My Sunshine

I woke early this morning to the yowling of my beloved companion Avalon. I knew something was wrong, but it wasn't until I rushed out and discovered her on the carpet that my husband and I realized just how wrong. Her back legs were stretched out behind her and she was panting in pain. After a  cursory check from Matt to see if she'd suffered a spinal injury, we loaded her into the cat carrier and sped to the Emergency Vet Clinic 20 minutes away.

We must have sat in the room while they checked her out for an eternity. But I've grown up with cats. Barn cats, house cats, you name it, and have dealt with every issue and illness that could befall them. I knew this was not going to be an easy choice, and I found myself having to decide.

It came back that she had a blood clot that had landed in her back and cut off circulation to her legs. Further, she was in heart failure, and struggling to keep her breath. There was no guarantee she'd ever be well enough to leave the hospital. Even less surety that she wouldn't have another clot break free soon and this time it might lodge in her brain.

I struggled with my choice... because 12 years ago...

I saw her in this old barn. My ex-husband had dragged me there to look at a trailer to haul one of his many junker project cars. She had a whole litter of brothers and sisters just like her, but she was the one who was too fat to run away. I picked her up, and that was the end of it. She came home with me.

I named her Avalon, because I'd just read the book "Mists of Avalon" and her grey fur reminded me of mists. I wasn't going to go with the common Misty, even if it is cute. Avalon struck me as her perfect name. And so began a close friendship, a companionship that is as responsible for making me who I am today as any other friendship in my life.

We weathered the whole shebang together. When Jason took his anger out on me, it was Avalon who snuggled to my side. When I was at my loneliest, she was the one who curled up by my head and purred to let me know it'd be alright. When we lost everything, she and I slept together on the floor.

My fondest memories with her in Michigan are when my cancer scare came up. For three months between diagnosis and surgery, she would curl up on my chest, bury her face in the crook of my neck and we'd just try to get through the harder moments together.

I would sing "You Are My Sunshine" to her, because when it got dark, she always shone a little light in, reminding me that life and love are always around.

When Matt came like a brave knight valiant to sweep me off my feet, he swept Avalon right along with me. He didn't have to love her as I did, but he did. After men who kicked her or belittled her, he gave her a soft hand, warm food, and a home for both of us. The look of adoration in her eyes when she curled up with him is proof of that. She loved him just as much in return.

And so it was that Matt took care of us both in the hospital today. He held her in a blanket as we said our goodbyes. He held her as the vet gave the final shot. I couldn't even be in there when it happened, but he was. He stayed with her just like he promised the both of us. When I came back in the room, I cried into her fur one more time and sang our song.

She will be cremated and her ashes placed in an urn. I can't bear to leave her here when her family and her life will move away in a year. Today wasn't goodbye forever. It's just goodbye for right now.

You are my sunshine
My only sunshine
You make me happy
When skies are gray

You'll never know, dear
How much I love you
Please don't take
My sunshine away

The other night, dear
As I lay sleeping
I dreamed I held you
In my arms
But when I woke, dear
I was mistaken
And I hung my head
And I cried.

RIP Avalon Murphy

Piece of Me

It looks like pretty much every other canopy bed you can find. Nothing too special, but it's pretty enough. In the end of 2003, I had been through a ringer and wanted to make some kind of attempt to steady myself. Prove to myself that what I needed most (stability and ability to make my life come to heel) was inside me all along. But lets look back at 2003 in summary, shall we?

On April 8th, 2003 the bad year for me began. Some of you may realize that this was my 23rd birthday. That morning, my bed caught fire due to the overuse of an old heating blanket. It destroyed my bed, and I ended up sleeping on a terribly uncomfortable water bed for a few months. This will come in to play later.

In July, I lost my brother and my maternal grandmother within three days of each other, a change that sent my finely crafted world of denial into a tailspin. It culminated in me deciding to leave my abusive marriage and choose a life by myself. What I didn't know is that this was the first time I would be forced to give up everything.

My car, the beautiful dishes my grandmother had given to me, and several other small but personally valuable things that got hauled off in boxes by the ex that I never saw again. If they were my price to pay to be free of him though, then I would begrudge it (except for those dishes. If I ever find those again, I will never part with them.)

Shortly after regaining my freedom, I lost my job. The plant I worked at shut down and I spent a bitter winter on a picket line, living like a hobo in the snow around a barrel fire, protesting my job being shipped to Mexico. I earned half pay rate doing this, and eventually when my tax return came in, my mother took me out for some retail therapy. It warrants mention that the ex took the waterbed with him, so I was sleeping on the couch.

That's when I saw it, the bed she knew I'd fall in love with. I blew half my refund on it without a single iota of regret. We bought black mosquito netting and draped it over the canopy, and mom helped me to braid it around the posts so it looked like some Bollywood inspired maharajah bed. I bought the entire set shown in the picture: vanity, ettache, end tables and even the bench that went at the foot of it (not pictured).

I loved my bed. My girl friends came over and flopped onto it, laughing that it was like the bed of a princess or some foreign queen. Every time I saw it, I got to have that moment of "I did this. Despite it all, I did something nice for myself."

Fast forward to the winter of 2008. The bed had, due to space constraints, been disassembled for about 6 months when we lost the house. I have other entries on what that was like that go in depth, but I must needs touch on it again here. We had to pack up a two story, three master bedroom farmhouse to move to a small, three bedroom ranch style house. I'll do the math for you: we had to get rid of a lot.

Our family heirlooms went off to local museums (including the tatted lace my great grandmother made), and I gave away or sold roughly 25% of the things that I thought other people might want. The rest was exploded around my bedroom in piles. No organization, just chaos and what looked like my entire life strewn around the room. I had a set amount of boxes, and I grabbed what I thought was important.

But it's a hard road to walk. We were emotionally shattered to begin with. Everyone was to the end of their rope. Tempers ran hot, tears flowed freely, and not one of us managed to make it out with scars. I remember very clearly being tired. The heat, which was moderate at best in the drafty farmhouse, had been shut off. The lights had been cut as well. It's a mid afternoon in the dead of winter, so the sun is already thinking about setting and I stood shivering in my room. I could see my breath.

This didn't feel like a home anymore. It was a cold and cruel replica of a room that had once made me feel safe. It was empty and devoid of it's soul. There were boxes scattered around, half full, books laying in piles unsorted. Clothes were everywhere, shoes dumped in the closet. I hit my wall at that moment. I knew my bed was around here somewhere, mostly disassembled. My vanity was one of the first things on the truck, and I'd packed it carefully and lovingly. The rest sat in that room and I wept because I knew I just didn't have the energy or the space to take it, but I didn't want to leave it.

I turned and walked out of the room. Whatever I left, I told myself, I could find again, when my life had changed and things had settled. My lesson in this was to let go, again, of what I'd rebuilt. It's painful even writing this, and the lump in my throat tells me the wounds are fresh enough still to bleed when poked.

But life can be funny. It can sucker punch you one minute, and then turn around and give you a miracle.

Life did change for me. I got engaged, and moved to Boston (the vanity made that trip too!). Slowly and surely I rebuilt what I'd lost. Most of the stuff I gave up is forgotten. I know I'll never get my actual sunflower dishes back, and I know the books I had aren't in print anymore. I don't know that I can even find them on sites like Amazon.com.

But I did find my bed. Out of curiosity I went looking and I found it, and to my surprise it costs half of what I originally paid. I thought about it for a while. Did I still want this bed? Is this just me feeling insecure? But I do still want it, and it's not borne out of anything but the desire to have back the things I miss the most.

This morning, I took the topic to my husband, the Mad Scientist. It's hard for me to ask for this, not because I think he'd have said no, but because it was something *I* bought, for *myself*, way back in the day. Obviously I don't make what I used to. I don't even make half of what I used to in a good week. But even knowing that if I asked for this bed, it would be as a gift from him, it doesn't devalue it. In fact, it makes it even more special because he does know what it means to me.

He knows what life has been for me. He knows how tough it got. And his desire to repair and rebuild with me is one of the reasons we work so well. He has given me back my bed. He's given me back this piece of me that I lost. For no other reason than because he loves me, and I don't think he knows how much sting he took out of the events of 2008 in this one act alone.

And I am doubly blessed.