Week 5: Narrative aka story

Digging

• This is an adaptation from a piece I wrote for 262-95

Meir returned home in a shoe box, late into the winter, when everything was covered with a thick layer of frozen snow. I was sad and upset and angry, mostly with myself, for listening to our old Vet, who told us to take care of him at home. Until the last moment we were hoping for his recovery from a liver decease that attacked him few weeks earlier. For short periods of time he seemed to be getting better but inevitably sank back into apathy, spending his days lying in some corner completely unaware of our presence.  I kept thinking that had I sleeked more professional help, sooner, he would still be alive.

So when I was offered at Animal hospitals help, deposing of his body, I was adamant in my refusal. “No way, he is coming home with us,” I almost spit the words in the Vets’ face for even considering this option. Being used to people in grief, he just shrugged, and walked away, but not before he handed me a $1000 bill.

Many hours later, utterly frustrated, looking at the barely noticeable dent I managed to create in the frozen ground, I realized how naïve and completely clueless I was when I was so fast to deny the offer to help. In my defense, I had no prior experience in digging graves in a northern country, in the winter. All I had was a vague recollection of an episode from one of my favorite TV series “Northern Exposures” in it the town mayor, of a small Alaskan town, is taking a count of perspective dying citizens so he can make sure to dig enough graves ahead of winter. “Very peculiar,” I remembered, thinking at the time, amusing in a morbid way and probably highly exaggerated.

But standing on the small hill behind our house, next to a lovely spot I chose, under the old pine, I was not amused at all. I tried everything from clearing a small patch of earth and than trying to create a ditch with a pick axe, to lighting a fire on the now exposed soil. I read somewhere that the hardest part is the surface, about 4"; the ground is warmer underneath so the picking will be easier. When this didn’t work I tried using an assortment of digging instruments I found in my husbands’ tool box, resorting from time to time to stamping on the unyielding ground and screaming. At one moment I even considered storing Meir in the freezer until spring thaw, but the thought of having to face him every day, gave me renewed strength to continue.  

”He had a good life,” I kept telling myself every time I stopped to take a quick breathe or wipe the sweat off my face.   From the day Keren “collected” him wandering in the street, in our home town, just a tiny bundle of white fur with one green and one blue eye. She declared him abandoned and even though it turned out that he belonged to that little boy down the street, she refused to give him back basing her decision on obvious neglect.

He got his name from a famous children poem book, we all loved. “A whole book on one cat” was exactly that, a whole book of poems dedicated to a white cat named Meir that looked exactly like him. He roamed our yard for many years before he was shipped, in his crate, to the U.S (Continental, cargo) when it became obvious we were not returning back any time soon.  Yes, he had a good, fulfilling life, as any cat can expect to have, but still I was sad that he had to be buried in a foreign, frozen, ground so far from “home”.

I kept looking at his shrinking cold body, now stuffed in the small box, and felt that I am betraying him yet again. He did not resemble in any way the big furry cat he used to be and the least I could to would be to find a way to bring him to rest in an honorable way.

So back to digging, even if I’ll have to move the dirt with my hands one handful in a time, I was not ready to give up and declare defeat. Finally, late in the afternoon, in the fading light, I managed to make a shallow ditch, barely deep enough to fit his body. Keren and I laid a big flat rock on top and wrote his name, in Hebrew and English.

We are selling the house, now that we are not living in it, and finally found a buyer. As we’re going through the necessary paper work I keep thinking of that afternoon. I am pretty sure that I will not miss the house, but that picture of the hill and the stone over the small grave will probably keep haunting me.

We called him Meir –Yonatan Geffen

The minute we laid our eyes on him

We decided that his name will be Meir.

Grandma said that it will not do to call a cat in a person name

Mom said that she couldn’t care less and a cat name makes no difference to no one

And dad said that he likes this name Meir

And that grandma should stop interfering