That which doesn’t kill you makes you funnier.

January 23, 2010

Every winter we doubt spring will come. But sure as anything one morning we will wake up wearing a hat and mitts and then by afternoon we’ll be wearing shorts and applying sunscreen. Climate Change has almost made spring obsolete. Almost cut out this transition season.

But I love spring. Spring brings flower buds and new ideas and the bunny who brings candy. You have to admit that was one fertility story that went horribly askew. I never really bought the Easter Bunny Neither did my daughter. When she was about seven she came up to me and said, “Mommy the Easter Bunny doesn’t make sense. A rabbit couldn’t hop around the world in one night delivering eggs.”

I thought ‘This is a smart kid. She’s from my side of the family.” I was about to spill the jelly-beans and tell her the whole truth, but within a split second she turned to me and said, “Yes the rabbit would’ve definitely needed a magic chicken.” Of course he would have. Definitely.

But the point of this story is my daughter needed a magic chicken. I needed a wild cat to bring me hope. Two years ago, I went through a long dark patch. I could call it a dark night of the soul, but it was an entire season. Dark when you woke up, dark all-day and dark when you went to bed. Even my SAD light was depressed. My kids had left. My marriage had ended. I was shook to the core.

When your kids leave its called empty nest syndrome. We need to call things syndromes so we can get a prescription. But having no man in your life there is no medication for that, no Patch you can purchase. In fact all you get when your marriage ends is unsolicited advice. One camp says don’t worry you’ll find somebody. Another says you don’t need anybody. Yet another group say don’t leave it too long. I guess we’re like cars. We need to take them out for a spin or we’ll seize up.

But then there are great friends like Rachel who said, “You are grieving. This is just loss –there’s nothing wrong with you. In fact there is a course you can take from a Buddhist temple in L.A. called There’s Nothing Wrong with You.” (She wasn’t making this up. You can Google it.) Apparently, I could pay big bucks to go to California to find out there’s nothing wrong with me.

In the middle of this dilemma, the kicker was my dog had to be put down. Most people sigh a big horrible sigh when I say this. They are fine with the kids going, and the man leaving but the dog dying really gets to them. It got to me too. It was like I was trapped in a country and western song and I couldn’t get out. I couldn’t do anything but make soup: pots and pots of soup. Packages and packages of soup lined up in my freezer, in alphabetical order. I would sometimes just look open the door and count the Baggies.

The only place I could keep it together was at work. I had to travel from hamlet to suburb being funny, I realized I could turn on the charm for about as long as it took for the audience to clap, collect the cheque and get to the car. By the time I turned on the ignition I’d be bawling again. We humans should’ve come equipped with windshield wipers on our eyeballs.

During this time I began talking to my cats but I got nothing back. See, cats are a lot like drunks. They go out for three days and act like it’s your fault that you expected them home for dinner. I often wondered what ‘is that cat thinking?” but any thing that stand there picking at the fabric the way they do over and over again is not thinking about much. They don’t ruminate. They have OCD.

Then one night I heard something banging on the door. I thought it was the cat who usually knocks on the door but no, it was standing right beside me. So I went outside and snuck around to the garage and saw a grey ball of fur with a pink thing on its head. As I drew closer I saw it had an empty cat can stuck on its head. A feral cat had gotten into the garage and got its head stuck in a pink can of Mr. Whiskas, and it was freaking out. So I took a broom and tried to knock it off but it didn’t help.

Then I called my neighbours and said, “ I’ve a feral cat in my garage with a can on its head”

“ Have you been drinking,” they asked.

“No, there is a cat with a can on its head and its going to die.”

“So! its a feral cat” On Amherst Island the place is crawling with wild cats.
 So, after a few more attempts to get the can off I concluded I would have to let it die. When I went to bed I began talking to myself.

“I never wanted to be Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. I am not a character off of Little House on The Prairie. I am 52 and I’m alone, but wisdom isn’t honoured in this society. There is no TV show called, “Canada’s Next Top Crone. And I don’t want to be old. I don’t want to wear a red hat, or go on a bus trip.”

The next morning I got up and got the shovel to bury the dang dead cat I knew would be waiting for me out in that garage. But when I opened the door there it was. Sitting there without a can on its head. I’ve never been so happy to see something alive—I looked at the cat and suddenly had an epiphany. I thought, “Life is like this. Sometimes we get a pink cat can stuck on our heads and we run around trying to get it off but if we just relax its all okay.”

It may not sound like ‘an a ha’ moment but for me it was almost as grand as when Scrooge raced through the streets on Xmas Day yelling Merry Christmas one and all. I was so filled with love for that blasted cat I bent down and petted it.

And it scratched me to shreds because that’s what a wild cat does. Then I went to the hospital because I thought I had cat scratch fever, and they gave me a tetanus shot and said, “Go on home. There is nothing with you.”

And I said, “I knew that. “

See I didn’t need to take a course to find out that loss is not a disease. It’s part of being human, and there is nothing to do except go through it. The dark winter ends, the spring comes, the magic chicken helps the Easter Bunny get the chocolate delivered.

More importantly the cat incident taught me two very important lessons. One, always wash out the cat cans before you recycle them. And two, that which doesn’t kill you makes you funnier.

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Categories: That which doesn't Kill makes you funnier |

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