze, and occasioinally tax her Nana and Grandpa. Yesterday, she made up for all the taxing with an original song about how much she loves her Nana and our lunches together 3 days a week. So you can see that I am doomed. Just doomed. I love her so.

Today, though, I feel like writing about my tom cat, Jackson. Jackson is dying. Formerly a 20+ pound, yet sleek, powerhouse of a feline, he is just a frail wisp. We've stopped weighing him. His lustrous black coat is thin and dryish, an enormous, horrible, inoperable tumor bulges from his abdomen on one side, threatening to topple him. His kidneys are weakening, and his anemia seems to have reached a point of no return. We are alert for the day when he does topple, can't rise, can't walk. It nears.

But right now he gamely trots out to the back fence of our yard at every opportunity, and lays dreamily in the sun and breeze. When we call to him he comes, quite simply, and the love, trust, and effort that takes each time is almost more precious than I can bear. Though he sometimes seems lost, confused, and unsure of what to do next, hearing his name in our voices always brings him back to us. It breaks my heart that he will soon go where our voices no longer hold such sway.

He's changed a lot physically and behaviorally. This morning I found him sleeping in the litter box. Night before last he pooped on our bed. Always a big foodie, he eats like a bird now, if at all. His lover's eyes remain as seductive and insistent as ever, though. I hold his little skeleton in my arms, those flecked green eyes seek mine, and a gentle purr vibrates from his heart to mine.

Fourteen years feels to me like a pretty short stay, but it seems that's all Jackson has been given. I think he's had a good life. And now that I'm 61, death doesn't seem quite so foreign and far away as it once did. Where Jackson goes soon, I will also go before too long a time. However unreasonably, I hold out the hope that we will meet again. I don't know anything, of course, except that we are going to miss him so very much.

Our sweet boy.