Rainbow Bridge Remembrance Day 2019

I've sort of been at a loss over what to write about for this year's Rainbow Bridge Remembrance Day. After all, just last month we honored Tara and Truffles on the anniversary of their journey to the Bridge, and last week saw the celebration of what was Truffles' Gotcha Day. Besides, everyone knows their stories by now.

In the past 4 years on this special day we've featured poetry, a short story, and a Purrfect 10 post. I finally decided to focus this year's post on the cat that started it all for me, my best friend throughout my childhood, Patch.

As I've often said, as a little girl in my playpen I had a cat in one corner and a stack of books in another. Patch was that cat. He was my parents' "first child," as he came into their lives a year and a half before I was born. He was abandoned as a three month old kitten on my father's family dairy farm and my grandmother, knowing how much my mom loved cats, asked if she'd like to take him home. Prior to Patch my mom had been over a decade without a cat in her life! Once I came into the picture, Patch wasn't about to give up his spot on mom's lap without a fight, so when she would hold me in her arms, she would have to put her feet up so he could nap on her legs.

Patch was the only cat I've ever taken outside on a leash. Back in those days it was quite a novelty, and my family was likely the talk of the neighborhood, but I loved taking him out in the backyard, enjoying quality time with my best friend.

We lost Patch to a brain tumor at age 15. Other than when his own parents died a few years before, the night we lost Patch was the first time I saw my father cry, I think because he knew our hearts were breaking. I know for a fact that Patch was my mom's "heart cat," and I've always felt that she never again let herself love a cat as deeply as she did him, knowing how much it would hurt at the end.

I've experienced a lot of loss since that first heartbreak, just as anyone does who can't imagine life without cats, but no matter how many times you say goodbye it doesn't get any easier. In ways I think it gets harder. But as the saying goes, grief is the price we pay for love. 

“We who choose to surround ourselves

with lives even more temporary than our

own, live within a fragile circle;

easily and often breached.

Unable to accept its awful gaps,

we would still live no other way.

We cherish memory as the only

certain immortality, never fully

understanding the necessary plan.”

― Irving Townsend

ABOUT RAINBOW BRIDGE REMEMBRANCE DAY:

This special day was created by Deborah Barnes – author, award winning blogger, and cat advocate in tribute to her cat, Mr. Jazz, who she had to say goodbye to on August 28, 2013. She shared the journey of letting him go in her book, “Purr Prints of the Heart: A Cat’s Tale of Life, Death, and Beyond,” a warm and heartfelt book that is written in the wise and comforting voice of Mr. Jazz himself as he shares his life and death journey to offer guidance and understanding through a cat’s perspective as to why sometimes letting a pet go can be the greatest gift you give them.

A special event page for Rainbow Bridge Remembrance Day has been created on Facebook so that people can share blog post links, pictures, poems, favorite memories, etc. Please click here for the link.