Signs of Love

These visits fill me with joy…and also with sadness,…that she is so close, and yet I can’t touch her.

Mimi has been pretty busy for the entire last week sending me messages from beyond this world. They could all be coincidences, but the rate at which they’ve moved in and out of my days since August 10 makes me think otherwise. I have a video at the end of this post which shares two of her signs of love that happened on the same day that I shared on YouTube for Mimi’s followers there.

The impossible probability

In one of my writing classes somewhere along the line I remember a professor discussing fictional stories and the “willing suspension of disbelief” that lets a reader accept what they read as a story that has, will, or could happen, even though they know it’s fiction. But you can only push fiction so far. You can write a story that according to the laws of physics, the space-time continuum or logic couldn’t possibly happen and some readers would go along with you, but you’d likely lose most readers and also your credibility. We tend to allow more credibility for what seems “impossible” actually happening as long as it’s “probable.” What’s “improbable” goes against our logical thinking and makes it less credible. Our goal as fiction writers was to create a plot and characters based on the “impossible probability,” choosing actions, places and characters that could probably happen and fit into our logical thinking, and by that we can believe the impossible.

Feathers and lights and butterflies

So after that little lecture I’ll just say feathers and lights and butterflies and more in relation to Mimi and the type and number of unusual incidents this past week fall into the category of “impossible probability” for me. I have shared some already, and others I’ll share at more length in their own posts.

On August 11, the dancing lights with me on the deck, and in my lap, seemingly impossible that I would decide to walk around the yard and up onto the deck and finally sit down in that spot at exactly the time the wind catcher on the wind chime at the corner of the deck would reflect the sun at exactly the right angle to come around to my left and then get into my lap and move around for four minutes, then leave and fade away. Especially when I’ve been out on that deck practically every morning in the 34 years I’ve lived here, and Mimi and I spent a lot of time out there each morning, and I never once saw that light before Sunday morning. But entirely probable. Nothing there violates the laws of physics or space-time or anything. Could entirely be coincidental. Does not feel that way to me. If appearances happen, light is a common element. The light and its action seemed happy, even joyful, and I felt my sadness dispel for that time.

On August 12 I felt peace in the garden as I walked around where she and I had been, and up the steps to the deck where I watched her progress each day. But on the deck, walking around the yoga mat I sensed Mimi there but felt a sudden deep sadness, started to cry and continued for a while, going into the kitchen, doubting my decisions and talking out loud to her. In time, I stopped and, in time, my doubts were gone. But after that I noticed that I no longer felt Mimi’s presence there, nor in the bathroom where her presence had been very strong. Perhaps the sadness was that her spirit had been lingering, but now had to leave. Not that she wouldn’t be back, but she would no longer be in these familiar places. I will write more about this.

On August 13, quiet all around. Even the back yard, usually loud with birds, seemed silent. No sense of Mimi at all.

But on August 14 when I went out for my morning walk and memories around the garden I found the tiny gray feather from a dove floating in her bird bath, right in the center. I’ve shared that here but here is a refresher in case you missed that post. I had been cleaning the bird bath daily, but stopped the day she left us. It was messy and the water was shallow, so I gently cleaned the bottom and added new water, giving the feather something to float on. It stayed in the center area for that day and the next, then moved off to float around the outside edge (and is still there today, August 19, after some rains replenished it).

Feathers signify that an “angel” is near or has visited, and left a message from a loved one in the form of a feather. The fact it was floating so prominently in Mimi’s bird bath demanding attention after a day when I hadn’t felt her presence was, again, a little too much coincidence. I immediately thought of her stopping back for a visit in one of her favorite places after her spirit had let go of this physical place.

Later that same day I carried things out to my car from the back yard, thinking of how much Mimi loved the driveway because it was often sunny and she could roll around, and the shed was there, it was oddly one of her favorite places. As I remembered her strolling along ahead of me on similar errands a red-spotted purple butterfly flew over me, circled around a few things and found a stand of jewelweed in the side yard.

Butterflies are considered the spirit of a loved one come for a visit, and this particular species happens to be black with mahogany highlights where the sun shines through her wings, with several rows of blue or turquoise spots along the lower edge of her hind wing like a black cat’s eyes contrasting with her dark fur, very much like Mimi herself; this butterfly also happened to be female. I will write more about this as well.

I awoke August 15 to find that I’d closed the bathroom door before I went to bed the night before. Not only Mimi had been in there each night since April, each of the other cats had spent nights in there over nearly the past two years. The bathroom door is one of the first things I see when I wake up, and because it’s a bifold door and didn’t close all the way I could often see Mimi or any of the others in there through the center or around the edges. I knew I wouldn’t see any black fur through those narrow places this time.

I laid there and thought about it, and each of them in their time, then got up and found I’d not only closed it but I had latched the hook into the eyehook as well. I didn’t remember anything about doing this, and no little memory nudges came up later, either. I unlatched it and opened the door, and the room didn’t feel as empty as it had just the day before. While my thoughts have been full of Mimi for days, weeks, I was visualizing all of them again as I went downstairs and made coffee, fed the rest of them their breakfast and went outside. I hadn’t realized I’d been so focused, but it was wonderful to once again have each of them in my memory through the day. More on this too.

On August 16 I neither felt nor experienced any visits or presence inside or out but thought about them all day as I worked, and what Mimi, and then the others, would be doing around me. But as I had done the previous Friday, Mimi’s last full day with us, I was finishing up the draft of another book cover, and it was time to paint the illustration before finishing the final design. Last week I went to bed instead of staying up late to paint it. This week I didn’t want to relive the experience in the same order so I stayed up late to paint the illustration.

August 17 was the one week anniversary of her transition. I had a local and brief photo shoot with friends right around noon, and I was kind of glad to have something distract me from sitting around remembering all day. I felt fine until I received an automated text for Mimi from CVS telling me her methimazole refill was ready. I had been planning to stop down and tell them, and since I was right across the street from them I stopped in and talked to the pharmacist and assistant. They’d been familiar with me and my prescriptions for my cats for the past two years and I thanked them for their patience with all my changes in their needs as I lost each one, and for running each of their prescriptions through the prescription discount card they had behind the counter, saving me quite a bit of money. They said they were sorry I had lost Mimi, they felt as if they had known my cats.

I’m not sure why but that conversation brought about sadness for me. I’d been planning to make a lunch and be ready to go sit out on the deck at about 3:00 to at least 4:00, the anniversary hour, but I had lost my appetite. I decided I’d just change my clothes and get ready to sit on the yoga mat and eat later.

I had mentioned a friend had visited last Saturday and was there with me when Dr. Michelle was here, and she messaged me around 2:30; messaging back and forth with her through the next hour was very calming and reassuring.

But a storm was rolling in at about 3:30, and watching it on the radar it was a pretty big one, with a purple and white area inside the green, red and yellow. I ran around closing windows as the wind picked up and the rain began to come in sideways on the deck. I wasn’t sure how bad it would get, I don’t mind getting wet but if the storm really turned bad I didn’t want to be outside for sure. As the time grew closer to 4:00 the storm grew worse, until, at 3:55, suddenly the rain slowed a little, then minute by minute the sun came out while it was still raining! I stepped out at 4:00, looked around in amazement that the storm had nearly stopped in five minutes and the sun was shining.

But also I was looking for a rainbow. In those conditions I’d always see one on the eastern horizon as I looked out from the deck, and if I’d seen one I’d wonder if Mimi had gained some superpowers in the afterlife with a display like this. I did not see one, though, and I even walked around the street for a better view and up the street, and messaged Denise, at the top of the hill, if she saw one to take a photo. I heard of rainbows in other areas after that, and I saw what looked like the colors forming a few times, but no actual rainbow. That’s okay, stopping the storm and giving me a creative project, along with messaging with my friend who had been with me at just that hour, washed away the sadness that had gathered. Was that Mimi? I’m sure she was involved in it somehow, rather than have me sit and be sad at the time she was set free.

August 18, as I walked the dim and damp garden in the morning I marveled at how it has flourished, and I thanked Mimi for her gift to me, this garden—more on that later too. But as I stopped to take a photo of the garden this morning, squinting to look in the viewfinder of my DSLR then opening my eye again, I saw a small black shape in my peripheral vision walking past the laundry post toward me on the bricks, like Mimi slowly raising her tail as she looked up at me, round-eyed, extending a front paw as she walked. I have always taken those peripheral visions as visitations as well, and I was sure that in her way Mimi was there with me.

Mimi’s Signs of Love

 

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Pet Loss in the First Person

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