Today has been a melancholy day for me. I was reminded of so many things via reading Calen over at Impromptu Promptlings. She had two posts that sent me into a flood of memories. The first moment came via her post Bittersweet over my cat, Lynx. My gorgeous silvery-grey Birman with blue eyes.
Lynx
I remember the day he followed Impy into the house when I lived in Roanoke Virginia. He just pranced in like he belonged there. I called him “hey cat” for a couple of days and realized that he was not going away. When Impy went out, he went out. When she came in, he came in. It was obvious that he would be sticking around. So sitting at my desk one afternoon, his name suddenly came to me. I called it out: “Lynx!” and he came running and jumped into my lap and snuggled up to me. It was as though he’d been waiting for someone, somewhere to finally know his name and say it aloud. This began a beautiful kinship with him. I dragged my four beautiful cats all the way from Virginia to Oklahoma in the spring of 2005 – Lynx, Impy, Mystra, and Bandit.
Lynx was my only male cat and when he came into my life, my large orange tabby named Spice disappeared. Prior to that when Spice arrived, I had a big grey cat named Mr. Grey. He disappeared when Spice arrived. Do you notice a pattern here? Apparently one male cat at a time for me. For three years, Lynx came and went at that place in Oklahoma without alarm. And then one cold late October evening, I arrived home from work and found a small black furry kitten outside my home. The kitten was so skinny under all of that fur and its meow was so alluring that I picked the little thing up and brought it into the house. I should have known better. I should have checked its sex before I even brought it in. I’d seen the pattern, I knew the pattern and I ultimately knew what would happen, though I disregarded it that night. The kitten, whom I named Miyu, was male and two weeks later, Lynx was gone. He simply vanished as had Spice and Mr. Grey before him. I was devastated. I am still devastated. No cat had ever responded to me the way Lynx did and none has since.
Miyu
The next moment of melancholia that swept over me was when Calen had written about closing doors. At the beginning of January this year, I too closed a door on a long time friend.
Jaime
We’d been separated since 2005 when I moved to Oklahoma, but had maintained some contact for a few years after that. Around 2010, the memories of our friendship flooded me over and over again. I needed her in my life and was desperate to get in touch with her again. All I knew was that she’d moved from Roanoke VA with her partner and was suppose to settle somewhere close to Maryland, perhaps still in Virginia, but I didn’t know where. She didn’t answer her phone. She ignored all of my emails. I was again devastated.
For 5 years, on her birthday in May and on Christmas, I would send her emails to all of the email addresses I had from her. I would give her my email address and my current phone number. Every once in a while I would get a small response from her, but just the one. Once, she found me on my WordPress blog, but when I responded back to her, she didn’t reply back. Finally, this year I’d had enough. Enough of the begging, enough of the heartache from the loss of friendship, enough of missing her. And, I closed that door. It hurts so deeply, like someone split open my heart with a long knife and let all of the love I had for her bleed out. A long, slow bleed. I still miss her, but I can no longer hold on to someone who wants to be set free. And I need to be free as well.
Calen probably has no idea the gift she gave to me today. Melancholy doesn’t always have to be depressing. In fact, it allowed me to take a trip through my photos to find the pictures I posted above. It also reminded me that my life is filled with happenstance.
As the Fates Would Have It 