Valentine’s Memoir Writing Contest Winner #3: Saying Goodbye by Perelandra Smith

Post #72 – Women’s Memoir Writing, ScrapMoir – Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnett

WELCOME TO WOMEN’S MEMOIRS CONTEST VALENTINE’S DAY READATHON

This is the third Valentine’s Day Memoir Contest story to be published in our first-ever ReadAThon. Each hour, for 11 hours, we are publishing an award-winning Valentine’s Day story.

We have four categories–

Worst Valentine’s Day
Worst Valentine’s Day Eventually Becoming Positive (Might Take Many Years)
Best Valentine’s Day
Most Humorous Valentine’s Day (In Retrospect, If Not at the Time)

and are publishing the award winners in that sequence. For each category, we publish the winner first followed by the runner(s) up, listed alphabetically.

Worst Valentine’s Day: Honorable Mention

SAYING GOODBYE

Perelandra Smith

The worst Valentine’s Day of my life was February 14th 2010.  It was a day for saying goodbye… whether I wanted to or not.
 
It was Sunday and I was attending my first Muslim funeral. Mo’s funeral. I met Mo at work, where he was one of my fellow managers of a car dealership.  He was short in stature, but grand in heart.  He was nice to everyone, not just to a pretty girl with a nice smile.  There was always a secret crush between us.  Many times over the half a decade I knew him, I toyed with the idea of what it would be like to date him.  I admired his work ethic and I think the sweetness between us would have been extraordinary.

One day he was exhausted in all ways possible. I suggested that he should go to Kaiser and he let me drive him there. He was evaluated and transferred to the local hospital where he stayed mostly in a coma for three and a half months.  I thought he was going to pull through. I thought I would see him again.
 
Mo died on Friday February 12th and, as his religious tradition stated, was to be buried as soon as possible. Not wanting to offend visiting relatives, I researched their funeral customs and learned that this would be quite different from any funeral I had ever attended.  We arrived at the small cemetery in Fredericksburg, Virginia.  The field was covered in a dirty white blanket, snow from the previous week’s blizzard.  In the Muslim cemetery, raised headstones or markers are not allowed, so it felt as if we were placing him in a random plot of land.  Men carried his body and lowered it into what looked like a jagged hole cut into the earth, lined with planks of wood.
 
There were no elaborate headstones or oversized sprays of lilies.  It was forbidden for those in mourning to excessively wail, scream, or thrash about. I scared myself into thinking I could not cry loudly or show dramatic displays of grief.  So much was going on in my head.  Emotions were stirring, not only from the death of my dear friend, but also from images of my sick cat, Sekhmet, in declining health, cavorting around in the back my mind.
 

My wonderful kitty had lost over 13 lbs in as many months.  This was the first time I was faced with the decision of what is best for the animal and his quality of life verses my own selfish nature and not wanting to let go.  One day it seemed like he couldn’t really see or focus on anything.  He would take a while to lie down, remaining half way bent down and not fully relaxing for almost a minute. Then the next day Sekhmet was eating and meowing and jumping on the couch. This was confusing and hard.  I wondered if he was secretly drinking water and peeing behind the couch!  He seemed alert, not like a cat that only had hours to live.

Losing pets is very hard and doubly so when you have to decide. Animals know when it is their time and giving up water is usually a prominent sign.  My vet was pushing more testing and treatments but too many years of morbid obesity wore down his body.  I left a message with the vet that I would be bringing him in the next day.  Making the decision to put a beloved pet to sleep has got to be in the top five hardest things to do, but a good friend gave me this gem, “The final act of love is letting them go.”

So this was my Valentine’s Day in 2010.  It was filled with much sorrow and will always be remembered as a tarnished day, but with the first anniversary quickly approaching, I will try to cherish the joy and love in my life.

Tagged as: memoir, Memoir Contest, memoir contest winner, ScrapMoir