Sometimes you can’t cry, because once you start you will not stop.
Normally I’m a pretty natural crier, but I have not cried since COVID 19 became a reality in our lives. There’s too much to do.
The first weeks were getting protective equipment to medical people. Then it was looking at our lives and putting in a garden, getting in more supplies for clinics later, upping our game with local meat, egg, and dairy supplies, revamping what we thought was a fairly locally sustainable lifestyle to fit a harsher lockdown. Preparing, in essence, for fall to be worse than now, with more people needing help, and wanting to have that help ready.
And then one of our cats disappeared. Hannah, the tiny tortie with half a tail and twice the attitude, walked out Saturday morning and didn’t come home. We put up signs, walked the neighborhood, searched the ditches and culverts. Nada. She disappeared. Never mind, we told ourselves; life is full of so many people losing so much these days, it isn’t fair to have the luxury of tears over this smaller loss. Keep going.
Today the rain came down in buckets, and I woke this morning with a heart heavier with fear than looking for its usual hope. My devotions have been uplifting these past few weeks. I take a Christian worldview oddly informed by my many Muslim friends back in Britain; we are in God’s hands, for better or for worse (which is a very Muslim approach to God, not the Christian ideology that those who worship Him can expect preferential treatment from Him). The most important thing in life is not to come out on top but to be a living example of Jesus’ mercy on Earth. So what comes, comes; it’s how we deal with it that is most important. Job 13:15 and all that.
But this morning during my devotions I started crying. Over Hannah, our missing cat. Because sometimes everything one mourns–the sense of loss for a way of life taken for granted, the belief in my own efficacy to meet challenges–all those big things slide down into one little thing. I sobbed for my missing cat as though nothing else had ever mattered.
A few hours later, she walked in, dry and happy and not a scratch on her. Demanding lunch.
It’s okay to cry. It’s okay to mourn. We’re dealing with some heavy trauma, kids. Our times are in God’s hands, and sometimes the cat comes back.
Wendy Welch: Books, Yarn, Cats, Opioids 
Well, this made me cry and smile at the same time!! Happy Ending!!
Wonderful reading. Thank you
Laura Kalpakian Author of The Great Pretenders ravennablue@gmail.com laurakalpakian.com Facebook // Twitter
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And in my sorrow I was laid bare and God covered me with His blessing. Welcome home, Hannah.
Oh, Wendy, this is so true. We hold up through all the big things, and then someone speaks a careless word or we lose our kitty or the dryer won’t work. Thank you for this–beautifully said.
:]
My Mom died. Four months later, my husband died. Six months later, Andy, my tabby cuddler, died. I buried them, separately. Then, on Mother’s Day, Maya Angelou, my silky, slinky 15 year old sorta siamese, died. When I buried her, next to Andy, I cried. I cried for weeks, went into seclusion, and recovered from it all. I will survive.
Yes, because you are as strong as a mountain and as sweet as honey