My husband has finally left for the airport. It hasn’t been easy to pretend that all is well with me.
Byd, stretched on the bed, opens her eyes. From her throat, rumbles a purr.
“Oh, Sweetie!” I lay down on the bed and stroke her beautiful white and caramel-colored fur. I know a cat’s purr doesn’t always mean contentment. It can mean just the opposite.
Byd and I are both old ladies. I’m seventy-three. Byd is sixteen. We’ve been together fifteen years. She entered my life after my daughter had to give her up because her new guy, whom she later married, was allergic to cats.
The vet suspects that Byd’s weight loss and high liver enzymes mean end-stage liver disease. A definite diagnosis would require biopsies, feeding and catheter tubes, hospitalization.
“Is that what you’d want, Byd?” Byd is not in any shape to answer that question. She’s stopped eating. I’ve been wetting her mouth with water. So I’m answering the question for her. Byd’s soul will leave body here at her home, surrounded by the smells she knows. Not like my mom, who lingered in a nursing home, a victim of dementia and colon cancer, or my dad, paralyzed with Parkinson’s.
Byd’s people, except for me, are on their way to a long-planned Caribbean cruise: my husband, our three millennial daughters and their husbands, but sadly no grandchildren. Yet. Will I be around to love and spoil a grandchild?
When Byd first got sick, I’d bought travel insurance just on myself, so when Byd neared the end, I cancelled myself from the trip and successfully urged the others to go.
I close my eyes. When I open them next, the room is dark. The nightstand clock shows I’ve been sleeping three hours!
“Byd?” I flick on the lamp on the nightstand.
Her eyes are closed. Is she breathing? I can’t tell.
I fill a cup with water from the bathroom faucet, sprinkle water on Byd’s beautiful face. No reaction. She’s gone.
“Good girl,” I whisper, stroking her soft fur. Already, warmth has left her body.
My loved ones will be gone fourteen days. More than enough time for me to decide if I want to know what that lump in my left breast means.
