Labor Day weekend has always been a time of endings and beginnings. Summer vacation is ending and school is starting. Warm summer breezes give way to cool fall-like wind that tugs on your skin and prompts you to put on a sweater.
For me, however, Labor Day weekend always seems to have a deeper symbolism. Like clockwork, something always begins or ends on this weekend. One year I moved to Santa Fe on Labor Day weekend. Goodbye old life in Michigan. Hello new life in New Mexico. Another year I released an old relationship only to find a new one waiting for me in the wings. Ten years ago I discovered that I was pregnant with my first child. Last year we got new kittens and my sons got to discover what unconditional love is like.
This year, Labor Day weekend held a definite ending for our family. Our 14 year old black cat Sabrina died. She'd been diagnosed with diabetes in the spring and had struggled with the disease, but this was her time.
I first got Sabrina from my sister-in-law back in 2000. She had just moved in with my brother and Sabrina decided that she didn't like Jon, showing it by peeing all over his landscaping blueprints. I, being the animal lover that I am, took her in, and soon the peeing stopped. Sabrina soon traveled with me to another house when I moved in with my husband-to-be, Jeff.
Sabrina was a very healing cat. Whenever Jeff or I were not feeling well Sabrina would sleep on our laps or chests. Sometimes she would just place a paw somewhere on our body and commence with the purring. I first knew that I was pregnant with both of our kids because she would always sit on my abdomen, like she was a momma bird incubating her young egg.
When I had Michael, Sabrina felt displaced and Jeff soon took over as her favorite human. Michael learned when he was 1 or 2 not to bother her too much or he would get nipped. Nicholas never learned it. He was always bothering Sabrina - he subscribed to the "I'll love her and squeeze her and call her George" theory that hugging and squeezing and laying on Sabrina was the best way to show her love. He had a lot of nips and scratches to disprove this theory, but he never learned (or cared). Now that I think of it, he was this way with me too.
As Sabrina grew older she showed her displeasure to almost anything by peeing on our stuff, mostly mine. She taught me quickly that if I left any clothes on the floor that they were sure to get peed on. If she was really mad she would pee on something in the boys' rooms. But never Jeff's.
When we got the kittens she was not very happy. In fact, she was pissed, literally. Our bedroom carpets became targets and I became very tired of it very soon.
"This cat needs to go!" I would shout after finding another pee spot. But the rest of the family didn't agree with me so she stayed.
Soon her legs betrayed her and we realized that she could no longer go downstairs to her litter box. So Jeff brought the litter box up and put it in our bathroom. Sometimes she made it into the box but most of the time I would find puddles outside.
"Sabrina, you're a cat - you're not supposed to think outside the box!" I would say to her as I cleaned up the puddle.
When she peed out a blood clot this summer I knew she was near the end. She was peeing everywhere, vomiting all the time, and couldn't jump up on the bed anymore. We went away three times on vacation and every time we came back I was expecting our neighbor to tell us that she had died while we were away. Luckily she didn't.
"Sabrina is really sick and may be on her way to heaven soon," I kept warning the kids. Nicholas, who is 7 1/2, didn't like to hear this news and, I think, didn't really accept it. He would make a beeline to find Sabrina in her favorite place under our bed, and talk to her and pet her.
And then the week before Labor Day weekend, Sabrina made a turn for the worse. She stopped eating, she was vomiting foam, she wobbled when she walked, and she was having trouble seeing. She was ready.
I warned the boys that she was really sick and probably wouldn't make it through the end of the week. They both started to sob. "I don't want Sabrina to go," Nicholas cried. "I love her!"
"I know you do," I said, tearing up a little myself. "But she's old and sick. There's not much left in this life for her now."
I made an appointment for the vet on Friday afternoon. That morning the boys spent a lot of time with her, petting her from under the bed. We talked a lot about death and what kitty heaven would be like. Ten-year-old Michael made a very adult-like observation that Sabrina was ready to die but was hanging on because she didn't want to leave us.
"You're right," I said. "Sometimes people or animals can't leave until their loved ones release them, It's a very powerful thing to do."
Michael left and came back a while later. "I told Sabrina that it's ok to leave us and go to heaven," he reported as he gave me a big hug. I knew then that he would be all right when she died because on some level he "got" death. I knew he had made peace with her passing. It was Nicholas who I was worried about. He was younger and didn't really understand what death was all about.
Thankfully my mom took the boys to the beach that afternoon. Jeff came home and we took Sabrina outside for her last romp in the grass. And then it was time. She passed very peacefully. We wrapped her in a towel and put her in a box in the garage.
When the kids came home Nicholas's first thoughts were about Sabrina.
"Where is Sabrina?" he asked.
"I'm sorry, buddy, but she died today."
"Noooooo!!" he sobbed as he collapsed in my arms. "I wasn't ready for her to go!" He cried for a while and then looked up at me, his tear-stained glasses enlarging the pain in his eyes.
"How did she die? Where did she die? Where is she? Can I hold her?"
We had kept her body for this very reason. This was the kids' first real experience with the death of someone super close to them and I wanted them to have closure.
I took Nicholas outside and sat him on a bench. Then I brought Sabrina's towel-wrapped body and laid it in his arms. Gently we removed part of the towel so he could see her head and face.
"Hi Sabs," he said to her. "I didn't want you to die. You were the best kitty in the world."
He looked at me and asked if he could give her a hug. I realize that this sounds very macabre, but I knew then that this was part of his healing process.
"Certainly," I said, and tearfully watched as my little "baby" held and rocked his "baby" back and forth, back and forth, back and forth as he cried into her fur.
My heart broke as I watched his splinter into a million pieces. As long as I live I will never forget the raw grief and emotion that was splashed across his face at that moment when he learned nothing in this world is here to stay forever, even if you want it to.
He would have held her for the rest of the day if we had let him. In fact, he did ask if she could sleep with him that night. We drew the line at that one, saying no.
When Nicholas first heard that Sabrina might not have long to live, he asked if we could have a funeral. I told him that was a wonderful idea. And so, after he gave Sabrina one last hug, we took her away and Nicholas called up his aunt and uncle and grandma and grandpa and invited them to come to her funeral.
Later he asked me if we could have a line at the funeral like the one he saw at his Great-Uncle Bob's funeral. "You know, Mom," he said, "The line where everyone comes and gives me a hug and tells me they're sorry that Sabrina died." I told him that he could do anything he wanted at the funeral.
The next day was bright and sunny - a great day for a cat funeral. Without any prodding from me Nicholas dressed in his most fancy shirt and put on his only tie. Then he wrote Sabrina a letter to take with her to heaven. "I'll miss you Sabrina. I'll always love you!" He and Michael then helped Jeff make a kitty casket, complete with engraved cover.
When everyone arrived, we took the casket into the corner of the back yard where Jeff had dug a hole. We stood in a circle as my dad spoke about the circle of life and about Sabrina's next phase of being. Partway through the service Nicholas went over to the casket and laid one of his teardrops on it. I held Nick's hand as my brother spoke when no one else could - we were all too choked up to say anything.
Finally we laid Sabrina to rest. We each placed some dirt on top of her casket and then the boys helped Jeff finish burying it. Janet had brought some flowers so we placed them on top.
We didn't have a luncheon afterwards or even any snacks - I think that would have been going too far. Some may think we went a little over the top as it was, but I think it was important to give my boys a chance to deal with their grief to the fullest. I think had we just told them that Sabrina had died and now she was gone, they would have felt incomplete somehow. By allowing them to have a ceremony celebrating her life and encouraging them to cry and feel sad this will help them to know how to deal with a loss, whatever it is, in the future.
Nicholas cried a lot on the day of Sabrina's funeral and in the days following, but now he can talk about her without tearing up. The other night I asked him what he thought she was doing now. He thought a moment and then said, "I think she's playing with her brother in kitty heaven."
The kittens we brought into our house last year are no longer kittens but full-grown cats. Leia has now turned into the alpha cat and is trying to fill the space that Sabrina left. She is now the healing cat - she, like Sabrina, instinctively knows when someone is not feeling well or is feeling sad and goes to lay by them. I knew she was going to be this way on the last day of Sabrina's life when she stayed under the bed with Sabrina the whole day as if to say "Hey, you didn't really like me much while I was a kitten but I'm not going to let you pass on your own."
I will always remember this Labor Day weekend as the time the life of our dear cat ended. I will also remember that it was a time of beginnings too. It was the beginning of a sense of emotional strength in the boys - one that is only brought on by loss. It is the knowledge that life does carry on after you lose someone you love. It's knowing that the departed will always live in your heart. And it's knowing that your tears will always make you feel better.
