Mimi’s Dancing Lights

Sunday morning, at the same time as Mimi and I usually went outside, I got my coffee and cameras and walked down the basement steps, visualizing Mimi and remembering all the mornings with her and with others through the years, opened the door and went out, walked the same paths we always had through the garden, around and up to the deck.

I wasn’t in any mood for my own calisthenics, but I eventually settled on the yoga mat in the spot where we’d often settled in the morning, about the same place where she and I had been the day before when we let her go. And not a moment too soon.

In less than a minute a light began dancing around to my left, on the little stack of trim wood I’ll someday make frames out of and in the area under my bike and exercise bike where she had been napping recently after I’d cleaned it out.

Then the light moved right into my lap. I was sitting in a loose cross-legged position—the full posture is difficult after my hip replacement—but the light moved up onto my legs, then across the space in between, up onto my belly and chest, but stayed in my lap area for almost four minutes.

The light came from the same place Mewsette’s dancing lights had come from last year, the aluminum wind chime that’s been at the corner of my deck since I moved in here. Like Mewsette’s dancing lights, I don’t ever remember seeing the light on the deck like this, though Mimi and I were out there on many, many mornings.

Here’s a photo of it from just after I finished taking the video, and you can see the angle and the distance of the wind catcher, the oval shape about the middle of the photo.

That light moves around, obviously, because the wind catcher is supposed to move in the breeze, but the reflection changes with the angle of the sun and minutes before or after would have been in a different place; at the end of the video it’s very faint and then disappears.

For me to sit in exactly the right spot at the right time for that light to move around in my lap for four minutes, there is too much coincidence.

Here is the video on YouTube. You can see enough in the first minute but I used all of the video where you can see the light just because.

And a tiny bit of Mimi’s fur was on the mat when I walked around it, before I sat down. Dr. Michelle shaved her leg to give her the injections and I collected that fur as I did with all of them. Either I missed a bit, or this hid from me. But on Sunday morning when I was feeling particularly lost this little bit of fur was very meaningful.

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From Instagram

You might recognize Mimi’s bench here, the one I trash rescued for her to have in the garden.

She used it to nap on and look around, and to get into the red wheelbarrow to get her daily outdoor drink, then I worked the bench and the birdbath into the layout for the new garden.

It does look a little different here…I sat with her on the yoga mat on the deck for a while before she went to be cremated, just being with her spirit in those last hours.

I heard something fall somewhere below us on the bricks or in the garden. I wasn’t concerned.

Later, when I took my first walk around the garden alone I saw the bench in this condition. I had known that center board was coming loose and pressed it together, intending to add a brace underneath.

But just maybe the garden and her things miss her too.

Pet Loss in the First Person

From the time I began writing about my experiences in pet loss, relating what I was feeling and thinking about it as I moved through grief, readers have thanked me, often in private, for my honesty, grateful to know another shared their feelings as they moved through grief, or helped them make a decision. 

Thank you for following our grief journey after losing three 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 one of these images in the side bar and in articles.

 

 

 

 

 

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Read more articles about Pet Loss in the First Person, my personal losses, about Pet Loss and other Essays on The Creative Cat.

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It’s Mimi napping in the shadow on the cool bricks among the geraniums, near the vintage aluminum tub where I grow pole beans. Read more and order.

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Copyright

All images and text used on this site are copyrighted to Bernadette E. Kazmarski unless otherwise noted and may not be used without my written permission, although links to your site are more than welcome and are shared. Please ask if you are interested in using and image or story in a print or internet publication. If you are interested in purchasing a print of an image or a product including it, check my animal and nature website Portraits of Animals to see if I have it available already. If you don’t find it there, visit Ordering Custom Artwork for more information on a custom greeting card, print or other item.

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Weekly schedule of features:

Sunday: Essays, Pet Loss, Poetry, The Artist’s Life

Monday: Adoptable Cats, TNR & Shelters

Tuesday: Rescue Stories

Wednesday: Commissioned Portrait or Featured Artwork

Thursday: New Merchandise

Friday: Book Review, Health and Welfare, Advocacy

Saturday: Your Backyard Wildlife Habitat, Living Green With Pets, Creating With Cats

And sometimes, I just throw my hands in the air and have fun!

 

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