In the turmoil of sleep - five million images, emotions and voices clashing - struggling to reach the surface of consciousness, comes the warm tractor of whiskers, nuzzling, sniffing. The amazing feeling of love that bounds the connecting forces between us in that moment instills such deep profundity that can only spell out healing. To be remembered, to be wanted, to be needed. To open an eye groggily and meet that yellow green slit peering curiously back, and in meeting, she proffers her pink nose forward to meet my own nose.
The compassion of my kitten in the last few days works wonders in my slow recovery. Those who might doubt that a cat could not experience such sentiments would need to know that, while yes, it is usual for her to be rather selfish: demanding pampering, endless fighting to escape the embracing arms of human -- she has negated these actions for that of affection. Endlessly her little snout has presented itself to be loved, and in so doing, providing her own love.
And in being needed, there arises that deeply entrenched proclivity of human nature: to mother. The state of parenthood -- and here I pause for she sits beside me talking away to me in her own language, something she has been doing these several days -- is something which beckons in us this inexplicable sense of purpose.
Mortality is the theme that has invaded my mind in these last days. To try to explain so many ruminations about it, I am at a severe loss. But to pass on, and have no new blood behind - lacking a state of parenthood - and have an entire family line just disappear, that is something that occurred to me quite starkly one day. In the midst of all generations coming together to witness that loss, one looks around and thinks, where do we go from here? Where do we continue on from? Who will be us when we are all ashes and dust, when we have embraced the spectre of death, in generations ahead - will we be none?
