For you, from me, with love — 5/12

[dropcap custom_class="normal"] E[/dropcap]ye candy: Pegs.

Times four?

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The New York Times featured one of my favorite style bloggers, Garance Doré. Fun little inside story on her rise. Find her blog here.

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Speaking of Garance, her recent posts, "Talking Age," and "39 x Cooler." Apropos for my journey into my 40s.

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After attending a Death Over Dinner discussion, stories like this touch my heart. And make me think.

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Documentary-in-the-works by a friend about the National Mill Dog Rescue (which is headquartered here in Colorado Springs). Watch. Learn. And, if you can, help.

[videos file="http://vimeo.com/93204374" width="600" height="500"][/videos]

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Some suggestions on spring cleaning your clothes closet. (Something I've learned recently I have a talent for helping others do.) (Maybe that will be my next money-making gig.)

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An absolutely lovely story on traveling Paris solo.

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Adding to the To-Read List — The Rise, by Sarah Lewis

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Prepping the kitchen — Ginger beer (#40before41)

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And ... the powers that are walking, napping, timing your coffee, and resting.

Paris, on hold

I had planned to come back to my blog after two weeks traveling in France and write about the trip. Post a few of the hundreds of photos I took. Share the total number of miles my husband and I walked (a lot). But I came back to the sad fact that my almost-18-year-old orange tabby cat Tai was dying — and so France, and the details of it, shall wait. My brain is not there.

I'm not sure where my brain is. Perhaps protecting itself? This morning I went to Target. I didn't take a written list, and in my grief, I spent an hour and half wandering every aisle of the store in the hopes that I would remember why I was there. Toilet paper. Check. Sponges. Check. Wrapping paper for a good friend's birthday gift. Check.

Paper towels? Nope. A card for the same birthday-celebrating friend? Nope.

Kleenex? Yes. I did remember the Kleenex. Thankfully, because we're completely out after days of crying.

Grief is a weird thing. It comes and goes. Sometimes like slow ocean waves. Sometimes like a flood. And the tears rush in and rush out the same such way. (Hence, the all-important extra-soft Kleenex.) Sometimes it pushes you forward to go, go, go. And sometimes, even standing up from the couch feels painful. Grief cares not where you are (in the car, at a party, in the shower) or what you are doing (wandering Target). It sets its own priorities for releasing itself.

And so, I know I cannot ignore the Tai-sized hole in my heart. But perhaps as the days pass, I can fill it with more memories than tears.

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Below you'll find what I wrote earlier this morning to tell friends about my dear Tai. Rest in peace, my sweet baby.

Tai (June-ish 1996 to April 3, 2014)

Tai. My-Tai. Sweet Potato Tai. ’Tato-Tai. Punkin’. I can’t even list all the names our little Tai picked up over the years.

G and I adopted this sweet orange tabby from the former Humane Society facility in February of 1997. The vet thought she was about nine months then and she’s spent the last 17-some years growing old with us. She was my first cat ever, our first pet as a couple. And within a day or two of adopting her, she got really sick. Like slept-23-hours-a-day, we’re-not-sure-she’s-gonna-make-it sick. We tried numerous medicines. The third one finally kicked in, and neither one of us had ever seen so much snot come out of a tiny sneezing cat. (We’re pretty sure that the bathroom in our rental house never really recovered.)

Over the years, we learned that she loved cheese, any kind. Open the fridge and pull out a plastic bag of shredded cheese, and within seconds you had a cat next to you. She even somehow knew when we had a brick of cheddar or a plastic container of feta. She adored small squishy balls and fabric mice. She’d pick them up and wander around the house making squawking noises with them in her mouth. She also was particularly fond of chasing and pouncing on beams of light, dozing in sunspots, and snuggling under “Tai Tents” that we’d make by bending our knees up under the bed blankets.

She was never much of a lap-sitter until a few years ago; from then on, it was hard to keep her off of us. She was our first cat, and our oldest, but the third we’ve had to say goodbye to over the past two years. I can’t say how much I miss her already and I just hope she meets Lexi and Bailey somewhere over the Rainbow Bridge.

Grieving at the edges

In the past week, three people died in the periphery of my day-to-day life — and since mid-January, a total of five. Each person was someone who I was not directly connected to, but who was important to someone important to me. How do you grieve these types of losses when, in my opinion, our society does not even know how to support those individuals struggling with what would be considered direct loss? Hell, we don't even like to talk about death.

I feel my friends' pain. And I mean feel it.

I'm completely exhausted.

Achy from my neck all the way down my back.

There is a heavy weight on my chest.

My right eye has been twitching off and on.

I took two three-hour naps this weekend. And when I got up this morning, after a brief meditation and yoga asana practice, all I really wanted to do was crawl back into bed, pull the covers over my head and sleep the rest of my Monday away.

And yet I struggle myself with the "properness" of my taking time to grieve, to cry, to throw a tantrum like a 2-year-old. (Which, I'm not doing, but I certainly feel like doing. Adults really should have the option to act like this every now and again. But I digress...)

I also struggle with wanting to be there for my friends. All-in to help them with their own grieving, which is more important to me then dealing with mine — no matter how much I know there's truth to be found in the airplane oxygen mask analogy, or the concept of "you have to take care of yourself before you can take care of others."

I have no answers today. Just putting some words out there.

Of course, maybe I do have one answer. Maybe, for me, this opening up is part of the grieving/healing process. So, thank you, whoever you may be out there, for allowing me this space.