Finding a Marble

Sometimes a set of circumstances that seem to be many coincidences feel like a visit from a beloved feline in spirit, but sometimes they can be just a series of coincidences that nonetheless help you along with healing the grief of your loss.  I call them “Little Visits.”

I’ve written about “little visits,” my term for a “visit” from one of my cats after they’ve gone to their next life, for years, and it likely seems like anything could be, or everything is, a “little visit.” All these years I’ve also tried to puzzle out exactly what did constitute a “little visit” because not every circumstance or object, not even circumstances or objects that would seem to be obvious visits, feel the same when the instance arises. In trying to explain this to others first, and then to myself, I have some observations and conclusions to share, along with a recent little visit.

The marble, the meeting, the thoughts

Running to a meeting, just after parking my car in a paved lot and putting coins in the meter, something small and light colored on the pavement caught my peripheral vision. I looked down next to my tire and saw a small marble nestled into a crack in the asphalt, as brilliant as Jupiter in the night sky against the mottled shades of gray and black. I looked closer and saw a smooth, glossy surface unmarred by scratches in this rough place, picked it out with my fingertips and found it sound and clean all around, pure white with small swirls of color. I tucked it into a small outside pocket in my purse already containing a few other found items and headed into my meeting, for which I was slightly late.

Emotional response

But the marble stayed in my thoughts as I walked to the door. Your attention literally being called to something out of place can sometimes feel commonplace, but sometimes not, and I had felt the moment I saw it there that it carried a message because of its unexpected appearance.

A little bit about marbles

Marbles have been around for thousands of years, prehistoric ones made of clay and stone used for trading or identity and gaming, later made from glass in particularly prized patterns.

In all this history a found marble is given a heavy burden of significance, from when and where and how it appears to its physical characteristics, the color and pattern, its very roundness, that perfect sphere, can seem to say so much.

I never played with marbles when I was young but they were visually fascinating to me. Later, when I moved into a rented house and first worked the yard for a garden, I started finding all sorts of marbles in the soil and joked that someone had “lost their marbles” in the yard, either dropping a bag of them accidentally or tossing them out. But since then I’ve regularly found marbles on my rambles either in town or neighborhood or off in the woods. Of course, I picked up each of them and brought them home. I have them in vases and other clear containers for flowers and plant cuttings, and some just for show, like my special cat’s eye marbles in one particular vase on my kitchen windowsill.

Because I regularly found marbles I’d looked it up several times through the years. Not just the marble itself but finding it is considered a sign or a message from a loved one, departed or not, or from the universe itself, to give guidance or affirmation, connection or inclusion.

That’s a lot of area to cover right there! But I never felt any of my other marble findings were anything but random.

The Meeting

The meeting was pertinent to my thoughts. I was meeting with Deb, the woman who owns Chartiers Custom Pet Cremation, and Carol, a friend in cat rescue who also works with Deb and me, to talk about new SEO for Deb’s website because her stats and customer calls had been dropping—and this detail may sound peripheral but it’s relevant.

With the new AI searches and ratings, SEO is completely different from keywords repeated through several areas because AI actually reads the text all over your site, not looking for keyword matches but matching your claims to your actual presentation. The live text in your article and all text should demonstrate “experience, expertise, authority and trustworthiness” in the subject of your site. I knew the best way to adapt Deb’s site was to offer, everywhere we could, an overview of Deb’s 21 years in business, and even her choice to change from her original career to create the unique service she provides to people who love animals.

I first went to Chartiers Custom Pet Cremation in 2006 with Moses, just months after Deb had opened her business, choosing her after reading an article about her on-site cremation, her living room where we could sit and talk, and that she was the only person who handled the beloved animal companions through the whole process. Along with taking all the cats I’ve lost to her in all these years, I’ve also managed her website and what we used to call “public relations,” press releases about events, designing ads for various places, getting radio spots for her and looking for other promotional opportunities, photographing everything, and helping with events like Pet Memorial Sunday and Healing Hearts.

I have an ideal overview of her business with all that experience, and an added ideal perspective of having used her service multiple times over all these years as a customer. So in preparation for this meeting were conversations with Deb, to explain and convince her this was necessary, outlining my experience as her customer, why I’d chosen her and stayed with her and recommended her, and with Carol so she could add her part to our meeting. And a lot of thinking about all the cats and their stories, all the changes in my feline household, and all the times I took one of my cats to Deb. Of course, my recent losses are still fresh in memory.

When I went into the coffee shop where we were meeting Deb was on a call but Carol was there. I had a bereavement gift for her after some recent losses, and then told her about the marble. I could picture it in the pocket of my purse, white in the darkness, pulled it out and felt, yes, this wasn’t like the other marbles I’d picked up.

The thoughts

We had a longish and productive meeting, discussing all the topics I’d mentioned above. I had thought about the marble now and then and had felt a sense of the four siblings, picturing each Giuseppe, Mewsette, Mr. Sunshine and Jelly Bean on the cabinet in the kitchen, milling around and watching me, Giuseppe talking. When I got back to my car I pulled out my phone and searched “finding a marble” one more time and found the same interpretations I already knew.

Colors

I pulled out the marble and saw that it had three swirls of color, red, yellow and blue, and a vague, very faded fourth swirl.

All four of the siblings were black and when they were newborn kittens and didn’t move too much I could tell a difference in size and shape, but as soon as they were up and mobile it took some effort to check who was who. I used my set of six basic colors of tempera paint, water-based and non-toxic, and randomly dabbed a spot on the back of the right ear of three of them—Jelly Bean had prominent white hairs in his ears that were easy enough to spot, but I could use the white if I needed to. I kept those colors consistent until they were about 12 weeks when their physical characteristics and personalities were clear, but the colors stuck with them and I even called them by their color names now and then. Later during my run of daily sketches I called up those colors once again in those sketches. Mewsette was red, Giuseppe was green (one of the ways his name became Giuseppe, long story), Mr. Sunshine was yellow, and Jelly Bean was white, or blue when I needed an actual color.

Shape

And it was a sphere, holding them all together. Even if that one stripe was faded, in the universe of design and color use that fourth color would be green, so the sphere held them all.

Conclusion

So was I putting all this detail together into a little visit out of convenience? Was this really a “little visit?” If I had had no other details to work with than the appearance of the marble itself I still would have felt it was because of my emotional response. It could have been any color. It could have been anything but a marble. But the details of the meeting topic, being with friends who had shared my losses through the years, the marble being unmarred by its travels, the shape with three of the colors, and the likely fourth might all be part of the message, they might all together simply reinforce the idea for me, or they might only be random details. But for me to even recognize a “little visit” is my emotional response, and that was there from the beginning.

I may paint that green stripe on there with one of my glass paints, or I may leave the marble as I found it. But I’ll always keep it where I can look at it and get that little flutter each time.

Little visits

You never know where the messages will come from or how the visitor will appear to you. But they will. They love and care about you as they did in life and still want to be near you.

 

Thank you for following our grief journey after losing seven members of our feline family.

I hope sharing our experiences have helped you in some way, as sharing my experiences with you helps me.

You can read all the articles related to their loss by tapping the images in the side bar and in articles.

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Also read articles about Pet Loss and Pet Loss in the First Person, where I share my own experiences.

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Read or listen to Little Visits

…stories I collected over the years and collected into a small anthology.

Click above to read and listen to Little Visits.

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