Entry Penned Beginning
Tuesday January 21st 2025 C.E
14:27 GMT+11
The last few days have been a combination of truly pleasant and heartbreaking.
This last weekend I got to spend some time in Melbourne, the city I used to work in and spend much of my time. Being able to show so many of the little places that meant so much to me to my eldest, Vincent, was joyous.
One of the things about Melbourne I have missed so very much has been the food and so we had Yum Cha as well as a number of different snacks and so on. Even the simple act of walking the street of the city I called home for so long was such a joy, although my feet have subsequently reminded me that I am not used to walking 14 miles in dress shoes anymore.
At the end of the weekend was the farewell as two of my family headed off to Thailand, one for a couple of weeks and the other a couple of months. I love that we are getting these chances and can have these experiences, yet their absence is still profound in a hundred little ways every day. Of course there is a joy in that as well, knowing that when we see each other again there will be new stories to share.
Perhaps the hardest part for me is that in their absence one of out cats has passed on and I keenly feel the absence of the comfort they provide.
Flame was old, very old, for a cat, and had been flirting with death so often I think I truly believed he might yet out live me. It pains me knowing that he passed without me there, without any two legs sitting deathwatch with him. I do know that he was not alone; his big sister, Spark, crossed that bridge long ago and in the way of cats she always walks where she will so I know that she was with him on this next step. Yet I cannot help but feel like I let him down by not being there for him at the end of this part of his journey.
Flame was a part of my life for 17 years and he collected so many kennings along the way; he was the little leap for his graceful jumps once he learnt how to jump after months of scrambling everywhere because he didn’t know how to jump. He was the musical mew for his sweet little meows, he was Flame the Paladin for his stubborn relentlessness and his tendency to try to lay on paws to help people when they felt sick.
The coming days will see a lot of work for us here, but all in good cause and taking us along the next steps both of this vacation and on our longer journey; but not today. Today I will sit with my grief, I acknowledge my loss and I remember the good times.
I miss you Mr Flame, thank you for walking this far with me. It has been an honour to be a part of your forever home and I will see you again my old friend, but I hope not too soon; until then I hope that the cream is fresh and plentiful and the catnip everlasting.
-Robert James-Noonan O’Wayreth
Leave a Reply