i have just finished reading a chapter of Gretchen Rubins ‘The Happiness Project” quietly turning the pages as my husband tries to sleep beside me. i’m quite annoying like that really, i like to go to bed later than him. I need either a good book to read to get me there earlier (true !) or i need to be really tired.
He goes to bed earlier and needs his sleep, i can go a few days on little sleep until it ‘hits’ me. sometimes can be a recipe for disaster, on both accounts.
anyways, i lay there trying to be sleepy, since it is sleeping time (apparently). i’m not sure if anyone else feels this way, but sometimes a feel sleep is such a waste of time. but then i know i actually do need it. surprise, surprise. the reported wind is swiftly battering at our house, successfully helping to keep me awake.
as i lay in my bed trying to bring on sleep, my thoughts drift to last year, 2012, which in my mind was the worst year of our lives. a year that i chose to not have ever existed….that feels like a gross understatement. i then take a moment to ponder that in actual fact, it probably had the potential to have been worse.
it began in January when my dearest, beloved Grandmother, passed away while my husband and i were overseas. this was heart breaking for me on so many levels, but heightened by the fact that we had left our children in New Zealand while we were in Europe for 4 weeks. They were my representatives at my Grandmothers funeral. They did me proud.
There were some small blobs of happiness like when i took my daughter to the Taylor Swift concert up in Auckland. This was a lovely weekend , but also revealed much sadness too.
We “lost” our daughter to the mental illness of obsessive compulsive disorder early on in the year, and this was just the beginning of “2012, the year that never existed”. we didn’t think it could get any worse. we were wrong.
My son had a great year of sport and was fortunate enough to travel to Lower Hutt and attend Rangers FC Club Academy. And travel to Wellington for another of his passions, Futsal.
As the year progressed, I pulled on all the powers that were available to me. i was going to need everything i had and more.
i had a new mantra “When Everything Changes, Change Everything”. Things had to change, and i had to be the change.
life continued on the very rocky road that we had been thrown on. i didn’t like it, and i didn’t want to be travelling on it. period.
i went through all the stages of grief, more than once. i thought i was being really smart and jumped 3 stages and went straight to acceptance. i thought i was so clever, until i realised that i was going back over those i had bypassed. me, not so smart.!
A lot of the year was a blur, a bit like childbirth, my brain seems to be able to filter useful information and not so useful. quite thankful i think.
As the year was coming to an end, things changed. Nothing was predictable, it was out of my control.
to end ‘the year that never existed”, our beloved family Cat, Anthony became sick with stomach cancer and thyroid problems. she had been a wonderful, wonderful cat, and i cry often as she is no longer with us. we were totally unselfish and had her put down. i wanted to be kind to her, and to remember her beautiful little face as our gorgeous loyal cat whom had been with us for 12 years. We had no idea how old she was, but estimated she was about 17 years old. she was the Grandmother. My children loved her, my daughter misses her as do i.
this is the prayer that i read, as we buried her in our garden…..
Poem For Cats
And God asked the feline spirit
Are you ready to come home?
Oh, yes, quite so, replied the precious soul
And, as a cat, you know I am most able
To decide anything for myself.
Are you coming then? asked God.
Soon, replied the whiskered angel
But I must come slowly
For my human friends are troubled
For you see, they need me, quite certainly.
But don’t they understand? asked God
That you’ll never leave them?
That your souls are intertwined. For all eternity?
That nothing is created or destroyed?
It just is….forever and ever and ever.
Eventually they will understand,
Replied the glorious cat
For I will whisper into their hearts
That I am always with them
I just am….forever and ever and ever.
YouR DinneRs in my StoMach 