Subscribe to this blog's feedBenjamin ferret doesn't care much, anymore.
I wake him up from deep sleep, and all he wants to do is crawl on my chest and lick my nose and mouth. It seems to give him joy, so I let him. He is amazingly gentle and never nips. And sometimes, is so overcome by his moment of contact that he draws back from licking me, and licks his lips with his eyes squeezed tightly shut, a ferret sign of rapture.
But when I let him out to play with the others, there is not so much joy or interest. He wanders the apartment for a little while, then finds a piece of cloth on the floor or spends time opening the animal carrier in the corner, and goes to sleep in the sleep sack I leave there for him. The world passes him by, and he does not seem to care very much, any longer. He is no pain, that I am aware of. He just gets tired, and just feels old. Transparent.
Tonight, I find one of his old toys in the corner. An old plastic wrapped toy from a Happy Meal I bought for the purpose of giving him a “treasure” to steal and stash. I locate Benjamin, asleep in a sack in the cage. I wake him up a little, giving him a rub and a gentle petting. He reaches out his blind head, pointed roughly in my direction. I rattle the toy, in the irresistable plastic bag. He sniffs it, for a moment. Then turns his head and lays back down, unconcerned and disinterested. I place the toy on top of him, so that he would have to move it. As I write this, I look over at the cage. It is unmoved. Once his greatest treasure, it is now a thing which holds no interest, no love, no need.
I will move it for him, before I go to bed.
I grieve, not for the great deaths, but the little ones, when I see that life holds no real challenge nor treasure for the ones I love. And for the Jonathan who foolishly thought that things, treasures, trinkets, would make an enduring difference. People die. Mom is fading, slowly. My pets are aging. And things I once thought irreplaceable now seem like clutter.
I love my Benjamin, and he loves me. But I used to think that love was enough, would always be enough. For a person to stay, for a parent to live, for a pet to thrive.
It is not. Love is wonderful, powerful, magical. But the world continues to turn, and things change. They fade. Loss comes bundled with love, like unwanted software. And we are incapable of doing much about it, except accept it's inevitability and adjusting to it. There is no choice, except our own death. And that, I am not ready for.
Benjamin makes a small noise in his sleep. I wonder if he dreams of treasures, of chasing bugs, of stashing and stealing crinkly things. He wakes up, and I go to him. He walks to me, unsteadily, in the cage, sightlessly bobbing his nearly bald head to looks for me. I open the door, and kiss his nose. He responds with enthusiasm, for a minute. Then sighs, and curls back into a ball. I am all that's left for him,all that he really cares about. I dare not think what will happen when I, when love, is no longer enough. And there will come a time when it won't be.
I want to embrace the future, I do. I have a high CD4 count and low viral load, miracles from the new meds considering my hospitalization a couple of months ago for dangerous respiratory illness. I need to plunge ahead to a brave new world, in which I am newly healthy and hearty. I want to do these things, yet feel afraid because it means I also recognize a mother who is elderly, and frail. Pets who are sick, and closer to death. And a life in which I find myself increasingly uncomfortable. Change, as I read on the news, is in the air. And I suppose we have to take the bad with the good. I wish the good were a little more apparent, and a little less.... laboratory in nature. What I feel, is that my strength is returning. What I see, is that Benjamin continues to wither, as does my mom, as does portions of my life which used to contain all there was of me. And now cannot.
Not sure where to go from here. Not sure how to move. But feeling as though it's going to happen, with or without my direct participation. And I would rather be steering this ship than be under the ship.
