(Bild via Pinterest)
Meine Lieben, es dauert nicht mehr lange und ich werde Mama eines kleinen, süssen Vierbeiners. Deshalb studiere ich schon jetzt wie ein Streber Erziehungsbücher und Ernährungs- und Pflegeratgeber für Hunde. In einem meiner Bände bin ich über diesen berührenden Text über das Loslassen gestolpert. Er zeigt, wie sehr der Tod zum Leben gehört... schön.
Saying Good-bye
The evening wore on, the music from the radio drifting out and enveloping us all. And with each moment, my wife and I could see that the small black kitten she held in her lap was edging even closer to death. Only a week before, we had adopted her from the animal shelter clinic where I had twice saved her life - first from the ravages of parasites, and then from the institutional procedures that required unadopted strays to be put to sleep after a certain period.
But now further postponing seemed impossible. I had done what I knw how to do and yet Miracle, as we'd dubbed her on account of her heroic, though brief, rebound, was surely on her way out.
(Lest weiter nach dem Break)
The signs were clear. Her small body grew stadily weaker and limper and her legs began to stiffen. Her eyes stared, dilated and motionless, fixed upon some awesome eternity. Occasionally she waved her head in small convulsions and feebly licked the inside of her mouth.
We had already discussed the possibilities. We could have struggled to save her all the way up to the end, violating her dignity with needles, tubes, and drugs. Or, to spare her - or maybe ourselves - the drawn-out process of dying, we could have injected her with the standard euthanasia solution, a painless passport to a quick end. Yet somehow, in that situation and with that animal, it just seemed right to let her go in her own way.
Without having to talk about it, we both knew it would be best this way. Looking at her, we realized how little we knew about the mystery of death or of life. We didn't know who or what a cat was, really.
We didn't know from where she had come or to where she would go. Yet we knew that beneath our surface differences there is a oneness, a bond uniting all living creatures. We knew that soon this graceful, highly evolved body with its tiny, perfect eyes would return to the earth, never to fulfill its promises. We thought of how we would miss her innocence, her playful grace, her courage - and a wave of sadness swept over us. Yet, what must be must be. And it was all right to be as it was.
We placed her into her sleeping box atop some warm bottles coverd with cloth and settled into bed. Gently and slowly, the darkness begann to lower us into that unknown which we all go to each night. Through the growing silence there came a few indescribable sounds - long, low half-groans, half-meaows. We reached over and felt Miracles's temperature. It was dropping.
Once, in the middle of the night, we awoke to hear another of the strange sounds, this one deeper, longer, with an air of finality.
The sunlight was streaming through the window when we awoke that morning, full of a fresh appreciation for the gift of living. We got up and looked into Miracle's box, knowing what we would find. She was indeed gone now. Her body was rigid and cold. Her eyes and mouth were open, frozen as if in surrender to some great force that had passed through her.
We found the right place to bury her, beneath a towering redwood on the edge of a nearby forest. we dug a small hole at the foot of the tree and then simply sat, silently.
The redwood was magnificent, sparkling and waving in the morning light, surging up from the earth to the sky. Into this great tree something of our small friend would pass. From form to form life would go on. We laid her body in the soil, covering it over with the tree's roots and the sweet-smelling forest loam. As we tamped down the last of it we heard a small rustling in the bushes. We turned to see.
It was a cat, watching.
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