Our Cat has Nine Lives
I’ll just say this: as bad as 2020 was, for us it was nothing compared to 2016. I cannot believe it’s four years. Four. How? The knowledge makes my head spin like a small planet, like its moon — time moving inexorably forward forward forward yet tricking you with its revolutions, its constant circling back […]
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Update needed, as Caitlin would say. Three years ago today, on the 9-month anniversary of her lung transplant, during a walk around Walden Pond, I decided to start writing what I called “the Caitlin book.” I wasn’t even sure what kind of book it would be, or if I could manage to write it, but […]
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I thought that losing Caitlin taught me all there was to know about love and loss and “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” but with my mother newly departed from this earth, I’m reminded that life is constantly teaching, and my faulty human self always has more to learn. The practical side […]
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On New Year’s Day 10 years ago, I woke up to a text from Caitlin. She was still living independently and rarely talked about long-term survival, but transplant was looming. Transplant was on her mind, and it showed in that confession of uncertainty tucked inside the bigger message of optimism and love. She did see […]
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Thank you so much for the outpouring of caring. Reading all the notes made me teary and grateful for all of the wonderful people in my beautiful daughter’s life. I’ll try to update every day, but sometimes it might be hard. Things are changing quickly. After a traumatic couple of days, Caitlin was relatively stable […]
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At some point when I was little, my mom and I started referring to one another as our “mostly companion.” It probably grew out of the time I was having surgery when I was 11, and was in the hospital a lot. We would get overly tired, stressed, and…really silly. We were absurdly often at […]
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Anyone who knows us knows that GROUNDHOG DAY is a favorite family movie. We know every line, and even Henry is part of the act—he was born on February 2. Caitlin and I were watching the movie a few weeks ago, and fell off our chairs with laughter when we realized that the opening segment […]
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