Living the questions. Maybe not loving them yet.

My cat died. :-( She was 17 (or 18?) and she just wasn't young enough to fight off the last infection and she got so sick that the vet said there was nothing else he could do, and they had to put her down. We've had her for all of her life, except the first 6 weeks. I dressed her up in doll clothes and made her jump through "circus" hoops and I watched her give birth when I was 14 and be a mommy and later I watched her get a little crankier and a little colder until it got to the point where she would spent 90% of her time sitting in front of the heating vent, or in the wool hut my dad put together for her, or on the nearest warm lap. She was tiny - never weighed more than 6 pounds. I wish I had a picture to show you.

Anyway, I feel so sad for my dad, too, because he is losing his roommate and friend. He has always sworn he won't get another cat, but I wouldn't be surprised if he did, sometime.

It's also sad that she died so close to Christmas. I hope he's OK.

I have been having awful dreams the past couple of nights, when I manage to sleep, which is not as much as I want to. Not the classic nightmares with scary objects or creatures putting me in frightening situations, but normal dreams of people-places-things in my everyday life, and then they go awry. Dreams of messing up the things that are important to me: arriving too late, making everyone wait for me, putting my foot in my mouth one too many times, making that one fatal mistake at work, hurting a friend, whatever.

I really need to get over the Christmas hump. Thank God I have somewhere to go.

Rainer Maria Rilke is my favorite German-language author. This is the quote that has been walking with me lately:

"Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer." (from Letters to a Young Poet)

Perhaps he's got a point.