Half a Story · 9:49pm Oct 10th, 2014
My cat's name was Ron--Ron Wheezy or Foul Ole Ron when he was a kitten, but just Ron when he got older (and once we found the right food for him). Ron turned seven sometime around the beginning of September, and I expected to have him in my life for another decade, at least.
His death came suddenly. On Sunday, he was fine. On Monday, he was a little wobbly, and at about 2 AM Tuesday morning, he fell off the bed and lay there looking defeated. At 8 AM we took him to the vet, who found an ear infection and sent us home with topical and oral antibiotics. On Tuesday evening, we dosed him. When we pulled him out of where he'd hidden himself for his Wednesday night dose, he was unresponsive, paddling his paws, and stiff.
We rushed back to the emergency vet, and he spent Wednesday night hooked up to IV antibiotics, steroids, and valium in an oxygen chamber. I got, perhaps, four hours of sleep. On Thursday morning--just yesterday, really?--we went to pick him up, to take him to the vet school and have a CT scan done. He died before they could load him for us. They sent us home with an imprint of his paw in Model Magic and an empty carrier.
He left behind the story that we were writing with him, and I find myself sorting through pages of drafts that will never be used. The scene where he first encounters wild turkeys in the yard. The scene where he sniffs a new baby with his eyes wide. The scene where a small child learns to pet the kitty nicely. The scene at the end, penciled in for chapters and chapters down the line, that was supposed to involve us holding him as the vet released him from whatever age-related malady finally closed his book.
It does occur to me that perhaps I spend too much time dissecting and discussing stories, thinking about it like that. But then, wiser men than me have said that stories are what make up the human world. Stories are how we tell ourselves what is right and wrong, what is fair, and what is finished. Building stories to fence in the world may be the one thing you can describe as the elusive 'universal human experience'.
Right now, I have a story that's been chopped off in the middle. I look at what we ended up with and find myself sputtering, "That can't be all--that's not 'The End', it's just... the end." The broken narrative is a spot where the world has wiggled free of the system I've built to understand it, and it leaves me with no framework to take in and process what has happened.
Inevitably, though, I'll end up building a new story, salvaged from the wreck and made of the pieces I got to keep. That corner of the world will end up with a new fence around it, and a certain order and understanding will return. I don't know yet if it will be a tragedy, a cautionary tale, one of those heartstring-pullers revolving around a terminally ill person, or something else--the only requirement, for it to really represent healing, is that I don't cast myself as the villain in the piece.
And yes, narcissists build the world into a series of self-inserts starring themselves as Mary Sue.
It's so hard not to see the world as stories, when you write so many. I keep looking for the moment when the thing happens that resolves everything, that little epilogue at the end of this tragedy that lets the main character accept what has happened and find peace with it. Every little thing gets grasped and tilted and turned to see if it fits into the plot hole that terrible, messy reality has left in my life. Could the bit where I somehow found I already had a statue with orange eyes, just his color, be it? Maybe sharing the memorial statue with everyone will be it? Or if I talk it out with the right person, they'll have the perfect thing to say, but who would that be, and what could they say that would actually help? If I say the right sort of prayer, can God comfort me, and that will be it? I look, and look, but nothing seems to actually fit into the hole, yet I can't stop trying to make something fit, somehow.
That part, where you you have one last good cry and then everything is okay, happens right after the tragic part, doesn't it? It's supposed to, you don't go on and write another story before you resolve this one, surely.
Sometimes I think stories are just another form of religion, trying to claim life has order and purpose. I dunno. Maybe they are. Sorry this happened..
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Well, that's the old chestnut, right? What is the difference between a myth and a god, except for faith?
And thank you, BH. I'll owe you a hug for next BronyCon, and with no shivs.