River: Remembering the FlowerCat: 49

[mdlbear]

If things had gone differently in July of 2021, Colleen and I would be celebrating our 49th anniversary today, and embarking on our 50th year of marriage. Things didn't, and we're not.

I never know just how it's going to hit me. This year -- yesterday -- I hit an emotional landmine on the last page of Cordwainer Smith's story "The Game of Rat and Dragon.

... as he buried his face in the pillow, he caught an image of the Lady May.

“She is a cat,” he thought. “That’s all she is⁠—a cat!”

But that was not how his mind saw her⁠—quick beyond all dreams of speed, sharp, clever, unbelievably graceful, beautiful, [...]

Where would he ever find a woman who could compare with her?

Colleen was always some kind of cat to me. Objectively, she didn't share all that many attributes with the Lady May, but there it was, and objectivity has nothing to do with it. I buried my face in my hands and sobbed silently for a few minutes.

Comments

[acelightning73]

I miss my parents and my aunts. I miss my former High Priestess and High Priest. She had a bizarre form of kidney failure, and had to go to dialysis a couple of times a week. Her venous port got infected and fell apart, and she bled to death on the floor of her kitchen while trying to call 911. My High Priest developed a weird form of cancer because of some of the recreational drugs he had used, and he died in a hospital. And a few of my covensibs died of various chronic illnesses. One had a heart attack while walking up the stairs to the apartment where he and his partner lived. Partner had severe gout - his fingers were so gnarled he could barely hold a fork to feed himself.He died of the complications of the condition, a few weeks after his partner had the heart attack. They're making bad puns at each other in the Summerland.

I miss my childhood music teacher, who gave me piano and voice lessons until I went away to college. I miss the French Canadian announcer I worked with at the UN. He died of AIDs.