To Use a Shovel

For the most part, Rosehill is an amazing place to live. As I slipped into my brown cowboy boots and grabbed a pair of thick work gloves, I was beginning to wonder if Rosehill was as full of vitality and life as I had once thought. Grabbing the shovel that stands taller than I am, I walked down the sawdust path that leads to the outhouse, walked around the lilac bushes and picked out a spot directly in front of the one from a week ago.

As I jumped on the shovel to get maximum leverage and bite through the semi-frozen dirt, my mind wandered over the week our family had just spent in southern Alberta. The packed, dry clay began to yield and I stopped for a breather. Watching the last of the leaves rustling dryly on the trees, I couldn't help but think of the devastation wreaked on my hometown. After driving around looking at watermarked houses, the haunting emptiness of my favorite coffee houses and walks, it seemed like all the destruction was so -- senseless. As I finished the hole, I went back to the doghouse for Minnie. My heart broke. One of our largest kittens was curled up on top of the body I had set out to bury before the emotions kicked in. Pulling them both out, I listened to the heartfelt cries of the living kitten whose eyes reflected a sadness I've not seen in the eyes of a cat for a long time.

I knew exactly how he felt.

One week ago, prior to our trip to the High River area, Momma handed me Death. His putrid screams rent the air as I cupped an emaciated kitten in my trembling hands. With one wise look at me, I whisked him into the cabin (under which he had been hiding, without the energy to move) and we set about caring for him. Three days passed, three days of timed feedings that dwindled from little to nothing, three days of grabbing Frankie (my cat) and trying to get her to nurse him, three days of buttoning him up inside my shirt where he could sleep while I worked "hands free" so to speak, three days of shaky hope.

Death is simply part of the equation, another factor to the formula, and I've always understood it as a fact of life. In watching a creature forfeit life because I failed to observe the warning signs, I couldn't help but wonder if euthanasia wouldn't have been better for the kitten that I'll always know as Death. His family had given up on him, which was clear, but he seemed to want to be among his own. It was late Sunday night that I brought him back inside, half frozen, and I noticed the gulping breaths. As Daddy and I dug a hole beside my dog Billie's grave, I realized how attached we all were to the dying kitten Frankie and Liza wouldn't even acknowledge now.

Though we were to get up at 3AM, I didn't sleep. Around midnight I heard eight cries, eight strokes of a clock far older than any we've created. Silence. Peace.

As Momma and I kicked the dirt over Minnie, and I scraped the pebbly clay into the hole, I couldn't help thinking about how death was so different for the two siblings that had died exactly one week apart; nor, in fact, could I stop thinking about how differently I reacted to the two deaths and how the slow limping of my hometown trying to recover from disaster juxtaposed so perfectly against the deaths of Death and Minnie.

As I leaned the shovel back in its place inside the woodshed, I felt the bitter taste death of one so young always leaves in me, but, all the same, I was thankful to have escaped the human caricature of civilization for home and My Uncivilized Life.

Love,
Jenny