It is strange how an absence of weight makes me feel heavier rather than lighter. Her warm, black-furred body, usually pressed against my hip all night, has been replaced by emptiness, weightlessness, when I reach out for her in the dark and fall into a depth of grieving I thought had passed. Perhaps that one small grief for a cat calls out to the others that are still sheltering in my heart. And maybe all they want to do is shake out their resting muscles for a while, take a walk around my bed. Still here, they say gently, proving to me, once again, that grief is the proof of great love. But this addition of a cat's life to the parade seems, for now, almost unbearable. This will pass, I know. We owe it to ourselves, the living, as well as to the memory of the dead, to turn our faces to the light of the world, remind ourselves of the joy we have gathered, the joy there is yet to be gathered.
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