Flowers for Dexter

My husband and I are still heavily grieving the loss of our tabbycat Dexter last week, and I know we will for a very long time. The first few days were the absolute worst, with the shock of it (he had seemed fine until the past week or two!) and with our grief. He was so much more than a cat to us; he was family.

We buried Dexter in the backyard on Friday, and ran some errands in town. We got home around supper time, and there was a ringing of the doorbell, a man on the front porch. We went out to discover a bouquet of flowers that had been sent by our friends Celia and Wayne (thank you!), who are the pet-parents to Dexter's brother Skeeter (see Skeeter here and here - yes, he looks a lot like Dexter!).

When the flowers arrived, I put them in their vase and filled it up with water, and placed the flowers on the table by the window where Dexter used to sit. This was an intentional strategy I decided to employ: to place something pretty in what felt like a very, very empty spot, so that every time I'd look there, I'd see beautiful flowers instead of the vast emptiness.

For the house does seem so quiet now, without Thunder Paws galloping through his Tabby Tunnel all the time. And we have already started to change some things. There are doors to rooms we kept closed (the middle bedroom, for example, where Dexter used to climb to the top of everything and sit looking down at me) that are open now. It is something I am trying to get used to.

And of course, we continue to process our grief by talking through it. We have been reflecting on Dexter's life, and ours, and how much the rituals we shared with him marked the hours of our days. The first morning after the cat had passed, I stood bawling in the kitchen, unable to start my day without my first-thing-in-the-morning Dexter rituals: "I don't know what to do with myself," I admitted, sobbing into the sink.

I have emptied and washed Dexter's food and water bowls, and I tossed a few of his smaller towels and blankets into the wash over the weekend. Other than that, his room is still exactly as he left it. There will be changes I will make there - that room may have other uses, eventually - but for now, there is no rush. I can't shake the irrational thought that if I leave his things as they are, maybe he will come back to us.

We have also reflected on something that gives a new perspective to our seven-month quarantine, as I have been working at home every day since mid-March. (You may see a photo of Dexter and me quarantining together in the extra photo for this blip.)

Those were seven good months - up until the past two weeks, anyway - where I got to spend pretty much every single day with Dexter, all day long. Under no other circumstances can I imagine such an opportunity presenting itself, though, of course, it did not feel that way at the time. What would I have paid for that to be our final gift: sweet time?

And so, thank you to our friends for the flowers. And thank you to everyone who has commented on all of the Dexter blips over the past few weeks and said such very kind things. We can feel your love wrapped around us as we struggle to soldier on. It helps get us through.

The soundtrack songs for this blip . . . there are two of them. One is for the sunflowers: here is Glen Campbell, with a happy little ditty called Sunflower. The second song is in honor of our final gift together, courtesy of the coronavirus quarantine: REO Speedwagon, with Sweet Time.