39 Days

This blog is 1 month old today. It's amazing how in such a short time, I have gathered my army of support around me, obtained a base of readers, and developed a ritual of nightly writing in order to cope.

Today I am 39 days a widow. 39 days of weirdness, pain, discovery, adaptation, fear, loss, grief, introspection, and sorrow. 39 days without Rick. 39 days of re-remembering every morning that my life is now different.

When I realized that I have been a widow for 39 days, my brain took me on a journey of numbers. I determined that I was a wife for 2,220 days exactly. That's all. 2,220. It sounds so insignificant in the scheme of life. Only 2,220 days. It turns out, that's all 6 years and 1 month amounts to: 2,220 days. 

The number of days I was a wife will forever remain stagnant, unmoving and irreversible. 2,220. But as I live and move forward in my new life, the number of days I am a widow will gain momentum, increase, and eventually surpass the number of days I was a wife. The days I am a widow will leave 2,220 in the dust. It startles me to realize that. And it hurts.

Being left behind is never a good feeling. I've been left behind with a memory box of a mere 2,220 days and a ticking day counter of widowhood. 

Speaking of being left behind, I took Juice to the vet again today and the vet is pretty sure that Juice has kidney failure like Tumbler. Hers is earlier stage than Tumbler's, but kidney failure at age 4 is not a good thing. Moral of the story: my whole little family is either dead or dying. Sooner than I would like, I'll be officially all alone.

That's not to say that Tumbler and Juice can't live for up to another year, but that's just 365 days. And when 2,220 seems unfair, 365 seems miniscule. I'm distraught and trying to think positive. There are positives: Juice finally ate something tonight after a long stretch of nothing. Tumbler gained weight at the vet when I thought the best case scenario would be for his weight to remain stable rather than lose. He continues to persist at life, just as I told him to do. I bought a cat pheromone diffuser plug-in for my house. It's for stressed out kitties who are dealing with transition, adjustments, or grief. The pheromones let them know they are safe and secure.

The vet suspects that due to the kitties' young age, it's a genetic abnormality that caused them to develop kidney failure. Since they are brother and sister from the same litter, their cat mom was ill, and Tumbler already has a birth defect (cerebella hypoplasia), the odds were just against them for some reason. 

So here we are, a household of miserable creatures...snuggling, crying, and inhaling the pheromones. Just a cat widow and her cats, waiting for the odds to be in our favor.