I remembered the comment of an acquaintance of mine who found me sobbing in my car in the parking lot a few days previously.

“Get a grip,” she had said. “He was only a cat.”

The words reverberated through my head. Only a cat. Only a cat. Only a cat.

Cautiously, like a child pulling a scab from her knee, compelled by a mixture of pain and fascination, I began to recall the last three months of my life. The last three months of McTavish’s life.

What made my grief almost unbearable was the added weight of guilt and self-blame. Remorse, heavier and more toxic, would come later. Having just received my bachelor’s in alternative animal medicine, I was about to begin my graduate studies in veterinary homeopathy but was unsure if I was worthy to continue.

If anybody had been able to save McTavish, it should have been me. I should have known; I should have seen. Was I not paying attention? Later, I would come to understand that objectivity is a rare luxury when someone we love is ill. I would also come to understand that the self-blame I felt was more closely related to anger and a deep sense of powerlessness. I was easier, somehow, to accept all blame and responsibility myself, than to attempt to dialogue with others who had been involved in the last months of his life. My grief was too fresh, too raw, to attempt communication with anyone outside of my isolation.

Another scab, another memory, surfaced. Slowly, fascinated, I began to pick through the ruins and surprised myself with a small smile.

from The Heart That Is Loved Never Forgets by Kaetheryn Walker (Inner Traditions/Bear & Co.)