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The Return, End-of-Year Thought, and Wishes for the New Year
7 years ago
General
Hello my Faithful Watchers!
First off, I hope you and yours are well. It has been much too long!
I had been intending on becoming a bit more active on FA, updating things with a few more pictures and stories, but life has a way of taking you in directions other than those you intended on or planned.
Life is not a single chapter, of course. Drifter was a large loss in my life, so I wanted to thank you all sincerely for the condolences and kind words. I truly believe he had a great life. He purred right to the end. He was “ancient” by any standard, and he let me know when it was time. Of course, time rolls on and stops for no one.
I took an immeasurable amount of comfort in Macumba. He was still young and well, and I threw all my pain at Drifter’s loss into him, and he was of great comfort to me and got me through the depression. I had, perhaps naively, thought I would have many years to come with Macumba, but sadly, this was not the case. Macumba passed away in Apr 2017. For me, this was the third in a row.
1) I lost my brother (1-year older than I) in Oct 2016 from a stroke. We had just gotten re-acquainted after some 25-years of limited interactions.
2) I lost my step-dad, who had become a "Dad" to me, and I an "adoptive son" to him. We had gotten close over the last several years. He died of heart failure in late Feb 2017 (at 83-y-o).
3) Once finished with all the affairs of Mom, I headed back home (late Mar’17). I lost by Macumba in less than a week.
Macumba had just turned 14-y-o, and with 3 vet visits, we could not determine what was wrong. A necropsy after-the-fact didn't reveal anything remarkable either. His loss to me was profound, for many reasons.
Leopards (and jaguars too) form bonds with their keepers/handlers like none other of the big cats. I admit, I was just as bonded to him as he was to me. So the loss, for no apparent reason, left me in emotional shambles. it's one things to find a problem, and perhaps fail in remedying it; it's quite another to do everything you can think of, yielding no viable diagnosis, and still failing at a remedy. I felt horribly guilty, having truly failed in the most basic premiss of guardianship.
(Shameless Advertising Plug Here) On a brighter note, I have managed to survive things decently enough. There have been some bouts of depression, but I have managed to keep walking forward and staying busy. I spent a bit of money on some new equipment (now that I didn’t have cats spending it all), and started doing some game-related videos (my channel on YouTube is “Bengali Engineering and Play”) which has been a lot of fun. I haven’t posted anything recently, as I’ve been deployed this year and didn’t get home until the end of Nov.
I have been encouraged to “reactivate” my FA account (which was a chore in an of itself) but I am finally back into the account. Once I logged in, I wanted to try and catch up with everyone, including the long, long overdue Journal entry.
Overall, I am trying my best to settle back into “life” (whatever the heck that is) and keep myself busy. Again, I hope all is well with you and yours, my Faithful Followers.
To my new watchers, thank you sincerely, and welcome to my humble page. Sorry for the much belated thanx for your watches.
It is my wish that the coming year will bring you all joy and happiness amidst the inevitable challenges and hurdles. Stay strong. Stay busy. You /will/ make it through to the other side.
With Warm Regards,
ShastaCat
First off, I hope you and yours are well. It has been much too long!
I had been intending on becoming a bit more active on FA, updating things with a few more pictures and stories, but life has a way of taking you in directions other than those you intended on or planned.
Life is not a single chapter, of course. Drifter was a large loss in my life, so I wanted to thank you all sincerely for the condolences and kind words. I truly believe he had a great life. He purred right to the end. He was “ancient” by any standard, and he let me know when it was time. Of course, time rolls on and stops for no one.
I took an immeasurable amount of comfort in Macumba. He was still young and well, and I threw all my pain at Drifter’s loss into him, and he was of great comfort to me and got me through the depression. I had, perhaps naively, thought I would have many years to come with Macumba, but sadly, this was not the case. Macumba passed away in Apr 2017. For me, this was the third in a row.
1) I lost my brother (1-year older than I) in Oct 2016 from a stroke. We had just gotten re-acquainted after some 25-years of limited interactions.
2) I lost my step-dad, who had become a "Dad" to me, and I an "adoptive son" to him. We had gotten close over the last several years. He died of heart failure in late Feb 2017 (at 83-y-o).
3) Once finished with all the affairs of Mom, I headed back home (late Mar’17). I lost by Macumba in less than a week.
Macumba had just turned 14-y-o, and with 3 vet visits, we could not determine what was wrong. A necropsy after-the-fact didn't reveal anything remarkable either. His loss to me was profound, for many reasons.
Leopards (and jaguars too) form bonds with their keepers/handlers like none other of the big cats. I admit, I was just as bonded to him as he was to me. So the loss, for no apparent reason, left me in emotional shambles. it's one things to find a problem, and perhaps fail in remedying it; it's quite another to do everything you can think of, yielding no viable diagnosis, and still failing at a remedy. I felt horribly guilty, having truly failed in the most basic premiss of guardianship.
(Shameless Advertising Plug Here) On a brighter note, I have managed to survive things decently enough. There have been some bouts of depression, but I have managed to keep walking forward and staying busy. I spent a bit of money on some new equipment (now that I didn’t have cats spending it all), and started doing some game-related videos (my channel on YouTube is “Bengali Engineering and Play”) which has been a lot of fun. I haven’t posted anything recently, as I’ve been deployed this year and didn’t get home until the end of Nov.
I have been encouraged to “reactivate” my FA account (which was a chore in an of itself) but I am finally back into the account. Once I logged in, I wanted to try and catch up with everyone, including the long, long overdue Journal entry.
Overall, I am trying my best to settle back into “life” (whatever the heck that is) and keep myself busy. Again, I hope all is well with you and yours, my Faithful Followers.
To my new watchers, thank you sincerely, and welcome to my humble page. Sorry for the much belated thanx for your watches.
It is my wish that the coming year will bring you all joy and happiness amidst the inevitable challenges and hurdles. Stay strong. Stay busy. You /will/ make it through to the other side.
With Warm Regards,
ShastaCat
But holy crap, you had a brutal year. God knows we all suffer loss, but I don't know how you begin to recover from a series of hits like that. I'm sorry, man.
My own coping mechanism for bereavement is just to be a Weeble. The grief comes, it knocks me sideways, I wobble upright again and carry on. A soft strategy, but resilient, so hopefully it'll see me through the further bereavements the future inevitably brings us -- if we're lucky.