Zachariah In Memoriam

We found out several months ago that our beloved cat, Zachy, 11 years old, had terminal stomach cancer.  There was really nothing to do but try to keep him comfortable and put him down when it was time.  For me, figuring out when to euthanize an animal is the hardest part.  But I had faith that we would know when the time came.  So, with a bottle of Prednizone, we went home and hoped for the best.

The steroid really seemed to help, and Zach was almost back to his normal self.  Meanwhile, we were also taking care of our daughter Fiona's three kittens.  Zach actually got along with them quite well;  in fact one, Harley, seemed to love Zach and followed him all around and slept next to him.

As the weeks went by, Zach got sicker, of course, and sat on my lap less and less. Eating became more and more difficult and he stopped grooming himself.  Finally, last week, he couldn't keep anything down.  We knew it was time.

We took him to the pet hospital and he sat on Rich's lap on the way.  When we got there, he was very calm and stoic.  We were called and went into the smaller of the two examination rooms.  As Zach lay on the table, we cradled his warm, furry body and stroked his white whiskers.  His bony spine was a ridge of tiny mountains.  Dr. Merrill came in and shaved a small patch on his leg, then inserted the first needle which put him to sleep.  He relaxed and became limp.  After the second shot, he was a rag doll with no stuffing. We buried him in the backyard next to our other cat, Sam. Deciding that today was the day was difficult, but I knew he was finally at peace.

We miss our tiny kitten (who in his prime was a huge 16 pound cat).  He was more like a dog than a cat:  he came when called, played with our dog, and led us to his food bowl.  He was always hungry!  We have many pictures of him to enjoy and he will live in our hearts forever.  Good bye Zachy.

Mom

"She passed at 7:15," the hospice nurse told us as we, my sisters and I, arrived that morning five years ago, at my mother's apartment.  We had been called a week ago to come "now" because she didn't have much longer to live.  My mother, so opinionated, precise, funny was gone, just as they had said she would.  And typical to her style, she had died on schedule the day before we were leaving.

"You might want to go in separately and spend a little time with her," the nurse suggested.  It was hard to imagine my mom not criticizing the nurse because she smoked, making jokes, cracking us up with her humor.  My sister Lynn did not want to go in, prefering to remember her as she was in life.

I decided to go into her room.  I held her cold limp hand.  The blue veins stood out under the translucent  skin, but she was still my mom.  "You were a wonderful mother," I said,  something that sounded so trite but was in fact very true.  "You did so much for me.  I am a musician because of your love of music spreading to us girls."  (My sister Amy is a public school music teacher in Pasadena.  My sister Lynn played oboe through high school and has handed down the love of music to her daughters.)  "You always had advice to give, most of it very wise and useful.  And I loved that you loved polar bears."  My mother worried about polar bears, how their habitat was vanishing.  But in her last week, she told us she didn't need to worry about them anymore.  Let someone else do that now.  Maybe that is how paradise would be for my mother, happy with the life she had lived.