At The End Of The Day

Though his official name, etched on a glinty gold mouse shaped tag, is Mr. Jones; I have summarily nicknamed him “The Belly”. Mr. Jones has a soft pouchy, udder-like belly that appeared about three months after the ravages of the street began to fade from his demeanor. Thereabouts he also began to groom himself. Before long his beauty came out in such magnitude that awestruck visitors often asked if that was the same cat that was brought in several months back. His coat became a luxurious brownish black and his belly became not only quite a novel source of amusement for me but also an open door to his innermost affections. To the best of my knowledge, I am the only one who plays with his udder-like belly. He’s not aloof, just cautious, and most people are too brusque to discover his quiet charms. I, however, spend an inordinate amount of time brooding, and that is conducive to forming a well-laid foundation for cat affections. He will loom above me, silent and staring, waiting for a flicker of response. Usually, I will roll over and reach for his belly, which sends him into chirs of ecstasy and me out of my doldrums. If I don’t respond in a suitable amount of time, a furry head butt usually does the trick. On rare occasions he must resort to a mixed bag of feline antidepressant remedies: an audible mraou, a double-eyed squint, a flick of the tail, or a bat of the paw. He is my friend. He, who has a cat for a friend, has a friend, indeed.

Cat fed, duty done; I returned upstairs. This was the part of the day where it all unravels.

My clock springs wind down, baby’s in bed, cats fed, and I lay there wondering if I have the ability, the strength - the grace from God to do it all again the next day. I sometimes wonder what would happen if that answer was no. I sometimes wonder why that answer isn’t no. I often think about our friend, Joel, who committed suicide last year. I understand why. I’ve often thought about it myself. I never realized the finality of it until he did it. I wish he hadn’t. I wonder if he wishes he hadn’t.

For some reason, known only to my subconscious mind, I find myself thinking about an old boyfriend. Actually, I’m thinking about the night sky, the immensity of the stars and of broken hearts. He was Canadian. I like Canadian’s the way I like cats. I know they’re different from me, but I like them just the same. He was tall and thin, wore the thickest glasses I had ever seen, was brilliantly musical, intelligent and quite sensitive; an engineering student and a professional musician. For a while it was blissful and I had begun to think in terms of “contentment”. One summer week we went up to a lake cabin owned by his family. It was 200 miles North of Toronto. It was one of the most wild and beautiful places I had ever seen. Our city saturated eyes soaked in the night sky. Without streetlights, skyscrapers, cars, traffic signals, stores, malls, and buildings of every kind, the night sky reached from one end of the horizon to the other. I had never seen so much sky; I didn’t know it was possible, every inch of it full of stars. The first time I saw it, I couldn’t breathe right, I was actually afraid and had to sit down. I felt dizzy from the stars reaching to the ground all around me. I felt small, and as all power drained out of my body I first sat, then lay down, to take it all in.

We spent every night lying on the dock, head to head looking up at the sky, soaking it in, angry at the cities for stealing the view.

I never wanted to leave. One day we decided to take a canoe trip across the lake.

We arose early, the mist laid heavy on the water and the spruce trees loomed ominous in the gray dawn. It was like a painting done by one of the Group of Seven. I heard the most unusual sound, my first loon. We paddled out into the Plexiglas water, thick and still. All went well, until a hornet started buzzing around me. Now, I have fears like anyone else, some are quite irrational, some quite exaggerated. My fear of flying stinging things is both. I made the grievous error of standing up. Being a city girl unknown to me was why the expression “tippy canoe” existed. We ended up in the water, as the last audible protests emitted from my soon-to-be-former boyfriend’s mouth. Unfortunately he was wearing glasses; fortunately his hand came in contact with them in the water, and he rescued them from their potential watery grave. What happened next was one of the most deplorable things to ever happen to me. He came up startled and sputtering, looking at me in a way that implied none of what he should have, he fixed a gaze on me that even in memory, still chills. “You, Dick!” he yelled. I stared at him in amazement. I could not even speak. What had he called me! A filthy, vile word! The irreparable damage had been done, and in that moment my heart had broken. I felt it as clearly as one would feel a bone break. My heart broke open, and all my love spilled out. We walked through the water and sat on the edge of a sandy shore, miles from the cabin. Wet and cold, we shivered and stared at each other. I was too numb to cry, but my face betrayed all the pain I felt. We silently made our way back to the cabin to change clothes. All the life was drained out of me and I knew it was time to go back home. It was one of the saddest moments I have ever had in my life.

I don’t trust anyone who says he’s never thought about committing suicide.

Life is full of hard, despairing moments that cause you to lose hope, faith and love.

Sometimes you wonder. I don’t trust anyone who says that point has never come, the point of wondering. I thought about that as I remembered Joel.

I miss Joel. His death was a horrible nightmare made all the more horrible by the way it was done. Not so much in the way he ended his life, but the facts that emerged afterward indicating how long he had planned it. As near as we can guess, the plan was in the works for at least six months, maybe a year. That was the shock of it. All that time and he never asked anyone for help, methodically and systematically ridding himself of his material belongings, purging personal letters, files and papers. The end came swiftly in a weekend spent mailing packages to his friends; the last item on the list. Once packages started arriving everyone knew something was terribly wrong. A search ensued to no avail, he had already been found early that morning by the police.

What gets me, what really gets me, is that I knew. Walking in to Robert’s apartment one day, I saw stacks of cassette tapes in boxes everywhere. I asked him what was going on and he told me Joel had given them to him. Immediately, I went into a panic, I knew he was thinking of suicide. I recognized something familiar in his actions. I knew because I had seen it, felt it, in myself; the need to distribute ones belongings according to the need to give it, or to a person's preferences. When I saw him next, I pounced on him. He laughed it off with an explanation that I had to except, but that still made me uneasy. At the time I didn’t know about the other distributions: other tapes, fishing equipment, items to friends who would appreciate or need them. Anyway soon we were busy packing, moving and giving birth. Time slipped by and Joel was still around. Still, I never quite looked at him without wondering. When the call came from a concerned friend, something inside of me already knew it was too late. The shame of it was he could have called anybody, anyone he knew and he or she would have been there; he wasn’t alone. Why do we always feel we’re so alone? He wasn’t alone.