Posted by Loulou on Aug 22, 2013 | 2 comments

Mama was thinking about her mama the other day, and she said to me, “Loulou, not a day goes by that I don’t thank my mama for something she taught me or for  words of wisdom that helped me through a hard time, and if I keep talking to you about her, I’m sure to cry!”

It has been years and years since mama’s mama died of a stroke in Texas, suddenly, but on a day when she was arguing with a tax collector about property taxes in Houston, and guess what—she had won her case and had her taxes lowered. So as mama says, she died happy.

But the grief doesn’t go away quickly, easily or ever, mama tells me.

I know that if something happened to me, mama would really fall apart, because she has grown to love me more and more each day (who wouldn’t?) and not like the way in which she loved those other no-good feline bums. We spend part of our day together in the garden and I’m right there at breakfast with papa, and we all three play The String Game together, and then I watch soccer and Al Jazeera and Bloomberg and old movies with these two and then, as I’ve mentioned way too often before, I curl up between mama’s knees and sleep like a baby the whole night, without one peep.

She moves around a lot sometimes so I have to go over to my own little bed to get some sleep, but if I were not there in the morning, oh, boy, that would be a grey day for all concerned.

It took mama a year to grieve over her mama’s death. Then one night she had a dream and in it, a telephone rang in a booth nearby, and mama answered it and it was her mama saying, “I have to go now—I’m going to hang up, but I just wanted to tell you goodbye.”

What a dream. Papa thought mama might not come back from this grief, but she took her time and it all worked out. That’s the way to do it. Grief is not to be gotten through hastily so that you’ll feel ‘back to normal’ or whatver it is you think you should feel. What’s ‘normal’ anyway? ‘Normal’ is feeling…period!

You won’t feel what  you felt before ever again, and that’s healthy. It’s good that mama would be devastated if something happened to me. It makes perfect sense when a light in your life goes out that you will miss it and be pissed about it and try to reckon with it and then, one day, the telephone in your own booth will ring, and you’ll go on your new path, not without sadness, but more easily.

I have to go. Enough of this.

Kitties have tears, too.

I only realized after having written this blog that it’s mama’s mama’s BIRTHDAY TODAY–Aug. 22 and I thought I had no unconscious….oh, boy.