I answered, “Love death!”
She laughed.
We do, we will, we want to.
The whole thing began when my wife broached the topic of a new name for the cat.
“Yep, we need a new name,” I said. The cat has had a good six or eight names in it’s life already so why not switch again. In the beginning we called her “Babies,” because she was the runt of the litter, the most baby of the baby kittens.
Here at the end, “Death” also fits nicely – – because she is almost there.
As an old-old cat “Babies” or “Nina” or “Nay-Nay” or whatever she has been called, now perfectly symbolizes the final stage, so much so that recently I told my daughter that she looked like the specter of death.
Mishearing that, she started calling her the “spectrum of death.”
Bingo!
This cat is somewhere on the spectrum of death, somewhere close to the far right end.
Silhouetted against the front room window — black, matted and poky fur sticking at at odd, ungroomed angles — she looks like Halloween. When she moves her rail thin, humped old frame goes slowly. She can’t actually jump on to the bed anymore.
“Ah, poor kitty!”
She is indeed, death incarnate.
So, here at the end, we are loving “Death.” She just wants to be held, so we hold her. She just wants to be on someone, so she is on us.
This makes for the hilarious, the ridiculous, for laughter in the presence of the ultimate unwanted.
We live with Death and the Spectrum of Death lives in our house.
And so we hold Death.
We wash Death.
We feed Death.
We comfort Death.
And we will love Death to the end!
Poor Death!
Thrive! 