To Love Is To Lose Control: What One Cat, Two Nights in the ICU, and a Global Pandemic Taught Me
“To love is to lose control.” — Paulo Coelho
“So we have to check Rumi in to the ICU. We have to ask this question as it’s part of our procedure, most likely nothing will happen, but just in case — if he collapses, do you want us to use the AED or should we euthanize him?”
I stare blankly at the vet. I hear the words, “What? What’s AED?” come out of my mouth, but it feels like I am watching a scene from a movie in slow motion.
From the side, I hear Alan saying, “They mean like CPR to resuscitate him if he is in a bad condition.”
“Oh.”
For some reason, the next question that comes out of my mouth is: “Will we have to pay extra if he needs to be resuscitated?”
“No, but it depends on you — what is your preference if his condition gets very unstable.”
“Will he be in a lot of pain? I think that’s the main question. Because if he’s suffering, of course we don’t want him to be in pain,” Alan says.
“It’s hard to tell with these situations.”
“Um, well, we are just living 10 minutes from here,” I say. “Can you just call us if anything happens and we will rush over here? But please don’t euthanize him without our consent.”
“Oh okay, that’s good you are nearby. Okay, let’s do that then.”
It hit me that in 30 years of my life so far, I have never had to make a decision about whether a loved one lives or dies. I’d decided when we first adopted Rumi that when it came time to let him go, I would not unnecessarily drag out his suffering just because I was not ready to say goodbye. I always believed that was the kindest thing to do. But I never thought I would be answering this question so soon, even if it was only in theory, as “procedure”. It’s been 30 years of living, without having to say goodbye to someone I love deeply. I’ve been lucky, and not even realized it.
The closest I’ve come it staring death in the face was saying goodbye to a colleague I worked closely with, sat next to every day, and even shared the exact same birthday with. Still, it’s not the same as saying goodbye to family. I’ve never sat beside the bed of a terminally ill person, never stood in a hospital room in a person’s final moments of life, never waited outside an operating room for someone going through a risky surgery. When my brother was in the hospital for a week to have his appendix removed, I didn’t even visit him daily to keep him company, since he had my parents.
For the first time in my entire life, I felt what it’s like having someone else’s life entirely in my hands. It’s a scary and overwhelming feeling.
Throughout the next 24 hours, I found myself escaping to the bathroom every now and then to wipe away tears. Being responsible for someone else’s life is never a responsibility anyone asks for, but it’s a responsibility and risk we all take every time we choose to open our hearts up to love someone. Every time we choose to love someone, we accept the risk that one day, we will have to say goodbye.
After two nights in the hospital, Rumi was discharged with a list of instructions and medication, including medication to relax his urinary muscles so that he would be able to pee (he had a urinary condition that was severely affecting his bladder and preventing him from urinating normally — when we admitted him, he could barely walk).
The first day he was back, he was curled up in his bed in a miserable ball, his tail tucked under him, instead of dangling over the side of the bed like it usually is. It took us awhile to realize he was trying to cover the scent of his pee with his tail — he had completely wet himself, unable to control his bladder. His bed was wet, his fur was wet, and the room smelled of ammonia and acid.
It hit me that in 30 years of my life so far, I have never spent a single day sponging and cleaning the pee of another living being every few hours. Never had to clean anything, pet, baby, or adult, who had soiled himself / herself. The thought of cleaning up a child’s poop/pee/puke has always been one of the biggest turn offs to me about becoming a parent. I always wondered if I could handle it. But in an instant, I knew the answer with 100% certainty.
When you see someone you love in so much discomfort, you would do anything for them.
Nothing is too gross or difficult — you would do anything to see them feel a little bit better. Each time I wiped Rumi down with a warm, wet towel, he started purring and looking a little bit less uncomfortable. He still smelled of pee, but I kissed his furry body anyway.
It’s possible that I never understood what love meant until this week.
It’s possible that in figuring out how to do the right things to love someone or to make someone love me, I had completely missed the point about love. Maybe the point of love is accepting a loss of control. Maybe it’s surrendering to the risk because the reward is so much greater. Maybe it’s about getting ready to say goodbye right from the first hello, because the privilege of any time you get to spend together, however short or long it may be, is sweeter than the bitterness of saying goodbye.
In 30 years of my life, I have watched love leave — friends moving countries, lovers who disappeared, broke up with me, or who I broke up with, pets I had to give up. Each time, I railed and raged at the cruelty and unfairness of it all. Why did this have to happen to me? Why did I end up in this situation? Why did they have to leave? Each time, whether the process of saying goodbye took weeks or months, I gritted my teeth, spent time wallowing in self-pity, and refused to accept it was happening. With some hurts, I held on to for years after the relationship had ended before being able to make peace, accept it, and move on.
This time, the process took just hours. I raged to my family at the frustration of the situation over a group family call. “It’s just like the coronavirus. I know the doctors and frontliners are doing everything they can, but it’s so frustrating when they all say the same thing: ‘It could be something he recovers quickly from. He’s a young cat, he will most likely get better. But at the same time, it could be life-threatening. He could die. It could be his diet, it could be stress, it could be a hereditary condition. Hard to tell.’”
“It’s so annoying,” I rant. “It’s like with the virus, everyday, you hear something different. ‘It doesn’t affect young people. Then young people are dying. If you don’t have an existing condition, you’ll recover quickly. Then even healthy people are dying. It’s hard to tell.’”
“It’s like there is literally nothing you can do but hope, and wait,” I say in frustration to my family, as I waited at home for the vet to call with news.
Yet as Alan and I walked away from the animal hospital after Rumi was finally discharged, as I wiped the pee off Rumi’s fur, I remember the only thoughts running through my head every other second: “I’m so thankful, I’m so thankful, I’m so thankful. If I have to say goodbye tomorrow, I’ll say goodbye tomorrow. I’ll be grateful that in this short time we had together, I got to love you, I got to care for you, I got to wipe pee off your fur, I got to understand that this is what love is all about.”
It hit me how much the past few weeks have changed me.
Reading daily headlines about people dying around the world and having a close scare with Rumi being in critical condition, barely able to stand up in the past week, has changed the way I think about everything. When I see another Facebook update that someone’s parent, or godparent, or relative has passed away, I choke up, thinking, “It could be my family next.”
Things that used to bother me become so small and insignificant in comparison. What I considered necessary expenses don’t seem so essential anymore. And no amount of money seems too much to pay if it means seeing someone you love stay alive and healthy for another day more.
I think why it was so hard to say goodbye in the past to what and who I thought I loved was because they were very flawed loves. Loves based on what needs of mine they met, what insecurities they helped smooth over, what baggage we were helping each other heal from. I never considered the possibility of watching any of those loves die. I never had to physically clean them or watch them in a helpless state. Was it unconditional and pure love? Probably not.
In contrast, loving Rumi has been simple and uncomplicated. I have freely and willingly chosen to be responsible for feeding and sheltering him and keeping him safe. I understood from day one that cats have a shorter lifespan than humans and that one day I will say goodbye. I don’t expect him to be anything other than a cat, to meet my needs, to solve my problems, yet in many ways, he makes my life so much better, all without me expecting him to.
If I can do this with a cat, why can’t I do this with a human? I ask myself this question a lot these days. Pop culture and the media over-complicate love, confusing it with chemistry, attraction, and compatibility. Those things may be related to love and can be good prerequisites for love, but are not love itself. Isn’t love simply acceptance, surrender, and sacrifice? Something that, for better or for worse, makes it all worth it? Maybe this is how it feels like to become a parent — maybe I wouldn’t be that bad at being one, despite my massive fears of the idea?
Right now, when it comes to “for better or for worse”, many of us are going through “worse”. These challenging times make it very clear what — and who — we can truly stick with when things get tough.
It’s easy to think something is love when things are going well. But when sacrifices need to be made, everything becomes clearer.
In the end, maybe this is all that matters in life — knowing who and what we would sacrifice anything and everything for, gladly, willingly, without complaint or hesitation. It could be a person, an animal, a vocation, a place, a cause, a vision, a faith, a lifestyle. I’m beginning to think that maybe it is not doing things or having things or accomplishing things that is what makes life worth living. It is finding what we would gladly pour ourselves out and sacrifice for — our ikigai, our passion, what we love and care about more above others.
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
“If I told you this was only gonna hurt
If I warned you that the fire’s gonna burn
Would you walk in?
Would you let me do it first?
Do it all in the name of love
Would you let me lead you even when you’re blind?
In the darkness, in the middle of the night
In the silence, when there’s no one by your side
Would you call in the name of love?
When there’s madness, when there’s poison in your head
When the sadness leaves you broken in your bed
I will hold you in the depths of your despair
And it’s all in the name of love ”— Bebe Rexha and Martin Garrix
