Saying Goodbye

My wife and I brought home our first pet together in November of 2015. At just a few months old I could hold Talion in one hand, and he would sit like an odd little W with his legs askew and his eyes full of wonder. We'd both had pets before, although only ever dogs and always with our own families. This was our first pet together, as fully independent adults in a new city and no one else to rely on.

I remember when we realized something was wrong. Kittens can have diarrhea, and the standard course of action was a cocktail of dewormers and other anti-parasite medications. But as time passed we found our boy had the impressive skill to take his meals and transform the wall near the litter box into a monochrome Jackson Pollock. Numerous vet visits built up, and we had our first taste of cruel math.

I think I had a spreadsheet at one point estimating the costs of pet ownership. Average veterinary bills, the cost of decent food, litter, pet insurance. I want to say I added in some overage at the beginning because life has a way of working outside of expectations. How well that lesson was learned in retrospect.

Anyone with a chronic health condition can attest to the cruel math. Especially in the United States, the ability for a person to get proper care for these conditions depends largely on access to financial liquidity. Behind that comes issues like access to quality care, specialists, insurance approvals for medications or the long phone calls with pharmaceutical companies hoping to get approved for subsidized supply. Adding up the dollars and cents and comparing to the household budget can be a weekly or even daily task, carefully considering whether the next dose or specialist might cost a skipped meal or maybe three.

Pets have it somewhat worse, as pet insurance may or may not have protections around things like rate increases or even the requirement to insure. You can have more limited access to covered options and in many cases you have to pay up front first before requesting reimbursement. In our case having a kitten with a pre-existing condition exempted most of his now-normal tests, and candidly I felt it likely we would have been dropped after the first year either way. Altogether that original spreadsheet of costs went right out the window within months.

Here in my hand I carry a little smote of light, warm and beautiful.

Here in my hand I carry the means to care for it with love and affection.

But my hand can carry only so much, and there is so much light and so few means.

And my greed demands I hold as much as I can of both, so I can hold not enough for not nearly long enough.

11 years later I can likely tally the cost of this little light in the tens of thousands. And I am immensely grateful to have the fortune of some measure of wealth, whether one ascribes that to luck, skill, or divinity. Yet I find something bitter on the tongue as having to weigh in the mind the cruel math that diffuses light into simple arithmetic. I wonder if I had more wealth, more that I could hold in my hand, whether I could have kept this little light just a little bit longer.

I distinctly remember when a few hundred dollars would have been impossible. There's a tightening in the chest when you hear the numbers, and beyond any grief or stress or even just a moment to consider what you want your mind goes to the mental spreadsheet. Checking accounts, savings accounts, credit limits, and the next pay period is a few more days away. How many people have had to give up light in their life only because they could not afford to help keep it shining.

What do I give up so that this little light will flourish? If this little light will cost me $10,000 today, what happens if some future little light needs another 10?

Or do I let these lights go to save a bit for - what, exactly? In my heart I know it's because there will be more light in the future, and this world rarely lets you hold and grow them without spilling money.

My house will soon be dimmer. Will I regret not loading 20 or 30K onto the HELOC, spreading payments out over months in exchange for the maybe that my little light would persist for months or years? In my heart I know that if I had those funds easily available, if my hands had kept or built more wealth, I might have done so more readily. But the cruel math cares not for love and grief, and maybe I would have succumbed to the gentle allure of spreadsheet formulas that strip the emotional weight from a financial decision.

The risks are there no matter what, and it may very well be that all the money in the world will not prevent this little light from returning to the greater one. That is of no comfort to me, because my hands can only hold as much as they do. I won't know one way or another, and none of us can know as Truth is beyond mortal vision. That is of no comfort to me, as in this moment I long terribly to Know.

I am sometimes thankful for the cruel math. Those same spreadsheets that so effectively split empathy from expense tell me that we can afford at-home euthenasia and a private cremation. I can hold some physical reminder of what was once light and reach back into memory to grasp what I once felt. What a relief that I can afford an inked imprint of his paw, and what misery that I had to ask whether I could.

The value of life is that it is finite, and in its close do those who persist remember this most sharply. There is something I think a little bit broken in this world that we have to additionally measure the financial value, the literal dollars and cents that it costs to maintain life in its many shapes and waves. I had a pastor once who said something to the effect of 'we are not in the Garden.' That feels the most apt when standing in a medical office looking at placards for financing options with 0% due for the first 6 months of the invoice on sorrow.

My mind went to employment and all the little things that an offer can entice you with. Fertility support, pet insurance, excellent medical coverage, life insurance, maybe even a gym benefit. So much of what light I can hold in my hand feels like it depends on who I work with, where their values towards their employees lie, or what a shareholder's balance sheet demands. In my heart I know that something about this is wrong and twisted, even more of our finite lives subordinated to the cruel math of an offer letter.

If I had more means, more fluid cash reserves or liquidity or literal dollar bills sitting under the matters, would the math have worked out in your favor little one? It seems like it's quite a bit easier to keep drawing lifelines when one's wallets are full and bank accounts overflowing. I am certainly bitter thinking back to selling MDB at just under half it's record high, because maybe that would be me today. Maybe I could have helped keep this beautiful little child's line going for just a little bit longer instead of having to run the numbers on a maybe.

Realistically having to put him through a complicated and uncertain surgery with unknown outcomes isn't for him. The logical math works against me, but my emotions scream out that there's room on the credit card to try. In the moment and after it, one works against the other mixing grief with guilt and certainty. Do I gamble on the odds of bringing him home, or does probability point to him passing away surrounded by strangers.

Tomorrow it will have been a week since we said goodbye. The passage of time is another cruel math, the simple movement of calendar days to mark the distance from my last memory of him spending a workday with me. We have to rebuild our version of normal around what is no longer here physically, even if it still occupies our heart and soul. Each day that passes gets us a little closer to the new normal, and each day gets easier - but never easy.

I don't really know what comes after this, and the thought of it honestly sends me into a sheer panic. But whether it's darkness or some hereafter, either way we will end up in the same place. So it's only goodbye for now, for a little while and then never again. Until then, sleep well and in gentle peace.