On the 20th of March, I received a text from my daughter that her cat was dying. Not a surprise, because he was old and had had a nice long life. But the act of physical death makes it a surprise, as it’s not often a quiet or quick process. After a brief phone call, she tells me what’s going on, just sharing with me what her cat was going through. In a return text I told her I felt like Cleo, my cat, would probably be next as she had been failing for a while. I didn’t mean, NEXT!

So the real surprise was that by 2am that night, my Cat began the same journey. Unbelievable! Cleo had given me no indication that she had made that drastic a turn, at least not one I accepted consciously.

But died, she did.

She died on the Equinox, began the process like I said at 2am and completed right before midnight, the entire day of welcoming spring and its renewal was met with death, the passing of our cats. And talk to others about death and it stirs people up. What happens at death? All we can do is speculate. Wonder and maybe have hope for something more.

As I think on it, I’m not sure teacher ever talked about Death. Keeping to a bent on positivity. We talked about the process of life but not anymore about death than its stages from a soul perspective. Did we talk about spirit, did we or did he? Are we on a journey in form to a better life in spirit? What is the point of physical life? And what the fuck happened to evolution? Why are humans no better after all these years, still waring, with anyone, everyone.

Cleo died in the bed with me at the end of the equinox I heard her take her last breath. I spent her last hours holding her as she seized and seized her physical form fighting the inevitable. Death is not easy for the physical vessel. Watch the movie Lucy! The urge to live is so strong. Maybe angels come to sing our souls’ away from our dying form. I hope so because I sang to her.

I have dealt with death, volunteered with Hospice, my mother took her last breath in front of me as did my father and they fought to leave their bodies until the end, both of them. Why is it I had so many questions on death as apart of a spiritual community? What hadn’t teacher talked about death and afterward. It so happened, after a particularly painful death in my family, it was if it hadn’t happened, you know stick to positivity. Unanswered questions and not even being able to ask the big questions would be cult territory.

All my life I had wanted to belong to a group, to feel like I was a part of something. I was the outsider in my family. The outsider because of my beliefs, and the outsider because I wouldn’t buy into peoples bull shit. Now they call it being a Karen, just kidding…but I really did believe in righteousness and the path of truth. At the end of my walk in this cult I found myself walking alone. They were happy to walk with me while the money ran and happy to walk away when the spring went dry. What about the nature of belief!

Jesus said loneliness was inevitable for a human. No one can know our experience. It was our elders who were to show us how to navigate the many life processes we would face. Without elders we must turn to the unseen world because it is from there that teaching is inevitable and life moves continuously.

Just as my stubborn bitch cat Cleo showed me her true love and devotion allowing me to sit with and hold her through her dying. My mother did the same, she died right there without ever saying she loved me, my father did the same. Some of our soul lessons come in such big and personal ways that it is far easier to take them personal because it looks and feels personal. Getting to witness the passing of a soul is a privilege. Their deaths said to me what they couldn’t consciously say out loud.

Being rejected and taken advantage of by a spiritual teacher, parent, lover, child, ends up being one of life’s greatest acts of teaching, learning to cherish the self, to love the self, above all acts of pain and rejection. We aren’t here to be broken by life. Learning, knowing and understanding who you are, when the very ones assigned to love you, can’t or won’t, is a great lesson in being one with God. Same with friendships, people tend to be judgmental even as they would prefer you not to judge them.

Cleo’s death set off a week of intense depression and made me look at where I am in life. The funniest thing was that a stray I had fed during the summer but had disappeared during hard winter, showed up at my door the day after Cleo died. That stray cat came in to my house uninvited and took up space and rubbed my leg and meowed in my face, because life is to be lived.

I needed to be reminded.

Wisdom is gained by a richly experienced life. No one said it would be free of horror.