Cleo

He grunted agreement. If by some miracle the surgery was successful it would give him new life. I tried not to think of the enormity of what was about to happen. Eight feet of colon would be removed, and he’d return home with a colostomy bag. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. He was born perfect. I’d used every ounce of my maternal powers to make him stay that way. My determination to heal him through sheer will had failed. If all went well there’d be a second operation two months later to remove the colostomy bag and give at least (at least, at least—what loathsome words they were) the appearance of physical normality.

Conversation was minimal. Toothbrush. Check. Razor. Check. Why couldn’t he have the one thing that mattered? Good health. Uncheck. We caught the elevator to the eighth floor, where a small grey room was waiting for him. A crucifix on the wall was a reminder of previous young men who’d suffered more than their due. He sat in a chair that had arms but could in no way qualify as an armchair. At least the room had a view over the city.

“Chantelle will be in there,” he said, pointing at a grey cube of a building. “The university.”

My heart lurched. To have twenty-four-year-old male yearnings inside a body that refused to work properly seemed the ultimate cruelty. All the other patients on his floor were the wrong side of seventy.

Our silence wasn’t awkward so much as textured.

“I love you,” I said. The words conveyed a tiny percentage of my feelings for my beautiful, sensitive, cat-loving son.

“You can go now,” he said, not moving his gaze from the window.

“Don’t you want me to stay till they settle you in?”

He shook his head. “Tell Cleo I’ll be home soon,” he said.

My last glimpse of him as I left the ward was of a lonely figure sitting in a chair facing a window.

Outside on ground level, I crossed the street to find a small church. Wood-lined and colonial, it reminded me of the one in which I’d struggled so hard as a child to learn God’s rules. I tried to pray again, but my conversation with God was one-sided as usual.

There was more solace to be found in the park outside, the giant soothing hands of branches reaching over me. It was easier to imagine God here among leaves and flowers that pulsated with life. Death and decay was woven into the beauty in ways that seemed natural and reassuring.

Gulping the oxygenated air, I thanked the Victorian minds that had decreed hospitals needed parks nearby. Grass and trees absorb human worries and help put them in perspective.

Six long hours later I fumbled in my handbag. My hand trembled and was so slippery I could barely hold the phone to my ear. The surgeon’s voice was weary, matter-of-fact, with an upbeat edge.

“It went well,” he said.

Cleo and I nursed Rob through his recovery from the first operation, and a couple of months later, the second. As he regained strength he often draped Cleo over his stomach to let her throaty song reverberate through his wounds. While scientists have proven pets help people live longer, more research needs to be done on the healing potential of a cat’s purr. It’s a primeval chant, the rhythm of waves crashing on the shore. There’s powerful medicine in it.

Cats are known to purr not only to express pleasure but also when they’re in great pain. Some say the feline lullaby is comforting because it reminds them of when they were kittens curled in the warmth of their mother’s fur. I wouldn’t be surprised if someday the purr is proved to be much more than a lullaby, that the vibrations have potential to heal living tissue.

“Listen to that,” he said one day. “It’s a cross between a gurgle and a roar—a rurgle.”

“Do you remember when you were little you said Cleo was talking to you?” I asked. “Was that real?”

“It felt real at the time.”

“Does she still talk to you?” I asked, no longer concerned for his sanity. Years ago I’d accepted Rob had a special connection with Cleo that only seemed to bring good.

“In dreams, sometimes.”

“What does she say?”

“She doesn’t talk so much these days as show me things. Sometimes we go back to when Sam was alive. We’ll run up and down the zigzag with him. It’s like she’s telling me everything’s going to be okay.”

Cleo straightened her front legs, arched her back and opened her mouth in a cavernous yawn. Appearing in Rob’s dreams was just a pastime, as far as she was concerned.

I’d have willingly exchanged places with Rob to relieve him of his ordeals. Yet he shrugged when I said such things. In many ways, he said, the illness was a gift. I shivered when he talked that way. He sounded like an old man. Certainly, his experiences gave him a perspective well beyond his years.

“I’ve been through good times and bad times,” he said. “Believe me, good’s better. When you’ve tasted stale bread, you really appreciate the fluffy stuff fresh out of the oven.”