The Price and Promise of Love

We do what we can with what we have and what we know, but there eventually comes a time when “everything” just isn't enough. There are no easier or better ways to go through this loss. Over the years, I've lost fur-kin suddenly and slowly. Sometimes I've been there, and sometimes I haven't. The pain is the same.

Someone will always say that the pain goes away in time, but that's really not true. Still, time is our friend because we do heal and regain perspective. When pain is fresh, it dominates everything else until, over time, we reabsorb the new pain back into our whole being. In digesting the pain, it mixes with all the joys and pains that we have accumulated over the years, and so even though the pain remains, we don't feel it so acutely. That also means that we can once again remember the joys, and and recognize that it's only the depth of the joy that makes the pain feel so bad when it comes.

Memories will be bittersweet since joy is never fully separate from the pain of loss, but eventually, the joy dominates once again. That's the promise of love. We may swear to never let ourselves love again because of the pain, just as I long ago swore that no more cats would enter my life.

Cats don't listen to us, of course, and since that vow we've gained and lost Lance, Al, and Buddy. We've added and still share with Glyph, Brulee, Ariel, Roto, Rooter, Bianca, Berlioz, Raucous, Bob, Charli, Dapper, and Natasha, along with the assorted strays we've fed. Sometimes, I look at one of them and feel a bit of the loss from the past and the loss that I know will come, but I'd never give up the joy they bring us.

We can never do all that we would like for them, and the price of love is sorrow. The best that we can do is swallow the pain like medicine while sipping the joy like wine and keeping the heart open for the fur-kin we have and those who are looking for us. The price is bitter medicine, indeed, but like wine, the joy ages so very well and eventually dilutes that bitter taste until it's once again the joy that we taste and feel most. I'll pay the price because I've also learned that the promise is kept.