Whelp, f*ck...
TW: Pet Death and Other Catastrophes
So, my plan for this article was to write about community and care, reflecting on my most recent artwork, Shoulder to Shoulder, a to-scale replica of a church pew in my Hallway Show - These Shining Hours at The Waiting Room. On display now through March 13 in KCMO.
But life had other plans. As always.
Our sweet kitten, Hildegard (after Hildegard von Bingen, a catholic saint, mystic, and polymath who lived during the High Middle Ages), died last week.
It was a complete and devastating accident. It hit us hard, when 3 of the 4 of us were laid up with the flu.
When Hilde died, I sobbed. I ran around my house in nothing but my red robe, which I cannot bear to put back on. I punched the ground and wailed.
My emotional reaction surprised me. I often have trouble weeping, even when I feel moved to deep sorrow. Tragic events always seem too far away for ugly crying. And Heaven forbid I fall apart when someone still has to make dinner.
But pets are a proxy, are they not?
As they slip in, furry and warm under your chin, they squeeze into the hollow spot in your affections. Before you know it, you love them too much.
I imagine her death was a kind of permission. Permission to grieve the larger terrors and loss I had been seeing around me.
Broken bodies in Minneapolis. Tear gas and jingle dances. Hand cuffs and slammed bodies. Broken windows and kidnapped neighbors. And around the world… Tightly wrapped babies frozen to death in Gaza. Violence visited upon girls my own daughter’s age by powerful men. The tally coming from a darkened Iran; 250 protestors killed….next day, 500 killed….another day, 800 citizen killed….1,200…as their government turned off the internet. The Ukrainians are still fighting.
The mean smallness of anger, fear, and death. The smoke. The choking. The hurled insults and raw footage.
When our sweet, weirdo of a kitten was gone, I could not look at her.
39 years old, and I just couldn’t bear it. Couldn’t even be there for my own kids. The truth of a lifeless body, even a small feline one, is so hard to look directly at. Imagine those bigger losses. Whole bright, beautiful lives - disappeared or ended. It seems too heavy to bear.
A place worn thin to tearing in the middle of your ribs, just north of your guts.
The next day was sunny and warm. But what a blessing after. As the only person well enough from the flu plague, I dug the grave. Thank God the ground wasn’t frozen.
To have a sunny and slow day to be grief-stricken while still recovering from illness.
If it were cloudy, I just couldn’t have borne it.
The day was as heavy as it was bright.
We needed a cloth. Something more ceremonious than the towel she was wrapped in after the accident. Then I remembered, THE QUILT!
Months before, I had received a quilt from my friend Laura, an amazingly talented artist living and making work in Minneapolis. It came in the mail, I folded it and placed it with my studio collection of broken and gifted quilts. I forgot about it.
When she gave it to me, Laura said that she had been repairing it for a while. I pulled it out. With its bright, sun/star-shaped block motifs, I knew it was the exact textile we needed.
For our kitty was a BRIGHT and Brilliant Weirdo. Who spread her love and purrs to everyone without discernment. A little thing who was always giving her gold away.
So I cut a hole in the quilt. Right in the middle. Big enough to adorn her for the grave.
The quilt suited best because of where it was from. In aiding our family grief, it connected with the larger griefs I was feeling.
Laura and her family live in South Minneapolis, quite near to where Renee Good was murdered. Read her South Minneapolis dispatch below. You can help her neighbors make rent here, too.
Laura had mended this quilt in sunny patches, like her colorful artwork. With her floral fabric repairs hidden in plain sight. I love them. She passed it along to me. I am now stitching along the cut portion, with plans to send out tendrils of black and white out towards the edges of the quilt. Stitches to honor our tuxedo kitten.
But like most artwork, it is about more than one thing. I will repair the rest of the quilt differently. I will use transparent silk patches, so you can see the existing damage. This kind of repair is sometimes used in museum conservation to avoid altering the original quilt too drastically.
While mending, I am meditating on the ongoing violence in Minneapolis (and around the country) from the government against its own citizens. A state of our union that makes me sad and mad.
At times this past week, I have also felt embarrassed. I have felt silly about the strength of my reaction. It was just a cat. We didn’t even have her for very long.
How weird is it to make art about one’s dead pet?
Aren’t there bigger and more terrible catastrophes to make work about?
Why can’t I weep all my days for them?
But as we buried her, last Thursday at sunset, a single goose flew overhead.
Of course, it reminded me of Wild Geese by Mary Oliver. Then I also remembered that Oliver wrote a whole book of poems about her beloved dogs, Dog Songs.
Remembering these works made me feel less silly. You love what you love. Our feelings often are confounding.
Wild geese by Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
In the past few years, grief and joy have led me to write more poems.
I wanted to share some musings I wrote about Hildegard when we first got her.
“Do I have kitten energy?
All lithe, awkward, and wriggling?
Slumping in a lap. Adoring with a strong purr, motoring, running lusty and shameless.
And in the next instant. Off to catch a bug, or attack the older (grumpier) feline companion.
Attention that of a goldfish.
Floppy Desire. Unabashed delight. Her attention is devoted fully. You are all that exists.
Oh, look, a bead to eat!”
Hug your kitties extra tight for me. Love you all. - Catherine
We are joined by our authentic loves that bind us to our shared sorrows, grief, and righteous rage. Your reflection is scripture for our times. A balm for the wounds of our shared humanity. Thank you.
This is sad and real and poetic and so lovely. So glad our hard journeys can be connected.... through the fabric of quilting.