The Trickster Diaries, part 3/Chapter 19

Despite the compassion and caring from Liz, Jones, Sabrina, Melissa, Bob… well, look, my guess is that most people will understand the level of desperation, of emptiness and pain and foolishness it took to write Juliette.
It had been three years. A crazy and intense history. Seemed that dealing with each other in the past equaled a hit or miss affair, like gently turning the knob right, then back left, dialing into some distant, late night station on a ’40’s analogue radio.
Finally she pulled the plug, after I’d pulled it, then plugged it back in.
Still, like some pitiful old clown, I wrote a short piece on the agony of loss I knew she’d experienced, synchronized it with my own, tagged her, sent it off. There it goes. It’s now a post on your Ello feed, you dope.

She’ll hate me even more than she does already for saying this, but of all the people I’ve encountered here on Ello, only @(Juliette’s channel) will truly understand and identify with the depth of loss, loneliness, emptiness I’m experiencing over the passing of Hank and Linda, my cats. Only she’ll know that knife-in-the-heart feeling of waking up to a house vacant of love, meaning and purpose.

Neither reason nor happy memories work to counter such suffering. Nothing does. Maybe because something very ordinary and wonderful just isn’t here anymore?

She sent me a photo once of her holding her “tiny hound” in her left hand as her right put on lipstick in preparation for work. An everyday thing. As everyday as Hank leaping into my arms as I made coffee. As ordinary as Linda staring at me as I awoke, then gently asking: “Muir-al”?

But this is far from ordinary, Kubler-Ross, grief process stuff, because cats and dogs are better, purer, truer, more sincere, more honest creatures than humans. And for those of us who understand and accept that — who’ve witnessed it over time — their abrupt exit from our shared universe, our routines, is beyond spirit crushing.

I can’t bring Hank and Linda back, obviously. But, truth is, I’d much prefer being with them, wherever they are, than here.

She’ll ignore it, probably. Or not even remember who I am?