Round about this time last year I was on holiday with my dad in Baja, Mexico. Out of nowhere I got the urge to go check my E-mail, so I borrowed some change and headed down the beach to a windsurfing equipment shop that had an internet terminal. I found a message from my mom that read:

"I have to tell you the sad news that Missy is no longer with us.Her front legs started giving way too and I could not in clear conscience watch her struggling any more. I took her to the vet today and followed all the instructions as requested by you Rob.We will talk when you return.In cat years she was 88 which was a good old age for a Kitty."

Missy was my cat who had been with me since I was 6 years old. Sadly she didn't want to sleep at the foot of my bed the night before I left. She was 19 years old and on the decline with her health. She had gone deaf about a year prior, and started to have breathing problems when she purred. In the end she hopped off my mom's bed and curled up in pain, unable to stand on her front legs any more.

My only regret was that I couldn't have been there with her during her last moments when she was put down. My mom described the process to me, at my own request, and it seemed so cold and abrupt. They injected her with a muscle relaxant that was strong enough to stop her heart, and it only took a moment for her to...stop entirely.

I thought that the anniversary day was coming up tomorrow, the 20th, but looking back through my E-mails I realize it happened on the 15th. Perhaps it's better that it's already over, I don't have to dwell on it. Although I've had other deaths in my family, it was never someone terribly close to me, that was a part of my everyday life, that I wasn't used to being without. Hers was the first one to hit me this hard, even if she was only a cat.

It took me long enough to stop having dreams about her every night. Somehow those excessive pictures I took of her while she was alive don't seem like anything close to enough, and I only have a few fleeting home videos of her. Sometimes I have trouble trying to remember what she was like, and other times I can imagine her with crystal clarity.

You know all those corny things they say in the movies, like "they're still alive in your heart"...so totally cliche right? I must have heard it all a million times, but I didn't fathom it until I was in that headspace myself. It was a major realization for me. I had thought death closed the book on everything relating to her, but my dreams about her made me realize that I could still create new memories surrounding her. Death didn't take away anything that happened when she was alive - all the time I had spent with her, and all the happy moments.

Its tough and confusing trying to comprehend that our animal companions can go through their entire lifespan in only a fraction of our own. As I've said in the past, we don't cry because someone dies, but because we are the ones left behind...for a little while anyway, in the big scheme of things.

One year later I still miss her. I think about her every now and then, and look back on her fondly. I only feel small pangs of sadness now, compared to being overtaken by grief. I think I have learned a couple of my life lessons from it, though I know I still have many to learn.

RIP Missy
April 18th 1987 - December 15th, 2005