Why is it so hard letting go...
Bubbles has been by my side for over 9 years now. She has been through everything with me. As a kitten, Bubbles lived with her sister, Moomoo, and a parade of my former housemates' pets: 3 pitbulls, 2 albino pythons, and 1 akita/rottweiler mix, a giant of dogs. Fearless was Bubbles among myriads of animals in the house.
Always ready for an adventure, Bubbles would run sideways on closet walls, matrix style, to catch insects. She would follow any visiting dogs around like a guard dog ready to pounce if any sudden, wrong move on their part. She was our insect exterminator; she was ready to defend us from home invaders.
When Bubbles was 1 years old, I came home one day to find half body of a lizard lying on the kitchen floor. Mind you, it was a big lizard, just its lower body including the tail was about 3.5 inches long. "Good job," I praised Bubbles and searched around for the missing half of the lizard, head and all, but could not, for the life of me, find it. The next morning getting ready for work, I sat down to put my shoes on and as soon as I put my right foot in the shoe, I felt something hard touch my big toe. I immediately knew then where the missing part of the lizard diappeared to. I yelled so loud and ran around the living room, hopping on one foot, shaking off the touch of the dead lizard from my foot. As I said, Bubbles was our protector. She made sure we were safe from this lizard invader and at the same time, gave me a present to show off her hunting skills.
Bubbles was Queen of our home. She was in charge of the other kitties. We could never make her do anything and if we berated her, she would give a sort of meow to say, "You can't tell me what to do! I am my own cat!"
God, I miss her, the real Bubbles, not this ghost of her I see every day now. When is it time to let her go? When is it alright to say, "Hey, I have done all I can do. Now, it's time for me to let you go." Caring for Bubbles on her last days of struggle with feline lymphoma, I constantly think of Christine. Christine, my grandmother, stood by and took care of Granddad in his last weeks of battling cancer 10 years ago. How unbelievable difficult it may be been for Christine to see her husband dwindle away to nothing but a shell of human, knowing she can't do anything but be that light of warmth, of comfort to ease his passing.
I draw my comfort in knowing that Bubbles was loved. Bubbles had a wonderful family and a good feline life in this lifetime. And maybe, just maybe, I will see her again and I hold onto that hope with hope. Good bye, Bubbles, for now.
