This post has been sitting in my drafts for about a month now... This time of the year is hard; my Dad's birthday would have been the 9th, the anniversary of my Mom passing is the 23rd, last year my Dad passed away on April 9th, and then a about a month later we had to put Daisy to sleep, finally, my Mom's birthday was May 9th, always right around mother's day.
So, I haven't been able to finish this post, until now.
My wife got Ella when she was just a kitten, her friend's mom used to breed ragdolls. That was 18 years ago. My wife and I hadn't even met yet, so when we got together I knew up front that it was a package deal; “the dog and the cat have to like you, otherwise this isn't going to work.”
Thankfully, they did like me, and Ella wasn't like any other cat that I had ever met before. Which is why it was so hard having to say goodbye to her.
Quite a lot has happened in my personal life. Some of it I've shared, other stuff, not so much. The pain of loss is probably the hardest thing I've ever had to go through. But to lose my Dad and my dog in the same month has been an especially terrible to experience. A bit compounded by the fact that last Friday (May 9th) would have also been my Mother's birthday.
Some people have things in their life that they regret. Sometimes I feel like some of us are more full of regrets than others. My dad was never one to regret anything. A very storied past. I still know all the stories too, and anyone who ever met him would never deny the legend of Jim Kane. “Jimmy Lee!” or “Seamus!” if my Mom was slightly perturbed, or very angry with him, respectively.
There were times I tried to poke and prod him—maybe in the last 5 or 6 years—about telling me all his stories again. Part of the reason being that I wanted to see if he still remembered them, and if they were the same as I remembered. More often than not though, I feel like he would just respond, “you already know all my stories, what am I going to tell you then?”
I originally wrote this in April of last year, shortly after my Mom's passing. This was something on the previous incarnation of my blog. I felt it was worthy of re-posting and preserving. Today would have been her 73rd birthday. When I think about her, I can still hear her laugh. Happy Birthday Mom!
