Nim

Dear Reader...this is a sad one,

Above, you see Nim around 2010. He was about 7 years old here, before life put any scars on his nose. I had just graduated from anesthesia school. It was a busy time, and he was right in the middle of it...as he has been for nearly my entire adult life.

Nim passed away on January 26. He was 19.5 years old. He lived a long, interesting, and (until the very end) healthy life. He died in my lap at home with the help of a hospice vet. He was purring. It was still very hard. If you would like to hear me talk about Nim at some length, you can listen to this episode of my podcast, which I have made public.

I've also created a slideshow in Google drive. You just click on the first image and hit next, next, next... There are a lot of pictures, as well as a few videos at the very end (mostly with Mochi).

I wrote his poem. Here it is:

Nim
(2003 – 2023)

I keep trying to write your poem, but it’s like picking up handfuls of broken glass,
each one a memory that cuts.
Your limp body the last time I ever held you.
Your paws around my arm twenty years earlier, "Please pick me, please."
Your trill every time I came home.
Your caterwaul, demanding my attention.
You in apartments, in hotel rooms, with family and friends, in boarding, in the house I bought for you.

Time feels plastic.
I am now and you are then,
separated by a few paper-thin days, like a pane of glass.
If I could just rewind the tape, only a few days, we would be in the same place.
It seems like it ought to be easy.
Somewhere, you are standing in the kitchen with me,
watching me cook,
with your posture so very proper, like a cat in a painting.
Somewhere, you are sleeping with Mochi or Taro on my bathroom floor.
Somewhere, I am brushing you in your favorite chair,
watching TV with you, waking up with you licking my nose.
Somewhere I am now and you are now,
if I could just rewind.

I have a picture of you in my head: bounding through snow like a puma; you were young, then. We were in Portland the first time.
Or, later, in Florida, when you fled home with a bobcat on your tail, and then spun around, suddenly brave with me at your back.
Time is slipping…like a dislocating hip, like a seizure, like a fractured mirror, spilling shards of broken glass.
I was twenty-six when I brought you home.
I had no money…then even less money…then we struggled up, up…until we were doing ok and paid off my student loans.
Then I bought you a house.

I was twenty-six when you wrapped your paws around my arm in the Humane Society and said, "Get me out of here."
I had three and a half novels drafted, none of them publishable. I had the first Eve and Malachi book. I was four years away from writing Cowry Catchers. I was so young.
You’ve been here when I wrote every book I ever published.
Your voice is in the outtakes from my early audiobooks.
You were there for nursing school, for anesthesia school, for every hospital job, for my entire professional career.

Your history is my history is your history.
You outlived three dear companions.
You outlived my grandmother and the queen of England (Nonie would have been proud).
I got my bobtail boys to keep you company in your old age.
If my life were a novel, you would be a through-line, a constant, a stitch that united the whole.
And now it’s all in jagged pieces.

Time is elastic.
You are then, and I am now, and I can almost reach back and touch your fur.
Almost.
I would say, "I will write you into a book," but I’ve already written you into all of them,
in bits and pieces. Jagged fragments.
You moved with me across the country three times and stayed in so many different apartments and hotels.
If I was there, you were happy. If I was there, you were home.
And if I wasn’t there, you waited, knowing I would always come back for you.
I told you the last time, "I’ll never leave you again, buddy." And I didn’t.
You left, instead.
Did you die, or was that me?

Your history is my history is your history.
I am now, and you are then, and we are no longer in the same place.
This makes no sense to me.
Rewind.

You never greeted me ecstatically when I came home after a long absence.
Instead, you would tuck your head under my hand and slowly, softly begin to purr, as though you were coming back to life.
I’m sure I could come back to life if you would just come back to me.

You were not convenient in your old age.
Your food was expensive and hard to find.
The company stopped making it during the pandemic, and I thought that would be the end of you.
I found cases on a dusty back shelf of a Petsmart at the bottom of the country,
and I filled my suitcase.
I was so happy. I counted them, counting the weeks I could keep you alive.
Keep us both in the now.

And we lived happily ever after.
For another year or two or three.
That’s how happily-ever-after works.
We had so many of them. More than we deserved. More than others get.

I know these memories will fit together eventually.
I will run my fingers over the jagged edges and bleed,
until I wear them down, sand them smooth.
I will shuffled and reorder them until they make a whole,
until I can look into the glass and see myself,
and you.
You will be here always, love.
Somewhere we are reading.
Somewhere we are falling asleep.

Yours,
An Author Missing her Friend