For Snowball, a Memorial
So the day is almost here. Tomorrow would have been Snowball's 14th birthday. This morning, shortly after I woke up, I thought about where I was fourteen years ago, the day before Snowball came into my life. I can't remember that day very well, but I remember the moment that Cloudy (Snowball's mom) went into labor. My brother and I were sitting ontop of my bed, watching her pacing back and forth, trying to get into my large wooden dresser. Then the yeowling began, piercing, and painfully loud. Of course, this caused my Dad to come into the room and say that Cloudy was going to give birth.
I remember we left after that because of necessary errands, my grandparents were coming in from England the next day. When we came home, Cloudy had crawled her way into my night-dress drawer and given birth (on top of my clothes) to four kittens, one of whom was my darling Snowball, who attached himself to me as soon as he could crawl out of the box and sleep with me.
From that day forward, I was Snowball's human. We were inseparable when I was home, he would wait in the hall for me to come home from school, cry when I was gone for more than a day, and sleep snuggled up with me everyday for thirteen and a half years, even up to the day that his kidneys finally overwhelmed him, when he was more toxin than cat.
Thus, this is my Memorial Day for him, his birthday. A day that would have been otherwise insignificant in my life except for the fact that it was the day I gained one of the best companions anyone could ask for.
I still cry for him. I would give anything to have a healthy Snowball back. I still feel incredibly cheated, I took such good care of him his entire life and I feel like he should have lived to be nineteen or twenty, that I wouldn't have had to make that decision for years yet. The whole experience of caring for a terminally ill family member was devastating, draining, and harder than I could have expected.
I never thought mercy was going to be that hard, but it still stings today. The image of his passing no less clear in my mind, it feels like yesterday...