love, loss and tolerance

12.19.13.4.11 6 Chuen 4 Uo
Everyone's lost someone they love. Does't matter if it's a pet or a parent, whether it's through death or abandonment. Everybody has lost somebody.
And what happens when you lose your loved one? You grieve and you make deals--even if you are an atheist, you will still make deals with yourself. "If only I had her back--I wouldn't complain about" whatever. There are always conditions.
Last night I was playing an online game on my computer and my cat, Zen, jumped on the desk as he often does and laid himself half on my arm, half on the keyboard, and purred madly. Very annoying. In fact, quite often I put him on the floor, especially if he knocks something over and/or breaks something or hits some impossible combination of keys which nearly blows up my computer.
But last night I didn't put him on the floor. In fact I moved a book so he could stretch out. Maybe it's because I know he's not well, and the loss of Goober still looms large in my heart. But as Zen was laying there showing me his belly and purring and staring at me in that intense way that he does when he really loves me, I thought, "If he had a terminal illness and I was going to lose him soon, or if I had lost him already, I would wish for him to be here on my arm purring. And I wouldn't care if he knocked things over or screwed up my game."
Maybe in some other universe I did make that deal, and that's why I have him now, why his illness turned out to be just a thyroid problem easily fixable with little white pills once a day and not some awful, fatal kitty disease.
But the whole idea wouldn't leave my mind. What if we treated everyone we loved that way? As if we were on the verge of losing them, and we were making deals. The annoying things people do fade away when they're gone. Why can't we learn to ignore them now? So my dad farts a lot. He's got Alzheimer's and he still knows who I am. Someday he won't remember me and I will wish to be back at this time when he does know me and he walks around via fart propulsion.