Cleo

If anything, the beauty of these sights was heightened now I understood how achingly brief the life span was of any living thing. Maybe the key to healing isn’t found in books, tears or religion, but in affection for small things—a flower, the smell of damp grass. Love for a kitten was helping me embrace the world again.

Observer

A wise cat steps back from emotional response and observes without judgment.

Our first winter after losing Sam was particularly harsh. Snow draped itself over the hills across the harbor. Giant bruises of clouds rolled up from Antarctica and pushed against our windows. Rain pelted sideways at the glass. Wind tore our coats as we scurried down the zigzag, which had become a waterfall.

I gradually trained myself to drive under the footbridge. The first time I held my breath and focused on a triangle of harbor in the distance as the car hurtled down the hill. Next time, driving slowly up the slope, I allowed my eyes to drift to the bus stop and the curb Sam’s foot had left.

A reluctant spring arrived with spikes of yellow bloom. Reliving Sam’s last steps, I forced myself to walk down the zigzag and onto the tired wooden planks of the footbridge. Pausing in the center, I gazed down at the road. It was an unremarkable strip of tar seal. No stains, no hollows or irregularities. Nothing to indicate a boy had lost his life there. I hoped he hadn’t died frightened and alone.

I gave up scouring the streets for mousey-haired, thirty-something largish women with or without spectacles in navy coats. A Ford Escort parked on the side of the street was no longer an invitation to inspect its headlights. The damage would’ve been fixed months ago, anyway. It was probably beetling up and down hills, pretending it had never killed.

With warmer weather a gut-wrenching series of firsts had to be endured: what would have been Sam’s tenth birthday, closely followed by our first Christmas without him, then the anniversary of the accident. I’ve never been able to love summer wholeheartedly since.

Sometimes I’d been paralyzed with guilt if a few minutes went by without grief for Sam. A moment of laughter or happiness would shame me into thinking I was letting Sam down. But I gradually realized that being locked in a state of misery wasn’t helping Rob or honoring the life we’d had with Sam or the fact I was still alive.

With courage worthy of Superman himself, Rob had settled back well into school. Teachers whined about learning difficulties but the main thing was he seemed to have plenty of friends. While Steve and I hadn’t fallen in love again, we’d accepted some of our differences and were getting along better. Cleo was constantly springing out at us from behind doorways, reminding us life was too profound to be taken seriously.

I was beginning to relate to Cleo’s attraction to high places. Even if it was just a hereditary Abyssinian thing, the notion of taking a step above daily life and gazing down at it from a distance had compelling logic. I’d been doing it myself at night recently, standing at the top of the zigzag, the chill wind slicing my cheeks, and staring down at the glittering city. When observed from a great height, pain sometimes shrinks and subsides into the wider pattern of life. With practice and time I was learning it’s possible to disengage emotion occasionally and experience the serenity of a cat observing the world from a rooftop.

Gazing down at the grids of streetlights, I would wonder if a person’s life is packaged in a predestined design. When Sam was just two years old we’d walked through a picturesque old cemetery one morning. He ran ahead and stopped at a grave stone engraved with the name “Samuel.” Pointing at the headstone, he howled uncontrollably. I’d had to lift him, red-faced and sobbing, in my arms and carry him away from the place. He couldn’t even read at the time and had no way to understand the technicalities of death and cemeteries. How could a toddler comprehend so much, let alone experience a terrifying premonition? The memory of that day still makes me shudder.