I guess in the end it's about buying time and ultimately, I can't afford to buy any right now because I danced my way through my past miseries into a handsome debt and now have no reserves whatsoever. I can't afford to buy any time and I can't afford to spend any money like a soothing balm to cover the immensely intense pain I am about to feel either. In the dream my dog just looks at me and says: "I don't know why you people get so upset about death."

A long, long time ago, I found a cartoon on a post card which was just stick figures, but oh so good. One of them was lying on the floor kicking and screaming WHY?! over and over and the other just looks up and says: "Well, we come into this world alone and we go out of it alone, so I figure in between we're going to have to spend some time alone." I really got that, but I guess I wasn't banking on spending quite so much of it alone. Maybe that's why losing things is so hard. Or maybe it's hard for everyone. Maybe it's even harder to lose things in front of a bunch of people or just even one person. I don't know.

At the end of "The Elegance of the Hedgehog" one of the characters has an epiphany about her cat and his role in her life over which I totally teared up, not because it was so much a revelation to me, but because I have known this the whole time of knowing my cats (and my dog too). She says: "...I take measure of how the ridiculous, superfluous cats who wander through our lives with all the placidity and indifference of an imbecile are in fact the happy guardians of life's good and joyful moments, and of it's happy web, even beneath the canopy of misfortune." And I am so lucky to have and have had such amazing guardians. This sweet mostly toothless cat who stands up on his hind legs and puts his paws all the way around my neck to hug me; who will come from the farthest corners of the house and the deepest sleep to comfort me if he hears me cry; who for some unknown reason really responds to the words: "Oh, my baby! Oh thank you, Steve!" when his name is Ozzie, this amazing orange angel...how in the world will I survive without him?