My family has had to deal with the death of a pet and the death of a friend recently. In the pet case, we put down one of our cats (cancer), she was 11 or 12 years old. The friend had a terminal cancer diagnosis and was successful in fighting it for a long time, but got to the end of the treatment trail and died a few weeks ago.
For our cat, we worked with our vet to rule out other possible causes, but the cancer cause eventually became the dominant one. We worked to make her last days comfortable and gave her chances to be outside (we adopted her as a feral cat, and she loved sitting outside in the sun). As we approached the end, our vet had a notice on their door that they had a litter of kittens looking for a good home. We decided to get a girl kitten just before the passing of our older cat. She has turned out to be a real blessing for us – so cute, playful, and cuddly. This weekend, our male cat (we had two cats before) finally started playing with the kitten instead of hissing and batting at her. That was a real turning point.
Our friend’s funeral was this past weekend. There were 300-400 people there, almost a full church – I have never seen this many people at a funeral. The eulogy was given by our friend’s adult children (survived by his wife, two children, three grandchildren). There was so much I learned about our friend from the eulogy – I almost felt like I did not know who he was! I had sung in our church choir with him for most of the past 10-15 years. Still, I felt that he was a good friend to me, and me to him, in our way. The next day, I started crying at Mass during the communion song, it took a minute to compose myself and get back to singing. I shared this with my wife, she said it was ok to cry. I think it may happen again…
At the reception after the funeral, I visited with a number of people from our choir, remembering moments about our friend. As my wife and I started to leave, we stopped to have a hug with some choir members, and I said “See you tomorrow – 8 o’clock!”. This is when we are supposed to get to church to warm up for the 8:30am Mass. I was saying it to keep the faith, that we were dealing with sorrow and loss, but we can still get up the next morning and do the work (via Peter Rukavina), and that this was what our friend would have wanted. The other thing that I want to remember is when my friend’s wife returns to our choir, to not look away (again, via Peter Rukavina):
This doesn’t mean they won’t cry. Everything makes them cry but they are tears of loss combined with gratitude for days that are gone but not forgotten. Hold their hand, hold their gaze, hold their loss. Stay with them and for the briefest of moments make them feel less alone in their sorrow.
