I last wrote about how attached some folks are to their four-legged family members. I also pointed out how much of a difference in life expectancy between husband and wife would result in the probability of the wife living alone for possibly decades after the death of her husband. At some point, I plan on writing how we all make choices to continue alone or to remarry after the death of a loved one.
I have multiple friends that have chosen both ways. One of them was advised that love was not subtractive, but additive. That marrying again in his old age was not taking away from the love he had for his first wife but adding the love for his second wife.
I have another friend who has remained unmarried since his wife died decades ago. While his vows were ‘till death do us part’, his heart remains with the memory of his dearly departed love of his life. While he has been able to make new friends, new friends are sometimes viewed with suspicion by surviving children.
I know when my mom and dad divorced and then remarried, I was challenged to fully accept the new spouses. I have told close friends loneliness is one of the worst feelings in the world and new spouses help people escape loneliness by bringing happiness in their own way. I am thankful that my late dad’s and mom’s new spouses brought happiness and a renewed fullness to their lives. But it is hard for some who cannot quite let go of the past when they always dreamed of a life together.
The National Council On Aging (NCOA) (https://www.ncoa.org/article/the-widowhood-effect-how-to-survive-the-loss-of-a-spouse/) shows men faced 70% higher risk of death in the first year after a wife dies. I need to interview others to learn more about subjects that I am ignorant of (and hope to remain ignorant of any first-hand experience). The sad fact is that one of the married couple, either the wife or the husband, will likely have to continue to live on without the other.
One would think that they would want their spouse to live on longer. But at that point, is that sentencing the remaining spouse to decades of loneliness? Many say they could not go on without the other, but no one knows until it happens. How long would someone last and how long would they want to last?
NCOA says that folks show a better chance of continuing to live a long life with a pet in the house. A 2021 study found that people who were grieving received greater comfort from a pet or animal than from humans. I ended my last article with, “Do you miss your four-legged family as much as I do?” While my ‘kitty kat’ Kubota was not a person, he was certainly a member of my family. We rescued him from certain death, finding him abandoned in a water-filled ditch. Teresa told me she did not expect him to live the night. The veterinarian gave the same, poor prognosis; that Kubota would not live the night.
So, Teresa bottle-fed Kubota and we fixed a bed in a cardboard box right next to where I slept so he could hear us and not feel so lonely. It did not take long for a lonely kitty to decide he wanted to be with another living being instead of alone in a box. He tried to climb up the side of the bed, but he was so small and weak he could not make it.
His crying was more than I could bear so I reached down and gently laid him on top of me. He did not take long to decide that Teresa’s hair made a much more inviting and snug bed for him than my stomach, so he crawled over and curled up in her long hair on top of her head. That became his favorite place to sleep when the sun went down. We were certainly all a family for those years.
We returned from a motorcycle trip last year and for some reason, Kubota was not in his favorite spots. After searching and searching for him, we finally found him, but something was spectacularly wrong with him. He had no energy and was clearly sick, but we could not get him into a veterinarian because they were all busy.
After several days, we were finally able to convince a clinic that this was profoundly serious and they took him in. That evening, we stopped by to see him to let him know that while he might be lonely in the clinic, he was not alone. He was so incredibly sick he was hardly able to make a sound. I cried and cried as I stroked him in his cage.
Teresa told me that in her experience, animals usually hang on while someone is with them and then pass away in the quiet middle of the night. We know from the laboratory test results that nothing would have saved him and we were blessed that we had not been able to get him seen earlier as that would just have meant him being alone and separated from us for another day.
Instead, we got to spend his last days together with him. We got to hold him and let him know how much we loved him. His death has devastated me beyond belief. It underlined what my mother Betty had said when we first found him. She told Teresa how I sure was attached to that cat. I said, “That is crazy. It’s just a stupid cat.” Clearly, my own mother Betty knew me better than I knew myself.
There is no doubt in my mind that my anguish and sorrow over the loss of my four-legged family member, Kubota, has taken years off my life. But at the same time, Kubota gave me untold happiness.
Sorrowfully,
Danny Leo Green,
Coroner, Cedar County
Facebook Comments