Yesterday

In 1996, I was a freshly minted TWA flight attendant living with two roommates in a townhouse-style apartment in St. Charles, Missouri. One of my roommates, Kelly, had a cat named Sunny, a healthy orange tabby who had gotten into my heart a little bit and made me want a cat of my own to love and keep me company. I had a boyfriend at the time, so one wonders about the need for company.

Anyway.

I put the word out to my friends that I was on the lookout for a new kitten to call my own, with the operative word being “kitten.” Not much later, I received a phone call my St. Louis mama, Sandi Stafford. Sandi had a good friend nearby named Carol. In a recent snowfall, a cat with no identification had wandered up onto Carol’s lawn. She’d asked around in the neighborhood and been unable to find its owner. Sandi knew I was on the hunt for a cat, so she called me to go take a look.

I was unimpressed for the simple fact that I was not looking for a cat. I was very specific. I was looking for a kitten. I said as much to Kelly, on our way to Carol’s house. She just smiled.

Carol ushered us into the garage where she was keeping her foundling. Apparently, the cat was in hiding, because I couldn’t see anything. Knowing cats, though, I sat down on the welcome mat and waited. The cat would eventually get curious, I figured, and come sniff me out.

I was right. In a few minutes, as we casually conversed about the storm that brought her to Carol’s home, a slight-framed, long-haired cat slid stealthily out from under Carol’s car and stepped delicately across the concrete floor in my direction. She was gray, with a faint tortoise shell pattern, and—in the light of that moment—there was a pink hue to her coat. Carol’s favorite color is pink. She was ecstatic about that.

It was uncanny how the cat walked straight to me, without hesitation, crawled over my leg, planted herself into my lap, raised her face to mine, and then made the same chirping-style meow that would become her signature and a point of delight to all her knew her well. No, she wasn’t a kitten.

“Carol, this cat is mine.”

Sandi and Carol smiled like proud mamas who’d mid-wived a successful birth. Kelly was delighted to have a playmate for Sunny. I was quietly cleaning out a large space in my heart for its new inhabitant. I hugged my little fur-girl to my chest and off we went to gather supplies and get her home.

Rosie. I named her Rosie for the pink of her coat. At times, we also called her Miss Rose, because there was a certain regal quality to her demeanor.

Eventually, TWA would issue a furlough and many of us who were hired in ’96 would find ourselves in need of a job. I was only in St. Louis for work, and now, with no more work, I had no reason to stay. Kelly and I packed up our cars and headed back East to Virginia—she to Woodbridge in the north and I to Virginia Beach, the southern coast. I left Rosie in our apartment under the care of my then ex-boyfriend who checked on her and made sure she had food and a clean litter box for about a week until my father and I could fly back for her, make arrangement for some of my belongings, and bring Rosie to Virginia with us.

Rosie didn’t fly well, and she was plenty disgruntled after our trip, but after a day, she relaxed into her new home with my parents and me in the same house where my parents live today. They loved her as their own and laughed at her idiosyncrasies, like doing the “tuna dance,” as my parents coined it, whenever she heard the sound of a can opener. Rosie could be a finicky eater, so Mom took to calling her Picky Eunice (I have no idea where this comes from), which always made us laugh. Rosie’s long fur tapered sharply at the crook of her legs, as though she were dressed in jodhpurs, another of Mom’s observations— along with the plume-like curve of her long-haired tail. “Plume!” my mother would exclaim in admiration as Rosie would pass her by.

I worked odd jobs, tried on a few more boyfriends, and made a disastrous choice of one, but Rosie remained a pleasant constant through that time. Eventually, I would enroll in graduate school and have to shoo her away from my books and laptop so I could write my papers and study my exams. In my final year of grad school, I met and married my husband, Charlie, and Rosie made her second move with me as we made our home a mile down the road from my parents.

Rosie loved to sneak through the door in our passing through and smell the plants and grass around the house, the breeze lightly lifting the long strands of her fur and making her appear even softer, almost airbrushed. She was never nervous or erratic. Her disposition was serene and her presence calming. She was a cat built for love and lounging, the perfect companion for loss and loneliness. She was made just for me.

About two and a half years ago, we received word that we would have to make another move, this time far away from our loved ones. In order to prevent a desert deployment, Charlie, a brand new father, travelled to recruiter school to keep his family together. I stayed home with our darling baby boy, and—as ever before—Rosie kept me company and played mama herself to her two little kitten siblings, Norman and Pansy, named for my precious grandparents. For my family, pets were always bonafide family members. They still are.

Once more, Rosie and I would make a move, this time as a family of six. We loaded up the FJ Cruiser and trucked down to Bossier City, Louisiana. It took four days, one heart-stop in Atlanta to see my best friend Leigh Anne, three cat carriers, and a bottle of prescription tranquilizers (for the fur-babies) to get it done. Charlie drove and I paved the lonesome highways with tears that might one day lead me back to the place that will always be “home.”

We made it safely and carved out our new home. Rosie crept the floor boards and gave tentative assent. She liked the thick carpet and the large window in the living room that gave her gracious sunlight all day long in which to stretch and lounge. Occasionally, I would let her explore the back patio, but only on her leash. Grudgingly, she would deign to step into its tethers and bear its restraint for the promise of rolling on hot concrete and chewing the green grasses that sprouted at the edge of the stoop.

Once more, Miss Rose was put upon to relocate, this time to a home with a larger yard and more spacious rooms just a mile down the road, fittingly, on Rosemead. She found solace in a sun-bathed breakfast nook, stolen trips through the garage to the shrubs around the water spigot where the earth was dark and cool from shade and moisture from the dripping faucet. Summer gave way to autumn and winter thawed into spring. Change and age settled into her bones, stunting her gait and dimming the pink light of her fur. She slept more, ate less, and stayed very close to my side. One day, loud noises brought no flinch or turn of her head. She could no longer hear my kissing call; her face flashed no recognition at the sound of her own name.

Yesterday, we Corbetts took to the Air Show to see the Air Force Thunderbirds. It was the day I took two thousand shots of magnificent airplanes performing masterful feats of gravity-defying aeronautics. It was the day I played paparazza, running down the flight line to catch Nicholas Cage greeting the Thunderbird Crew with his four year old little boy, Kal-El, who hid playfully from the crowd under the back of his father’s bright yellow shirt. It was the kind of day that wears you out completely and leaves you glad for the experience and pining for your bed.

Back at home, we dragged our bags in from the van and stumbled around the house, putting things away and putting on more comfortable clothes. Charlie drew Jackson a bath, and I walked through the house trying to decide where to begin with straightening and preparing for the coming week. Every step, Rosie followed me. She had been feeling sickly and only drinking a little water. She weighed heavy on my heart all week, and I made a mental note to get her to the vet. But yesterday afternoon, her shadowing was unrelenting. She would stand before me and summon a pitiful meow, without any hint of her signature chirping. She no longer had it in her. And I knew intuitively what I did not want to know. I made some calls, talked with Charlie about dinner without me, and kissed Jackson who was splashing about in the tub. Charlie brought down a carrier from the attic for us.

One more time, Rosie and I travelled together in the car. We rode in silence, and I opened the door of her carrier so I could keep my hand near her for comfort, hers and mine. I didn’t know what was wrong, but she’d lost so much weight that I knew it wouldn’t be good news from the emergency vet. After a little while, I spoke softly to her of the day we met and the trip to Virginia and the days of heartache she helped me through. I spoke to Love and asked for presence, for help that Rosie could no longer give. My heart tore open and spilled through my face and I was unable to find composure as we stepped into the waiting room and found a chair to somehow fill out the papers on the clipboard I didn’t remember picking up.

Date. I couldn’t catch hold of it in my mind. I looked to one of the other waiters and asked for the date, recognizing faces as those of new friends from a board on which we serve together, their little precocious Vivian, and an ailing puppy named Blue. I offered through a broken sob that I thought I knew them. Yes. We thought so, too. I’m sorry I’m so grieved. I don’t usually make it so public but, but, but…
The distraction was welcome, and their kindness was warm and genuine. My strength recovered a little and our conversation was light and careful. I managed to laugh and forget, if only for a little while.

Our turn. The doctor. Blood work. Leave her with us, go eat. Come back and we’ll talk about our options. I drove to a drive-thru joint and ate fried food in a cold dining room empty of customers but crowded with memories and fears. So lonesome.
Twisting knob. Somber expression. A sheet of paper with red marks and too-high numbers. Costs and chronic care. It’s true. It’s true. It’s true. This is it. Make ready. My heart bleeds fire and screams from my chest.

Do you want to be present? Sunlit naps and green grasses. Yes. Sign here please. Do you want us to handle the body. Rental house. Someone else’s ground. Yes. Initial here. You’re doing the right thing. You gave her a good life. Jesus is an overweight, menopausal blonde with compassion radiating from her arms and eyes. She hugged me hard and long and left me alone. I want you to be here.

The towel was soft from wear and splotched from many washings in bleach and antiseptic detergent. She lay listless, spent. The door closed respectfully, and I dropped to me knees and met her glazed-over gaze. I prayed for hearing, and whispered of love and longing and loss, private things that are too painful to recount. I can’t give you health, but I can give you rest, Rose.

The gentle doctor, my mourning companion, came bearing a syringe to fill a catheter and bring rest. The fluid was pink. We stroked her fur together and I held my face so close to hers, whispering I love you over and over and over and too soon no heart beat. Is she gone? Stethoscope and a heavy nod.

I left the last room she ever saw and found her vacant carrier waiting for me at the front desk, an unintentional stab into the fresh wound of my grief. Three hundred thirty-seven dollars is the clinical cost of goodbye. Blonde Jesus gave me a cup of cool water. I realized it was still in my left hand as I walked through our garage door.

Food bowls of uneaten tuna. Water flecked with two strands of her fur. The pillow by the window still depressed from the weight of her last nap there. Blankets that were never completely free from the evidence that she’d slept on them, by my side. Voicemails left for cancellations. My only appointment would be with my grief. I left messages for my parents, and my father called me right back. They buried Gotti just two months ago. We wept together softly on the phone at midnight, for the loss of my little love and the distance that separated us in our grieving.

Life is relentless. It insists on pressing forward, when I so wish it would go easy on me. The phone rings. The mail beckons. The coffee brews. On it goes. My head hasn’t caught up with my heart. I’m still looking for her in her favorite places, finding her unexpectedly on fabric I forgot to brush free of fur. It will be that way for some time, I am sure.

Over the next few days, I will pull together some photos I’ve taken of Rosie over the years and choose one to have printed for a wall in our home. That’s how I want to remember her.

Healthy. Vibrant. Soaking up the sunlight in a warm window. Chirping back brightly at the sound of her name.

Rosie Walton Corbett
1996-April 25, 2010
Gone to rest