They Say Bad Things Come in Threes...

My Paw Paw
April 24, 1927 - July 6, 2011

Paw Paw, I will always miss and love you. RIP my angle with feet. I hope you forgive me for not visiting you at Christmas.

-Love, Bean

They say bad things always come in threes. And I guess they're right. For the first 39 years of my life I ne
 ver had to live through the passing of a loved one, not someone I was truly close to. My great-grandmother, Mawie, passed when I was six, I remember it, but I was so young it really didn't faze me. I don't guess I understood what exactly it meant. Then, life changed. First my cat, Little Boy, passed away on February 1, 2010. It was horrible, and he was in so much pain. I had to make the most difficult decision of my life that day: try to "fix" what was wrong or put him down. He was 17. I knew there really was no "fixing" his old age and the myriad of problems related to that that had lead up to the moment I was in. The moment I had to decide. So I did what every mommy dreads; I decided to let him have peace, away from the pain and any recurrence of it. I was alone in Germany, away from friends and family. The vet didn't speak English very well, but she said what she could and left me alone with my baby as long as she could. I tried to keep it together for her....And then I screamed in the car all the way home: in anger, in denial, in sadness, in loneliness. I screamed and screamed. It still hasn't gone away.

Then two days after Thanksgiving the same year, my second cat, Gator, passed away. He was 15, and I was only TWO WEEKS from coming back home to visit him after having been away for three years, but he died before I could hold him again, or say goodbye. My heart still aches knowing how he probably thought I had abandoned him forever. The only small comfort I can take from the whole thing is the fact that he passed quietly in his sleep and that I had always promised him a big backyard to play in, and at least he had that at my Mom's house. At least I was able to give him that.

And now, my Paw Paw. What can I say to express how sad I am? I was supposed to visit him for Christmas, but I didn't go because the tickets were "too expensive." How can anything be too expensive when weighed against never seeing someone you love again? How could I ever have been so selfish? We all knew he was old and frail. How stupid could I be? How shortsighted? What is $300.00 against an eternity? If someone told me that the price to get into a blissful hereafter was $300.00 and I only had $250.00, you better bet your ass I would've figured out where to get the other $50.00!!! Yet, by the same token, I couldn't muster the same to see my Paw Paw one last time? What a selfish witch of a granddaughter I am! How ungrateful and abhorently inconsiderate that I couldn't take the time and make the effort to thank him one last time for everything he's ever done for me! He certainly deserved better than that! He worked hard his entire life trying to give us everything we needed. He slaved under the scorn and coldness of my grandmother. He always looked at our homeowrk and report cards and told us he expected us to do well...and we wanted to for him! He went to our dance recitals and took us camping. Yet, I couldn't find it within myself to go visit him?! I miss him so much.

So bad things do come in threes, you see? Maybe I have learned my lesson: never leave those things undone that you will regret if time slips by you unnoticed. Time is a greedy beast who devours all that we love while it stares balefully upon our tears with an unblinking, dispassionate eye. Don't let it devour your good intentions, too.