The day I had to put my cat Emily to sleep, I had this sick feeling I had been written into a novel. I even questioned Free Will, as each detail of the day of the seemed to have be placed there for me to discover, or not to, that eerie image only the reader notices, while the character goes along with her day thinking she has choices.
Monday didn't start out with Emily dying, but waking up to find that my daughter's leopard frog was dead. As I mentioned, though it's a little weird that the frog died on the same day as we knew our cat would be put to sleep, this seems even odder given that in Chapter three, the same thing happened to our betta fish and our greyhound. This is what I mean by my life being taken over by a novelist, there was too much foreshadowing for my tastes.
And there were these weird comic moments--like in Steel Magnolias when Clairee grabs Ouiser during the graveyard scene and yells, "Hit her!" To which Ouiser responds, "Are you high, Clairee?" We had a few of these scenes. Like my daughter carrying her dead leopard frog to the vet in a small plastic tank and someone asking, "Oh and what are you taking to the vet today?" Then later, her setting the frog down only to have the tank tip over and yet, Pumpkin the frog still stuck to the ceiling of the tank. My daughter's reaction when we said, "He's upside down, Honey" was "Well, he has suction cups on his feet." And when my daughter saw Emily's tongue out the side of her mouth, she said, "It looks like she's studying."
These strange moments of comic relief and yet, after I had put my cat to sleep and ran back in the room one more time to say goodbye, as I walked out the door into the waiting room I heard this familiar song and I thought, "No way are they playing this now." As I listened I realized that yes, the song that was on the radio speakers was "In the Living Years" by Mike & the Mechanics. Truly, it was as if the writer put this in for a little mood music. ( I wasn't there that morning when my father passed away,I didn't get to tell him all the things I had to say, I think I caught his spirit later that same year I'm sure I heard his echo in my baby's new born tears, I just wish I could have told him in the living years). And after I shook my head at this, I walked out to the car to find my husband in the car with my daughter crying as Fergie sang "Big Girls Don't Cry" on their radio.
Whose in charge of the soundtrack these days? Apparently it's a god, a writer with a sense of humor or one who really just likes to make sure all the details are in place. Later that day, my husband and I heard a cat meowing in the PLU dorms and we both thought we were losing our minds. I went to bed realizing how big the universe is and watching satellites pass above my house, telling myself to remember this feeling when I'm upset about something minor like a new scratch on my car or my husband accidentally deleting all my digital photos from my week at school. It's a good reminder that's it's not the *things* in life you remember, but the way the willow tree looked in a certain light, the song on the radio, the pink towel I held my cat in, those moments I never expected. I live for them and against them.
We're onto a new chapter or maybe one that hasn't been written yet.
