Chief

The other day, I was driving in the car with the kids when Mason had scratched his mosquito bite raw. It began to bleed and the girls started freaking out.  As they began freaking out, Mason began freaking out...and before I knew it, I had three frantic kids in the backseat screaming because Mason was bleeding.  

From a tiny mosquito bite.  

I began looking through the car trying to find a tissue or napkin and of course, I didn't have any.  The only thing I could immediately find was a pantyliner, so I passed it back to Mason and told him to use it.  

In MY mind, he was going to take the soft fabric part and soak up the teeny tiny bit of blood that was bubbling from his leg.  

But nope.  

In HIS mind, I had just handed him a great big band-aid.  

I didn't realize until we got to where we were going how he had actually utilized the pantyliner that I had given him.  He had opened it up and stuck the sticky part down on to his leg and used it to cover his mosquito bite - like a band-aid.  I started laughing and Makayla scornfully looked down at his leg and said "Mason!  That's a peepee pad", then repeated "Mason!  That's a vagina pad"!

It's the laughter I get from stories like this that help me get through life - the rough and tough parts of life.

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We had a tragic event at our house the other night -  
Late Sunday night/early Monday morning, one of our family cats, Chief, was hit by a car and killed.  

While  I've always felt that to be inevitable since we live so close to a very busy road and my cats (especially Chief) love to meander and roam, it still took my breath away and sucked a little life out of me upon hearing the news.  

Not the least hard thing to bear when they go from us, these quiet friends, is that they carry away with them so many years of our own lives.
-John Galsworthy 

Chief was taken off the road by the state before I could see him.  I am thankful for that because then I didn't have to see his lifeless body in the road, but at the same time, I regret it because he was taken to the landfill (where they take all dead animals that are found). 
The landfill.
*gulp*

Trying to find a positive in our negative situation:
I was told by many (it's a much traveled road) that Chief was right in the middle of the road.  That alone can bring me a tiny bit of peace because then I know he was probably killed instantly.  Where as if he was on the side of the road, I would have thought that he lived long enough to try to struggle home and made it as far as the side of the road before he passed.

-breathe-

I immediately knew that I needed to tell the truth to the kids right away, but there was still a part of me that was fighting that initial feeling and was trying to find different ways/stories as to why Chief was missing besides death.  

I couldn't do that, though.   

Dealing with death is a part of life -

It's the circle of life - 

and they needed to learn about it.
A tough,

very tough,

lesson to learn.

As expected, they were sad. 
Makayla was devastated. 
She cried most of the night.

Her first words she could get out were
"I didn't get to say good-bye".

aaaah, neither did i baby girl, neither did i.

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I wish we had him so we could bury him in our yard, but we don't, 
so I am still in the process of trying to figure something out to memorialize him - something we can do to give ourselves a closure. 

Chief was an awesome little buddy. 

He was 10 years old.

He and his brother were our first babies.

He LOVED to hunt.  One time we caught him on a night camera carrying an opossum in his mouth.  Gross, I know!

He learned tricks that the kids taught him.
He loved to be kissed, petted, and held.
He could not have been more tolerant of the kids and their "abuse".

He was always up in our business - on our laps, in our face - meowing, rubbing against us.

He had been hit by a car once before when he was a baby, shattering his pelvis and breaking his hip. 

When I asked the kids what they'll remember most about Chief they answered -
Mason: Chief's eyes.

Makayla: His tricks

Mia: Me miss Chief.

His empty spot in our family will  definitely be noticed - a void that will be impossible to fill for a very long time, for...ever.  
And I wonder to myself how long it will be before I stop hoping that maybe he'll be sitting on the front step when I pull up to our house...

We've began really focusing on Rascal, Chief's brother.  He doesn't know what life is like without Chief.  He's not grown more distant, but he has been moping in and out of rooms, meowing out outside (i expect looking for chief). We have gone out to buy Rascal toys and the "expensive" food (something we couldn't afford with chief around because he was a hoss - he ate like a beast).

*sigh*

To lose your family pet, 

a member of your family -

It's so sad.
And so hard.

But life goes on.

It's important to cry and important to grieve, but at the same time, I don't want his loss to consume us.

Despite the grim situation, we are thankful for the time we had with Chief and the memories we have with him.  

I go back and forth with a roller coaster of emotions - At one moment, I feel heavy, like there's too much gravity on my heart and I feel like I've been 'buried in a landslide of sharp, sad rocks'...and I can replay his accident (that i never even saw) over and over again in my mind.  
And then the next moment, I think of Mason and his pantyliner band-aid (and other similar stories) and I laugh.  
And that laughter makes me feel better.  
And I remind myself that losing a pet is a part of life and I tell myself, just like I tell my kids, that we'll see him again someday.  There's nothing I can do to change what happened - what's been done is done - and what's meant to be is meant to be.  I have to smile at what we've had with Chiefers and I have to think that he had no suffering, but died instantly while doing his favorite thing - hunting down an animal.

You will lose someone you can’t live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.
 ~Anne Lamott


Never again will I be able to see a black cat without thinking of my own and all that he has brought to our lives.

RIP Chief Michael Montgomery!