Herding Cats
Once upon a time I was an avid camper and hiker. Perhaps I should say once upon another lifetime, ‘cause it seems about that long ago. I loved the outdoors, the woods with their towering trees—especially pines—and the sunlight filtering through the branches. I hiked and camped all over West Tennessee, and when I say camped, I mean camped. There were tents involved with sleeping bags and food cooked over fires we built without lighter fluid and newspapers. We did use matches, but I could lay a fire and light it with just one—no dried leaves, no secondary fuel source—just tinder and kindling, preferably from the lowest branches of a cedar tree. We lashed our own tables using fallen branches and twine, chopped our own firewood, and dug our own latrines. You can look that last one up if you don’t know what it is.
So when my grandsons came to spend the night one weekend, I had this glorious idea that they needed a tent and sleeping bags. But it had to be a free-standing tent ‘cause it had to be set up inside; there is no way this old body is gonna sleep on the ground and actually move the next morning. So we took them shopping, got them all excited about a tent and sleeping bags, and then struggled to actually get them to go to sleep once they burrowed in.
Now, whenever night spending takes place, they want to know if we can put up the tent (in the living room since there’s enough space for a four person tent and not much else) and can they sleep in it. After our last round, the tent was dismantled and piled on the sofa . . . along with the poles and the rain cover and the bag. It was my duty to fold and store said tent.
Have you ever tried to fold anything that required a large amount of floor space with seven cats in attendance? Now we don’t have seven that are full time house cats. Only two occupy that position. The others come in if the door opens and they are outside—or go out if the door opens and they are in. But for some unknown reason, I thought it was a good idea to fold and bag the tent at feeding time. So I brought it into the kitchen (where I could multi-task by watching “ Bones” at the same time), spread it out on the floor, and proceeded to shoo cats away or pick them up off the tent or fish them out from under the tent or take the ties away from them or pull them out of the bag or . . .
Get the picture? I finally managed to fold the tent, reclaimed the bag, and stuffed everything inside (I know you’re wondering why I didn’t just put the cats outside; probably for the same reason I decided to fold the tent while cat feeding). At least I didn’t have to sweep dead leaves and grass off as I rolled it up, but there’s probably a fair amount of cat hair clinging to it.
What in the world, you may ask, does any of that have to do with death? An excellent question which I shall now attempt to answer. When death occurs, the end result is almost the equivalent of trying to herd cats, and I’m not referring to dealing with the survivors. Loss takes normal and makes it anything but and until you experience that loss, you really don’t know how you will react—and no two losses ever generate the same feelings. There are days you may think you’re a pinball, bouncing from post to post at the whim of some random human operating the flippers . . . or someone trying to fold a tent while besieged by cats. No matter how hard you try to focus or how much you want to be functional, the distractions brought by grief can take the routine and make it impossible. The key throughout it all is to remember that you haven’t lost your mind along with your loved one. Everything you are experiencing is normal. You aren’t going crazy. You’re just temporarily herding cats.
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