Gratitude

So there I was this morning, finally mopping the kitchen floor, something I've avoided since signing the permission form for my cat's extermination. "Euthanasia permission form", it was called. I am a moggy murderer. He pulled his front leg away as hard as he could as he saw the needle approach, but was too frail to do more.

I feel like such a cow. It doesn't seem to matter, from this perspective, that as his system shut down the poisons building up would get further into his little brain and cause him fits and all sorts of yucky side effects. There is no palliative care, for cats.

Anyway, the sight of his muddy paw prints from the cat flap to his bowl, then the discovery of cat biscuits that he'd scattered under the fridge, all caused me a moment of self pity and tearfulness, for which I was grateful. Although my youngest daughter has cried every night, since his loss (she used to take him to bed with her for half an hour or so), I haven't managed a wet eye of my own since that day.

I took the opportunity, then, when the floodgates creaked open this morning, to have a proper wallow.

And then DOH got in touch.

He's trying to postpone a 7-week training course he has to take, half way up the country - this morning he was sent notice that one of his best friends at work (DOH is on secondment right now) is losing a battle with cancer and has only weeks to live. The funeral and the currently scheduled training course will clash.

Damn, but how to take the wind out of your sails, your lungs - how to take the blood from your arms and the bones from your legs.

I am so, so grateful. Things, creatures, people are so fleeting, so transitory, and yet, if we're lucky, as we hurtle through, we get to be touched by them, we get to have fond thoughts of them and to know the world is good, because of them. And even when it hurts like hell, sacrificing that connection is just not worth thinking about.

And now, for posting this, I am late for work. But who cares - some things make others pale into insignificance, and that's what life's all about.