The ends of March

Greetings from our far flung islands. The ends of March are rather fragmented. Just a snippet of this and that to update you.

Our family's greatest sadness has been the demise of our very resilient and communicative cat called Alex. I have written of her before. She climbed into our lives soon after we arrived in New Zealand - visiting the garden when we were putting washing on the line and treating our legs like a tree - literally climbing up for some TLC. Alex was a generic and non-gender confusing open kind of name as we were not sure what she/he was. You will recall our Witbank cat in the old days called Suzy, named after the street where she lived before moving into our house. Suzy, when we thought she was pregnant, turned out to be a male cat with a hernia. So you can see why we were avoiding that kind of dilemma.
Alex, Alexi, or Alexi Stukoff, as she was known by various members of the family, would virtually speak when in need, and tap me on the arm in bed each morning with her paw - requiring a visit to the kitchen of course. She ran away when we were in Brisbane some time back, and was found by advertising on "Pets on the net". She was more like a dog in some ways, waiting for us to return, and following us around the house. A real family member.
Friday morning I found her dead in the street after returning from an early drive into the city taking a student to a street collection for the local MS society. A very distressing thing indeed, followed by a very hastily arranged funeral in the back yard before going to school. I have spoken about grief a thousand times, and understand all the tricky things when we lose someone in tragic ways. Who would have thought how intense it would be in the loss of Alex. The feeling that she would walk around the corner. Looking twice at her favourite places each day to see if she wasn't perhaps there. Dreaming of her arriving back again as I have done through the years when death has taken special people in my life.
The house has been eerily quiet and subdued. My middle child didn't come out of his room for the first five days. I found things that were usually quite manageable almost impossible. In short, I was surprised by the level of trauma. Of course it's all very subtle. She was the constant factor in the irritating moving from house to house over the last three years. And the unconditional and uncomplicated love of a pet cat puts human complexities into an interesting perspective.
Blessed are they who mourn - says the sermon on the Mount. I am hardly happy, to use the unhelpful English translations of that line. And yes we are blessed - our lives are so rich in many ways. But our losses tear a bit away from the securities and certainties which prop us up and steady the ship, so to speak.
I have mourned with so many over the years. Perhaps not giving enough time to my own mourning. I have written often about the tearing of immigration, the losses of work conflicts, and the tragedies of separation and anger that I have seen. We have suffered terrible consequences when people have had too many ends - the ripping away of that which defines one, the dehumanising of those who subject you through the dominant discourses of another land to a sense of being foreign, strange, or unwelcomed.
The end of Alex the cat seems an unnecessary indignity. I share the lives of so many boys at school who have had these ends - lost pets, parents, friends, dreams, and loves. It all requires such courage, of course. Courage to risk the chance of love again, courage to journey with parents on their travels towards new partners or spouses, new homes and jobs, courage to try again when others have boxed you in, using the kind of language that grinds and grates, consigning you to the emotional bins and trash heaps of life.
There are many South Africans still rolling onto these shores - all with their ends and hopeful beginnings. They bring their luggage and their baggage, and bravely start again with new and stuttering beginnings. Such is the ebb and flow of life. T S Eliot wrote of his "burnt-out ends of smoky days". I always remembered the line from his Preludes in my overloaded head as burnt-out ends of lonely days.
Well there it is. The ends of March. Words have always been good friends. In deepest moments of loss and disappointments I have scraped together attempts in verse and song. Today I tap these out while sitting on a bed. It's the end of Friday. The end of week 10. How organised the school terms are. The end of the term eagerly awaits us. The end of Lent will bring the beginning of a new Easter celebrating the end of a another life of far greater impact and significance than our insignificant bumps in the road of life.
Easter will see us travelling back to the Hawkes Bay to visit good friends and rest at Glen Innis, the Presbyterian Holiday home. As winter approaches the thought of cold wet southerly winds and our fourth winter in Wellington is an interesting one. The end of March officially - the 31st - will be the celebration of our third anniversary here in New Zealand. Not far after that in May, we have our 25th wedding anniversary. We remain immensely grateful for all we have shared. Thanks for journeying with us,

Blessings at this Easter tide.

The Palmers.