Mary Hobson 10/29/23 Mary Hobson 10/29/23

Happy 10th Birthday, Patrick

[The following was originally posted as a post on my personal Facebook page.]

Struggling with words and feelings today. It’s Patrick’s 10th birthday. But do I say it is, it was, or it would have been? I mean, it is. We use present tense for the statement about dead people all the time. It’s so and so’s 100th or 200th birthday. But we generally understand with numbers that large that these are celebratory memorial birthdays. When you say it’s someone’s 10th birthday, the expectation is they are still alive for the celebration.

And then there’s the fact that it’s the big 1-0! This is a huge birthday milestone! Double digits! I remember always hearing those words prefaced or followed by “you made it!” But Patrick didn’t make it; not corporeally, anyway. And yet, at times I’ve felt ridiculously giddy and excited this past week knowing his 10th birthday was almost here.

Phil pointed out that we’ve survived 10 years, and I guess that’s part of it. But I’ve felt unsettled each time I recognized the feelings of joy, excitement, and anticipation for today. So I’m taking the day to sit with them. Feel them. Wish my sister a Happy Birthday because it was her day first, before life overshadowed that.

I think part of it is because I heard from Patrick this week. I was on a Zoom meeting and one of the other participants noticed some energy hanging around me. Afterward, she reached out through a mutual friend to ask if I was open to figuring it out. Long story short, it was Patrick and one of my grandfathers with messages for me.

I’ve had lots of mediums and spiritually sensitive people tell me Patrick’s never left me. One friend who did bodywork on me explained that he left a little footprint imprinted on my heart and that she’d never seen anything like it before. And I’ve said for a very long time that his outsized effect on the world meant he’s still here in many ways, even if I’m not raising him. So he’s not gone. Not really; only in the corporeal sense.

And I’ve found myself pondering the fact that his birthday is so close to Samhain and Halloween, when the veil between worlds is said to be thinner.

Anyway, one of the things the medium shared with me was that Patrick was sorry he had to go. I nearly laughed. I have considered myself blessed that we were able to give Patrick a good death and that we had no regrets about the choices we made. The only thing I have ever wondered about is whether he knew that and was okay with the choices. To have that question lifted. To know that he had to go, so the choice we made to spend two weeks together as a family really was the best choice for all of us. There are no words to describe what occurred—the breaking open of my heart and its simultaneous healing. Like it shattered into pieces but was instantaneously mended with gold energy, similar to the Japanese tradition of kintsugi.

So, it’s been a big week of feelings and knowings and learnings. And today, my forever baby boy would’ve turned 10. Turns 10. Is 10. I ponder the 10th anniversary of his birth. Whatever.

As a person who knows the values of words and spends so much time looking for the just right word, knowing that this moment isn’t about the words is weird. I write to process. To share. To educate. To inform. But some things just defy explanation. Language can’t really describe the comfort brought by the hug of a close friend, the softness of a baby’s hand on your cheek, or the scent of heaven wafting off the crown of their heads. A picture is worth a thousand words for a reason. Feelings can be, too.

So today is about feelings. Sitting with them and letting myself feel them and doing my best to keep my brain out of it; removing judgment or shoulds or need tos. Living in the tension.

Loving my son. Loving my sister. Loving the new friends Patrick has brought into my life who are having their own grief experiences. Loving my family. Grieving the life I expected. The one I thought I was going to have. Learning to love the life I do have and who I have become. Feeling Happiness and joy and loss and sadness.

Because they aren’t two ends of a line. It’s not either/or. It’s both/and. Happy tears. Downpours in the sun. Gone but still here. It’s all part of life; part of our souls having a human experience. We have to feel these things. It’s why we’re here. Every feeling, every experience stems from love. The warm, fuzzy ones are offshoots of its appearance or presence and the dark, prickly ones are offshoots of its removal or absence. Go back to the source. Find the love. Remember that. That’s what I’m doing today.

Happy birthday, Patrick. I love you.

Mary Hobson 6/4/22 Mary Hobson 6/4/22

Regarding Fergus

CW: Pet death, infant death, grief, PTSD

Yesterday nearly broke me. My beautiful, ginormous orange fluffball cat Fergus/aka “Bob”/aka the Big Orange Booger/aka the Patriarchy died suddenly and unexpectedly. Fergus was born almost exactly 6 years ago as a barn cat to some friends of ours.

He was the only ginger in the litter and I begged my spouse for another kitty because we were already at our limit of two. My hubby agreed, and we watched on FB as our kitten grew and became socialized and, in August 2016, while I was away at a congenital heart conference, Phil & Mira collected Fergus and brought him home, his jaunty clipped ear the only sign he had ever been a barn cat.

Hard to believe now, but Fergus was a tiny boy, fitting entirely into the palm of our hands when we first got him. Never in our wildest dreams did we anticipate what a behemoth he would turn out to be.

When we moved from MI to NY, he disappeared on us in the new house. Four adults and two children searched everywhere in an essentially empty house for over an hour. We all assumed he must have wandered out the front door when it had been left open for a period of time. When we located him the next day, he came sauntering out of the laundry room, presumably having squeezed himself back behind the appliances. He never did set foot back into that room again (not that I blame him). Only last year, when we needed to clean the dryer vents, did we find the desiccated remains of the piece of pizza he had stolen and taken back there to eat in private. He was something else.

On occasion, you might be petting his fluffy self and find a weird wet spot. Often it was on the top of his head, but not always. This weirdness was finally explained when we discovered he loved hanging out under the faucet in the bath and sauntering around a freshly used shower. He hated water most of the time, but these were happy moments for him, and I feel sure he loved knowing we were going to be happily petting him until we hit a wet spot and just left wondering if we needed to go wash our hands.

He also loved to be where the action was. Oh, you’re working? Let me help by fwooping my 20lb body across your keyboard, or sticking my fluffy tail between you and the screen you are trying to see. He was a boy who loved to try and take (often successfully) the pages as they came out of the printer.

Fergus was curious and had no boundaries. You had to feed him first, or he would try to eat the dog’s food while you got his ready for him. He would insinuate himself onto your lap or into the crevice next to you and then spread out as much as he could in the hope that you would move. He would purr loudly, merp three octaves higher than you would expect, and grab your hand with his paws if you were not giving him the petting to which he believed he was entitled that very moment. If he stretched out to full length from the floor, he would likely be able to touch your shoulder if you were sitting. He was big, sweet, and dumb as a bag of hammers.

Yesterday, we headed out early for a long drive to get a medical evaluation for Mira. My sister has been visiting to help the household run since I just had spinal surgery. She called to let us know that Fergus’s back legs were not working well and he was not interested in food or water. She said she would keep an eye on him. I Googled the symptoms and determined that it was most likely a blood clot and that he was not coming back from this because even cats that survive the first clot often throw a second, so euthanasia was the kindest solution. Since he was not exhibiting any signs of pain, we decided to just let things be until we could get home. On our drive back several hours later, I called the vet and was able to get an appointment for 3:20 pm. We arrive home around 1:00 and found our buddy lying on the floor, kind of purring to himself in a self-soothing way. I couldn’t stand it. We wrapped him up in a blanket, and I had my sister hand him to me while I sat in the recliner.

Friends, when I tell you we were not prepared for the next few moments, I cannot emphasize it enough. Suddenly, I was back in September 2014, holding our 10-month-old son wrapped in a blanket at he breathed his last breaths. Patrick in a soft green blanket, Fergus is a soft blue, both breathing shallowly and difficultly. In that moment, I knew Fergus would not make it until his 3:20 appointment, so I talked softly to him and told him how much we loved him and would miss him, and asked him to go meet Patrick and play together until it was our turn to arrive. When Phil came in, leaned forward, and whispered in my ear that he was about to break, I knew the moment had caught him unawares in exactly the same way that it had caught me. We were watching our baby boy die all over again.

And what was worse? This time, Mira, now 11, totally gets the loss and finality of death in a way she did not at the age of 3 when Patrick passed. It was an excruciatingly beautiful and sad moment when she came and sat with me after Fergus had breathed his last breath and she began to pet his head. We all cried, but we also talked about what a little shit he could be and laughed at the antics that had brought us so much joy over the last six years.

When it came time, we took him to the vet and made plans for his cremation. I also elected to get a mold of his paw print. And then the vet dropped the bomb I had not been anticipating. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “When we heard the heart murmur last year and did the blood test, it showed that he didn’t have any risk at that time. Unfortunately, this is a classic case of what happens with cats who have a heart murmur—they throw blood clots and it lands at the saddle juncture…” When I tell you that my heart stopped, I am being literal. I have heart palpitations that I take medications for. And when the vet said “heart murmur,” my heart skipped a beat. Because I had forgotten. In that moment, I was taken back to last summer when we first received word that Fergus had a heart murmur and all of the anger and frustration I had felt. Why?! Was having two kids with congenital heart defects not enough? Did my cat have to have one, too? I was so mad. But then the blood test came back fine. And we had so many other fights to fight, and Fergus was fine. So I forgot. Completely. Nothing I had read on Google had triggered that moment from last summer.

Now here I was. Already suffering PTSD and back in the moment of my son’s death, grief at the loss of him and Fergus swirling together, ready to take me under, and the vet had just told me, essentially, that my cat had died from complications of a heart defect. I’ve had some time to think and sleep on this, and I still don’t know what to do with this information.

And yet, part of me knows that’s a lie. Part of me knows that it was my experience with Patrick that informed my actions with Fergus. I held him and made him feel comfortable and loved, and reminded him he was not alone in the last moments of his life. Moments that were quiet and peaceful, instead of being spent in a car rushing down the highway in an effort to get to an emergency vet that would charge me $1000 just to tell me there is nothing they can do but keep him comfortable.

Six years is not long enough with a cat. Ten months is not long enough with a son. Loss sucks. Grief sucks. Seeing the downward spiral coming for you and not being able to get out of the way sucks. It’s terrifying. The fear washes over me. How long, this time? How long until I can begin to dig my way out again? How long will the dig take? What if something ELSE happens in the meantime? Why us? Why now? Haven’t we been through ENOUGH? God dammit! I am already physically broken and trying to heal. How do I do this?

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There are no answers to my questions. But then I remember that tomorrow is Pentecost. The color is red. Red like a heart. Red like good, oxygenated blood. Red like the symbols for CHD. And it’s seen as the beginning of the church’s mission to the world. It’s a reminder of my mission. To share, honestly, with others about where I have been and where I am; about my struggles. To educate and give others space to feel, process, and share their own stories if they feel so moved.

It’s also a reminder that God can and does give us more than we as individuals can handle. But I am not alone. My sister is here. My spouse is here, and we are both supported and loved by the congregation he serves. My friends and family can reach out by phone or social media. I am here for Mira and Phil. Our other fur babies are here, cuddling up to us and giving us comfort. This moment sucks. It hurts. It’s awful in ways I simply never anticipated. But I am wrapped up in and held up by the love of others. Just as I held Patrick, Fergus, and Mira in moments they needed comfort, love, and care, so too do others now do the same for me. We are a community. It’s the only way this works. Thank you for being part of mine.