Another Laura Birthday Come and Gone

With Laura’s passing, the once-important dates in our lives (now my life) are basically tentpoles, with some being more important to be able to hold up the structure that are my memories stronger than others. The obvious ones are Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Easter, and Thanksgiving. Some of the less obvious ones are Halloween, Independence Day, New Year’s Day, and Labor Day, along with the days that were just personal to her and I, such as days that the cats were either born on or passed away on, relatives birthdays and death dates, and significant dates in our life together, such as the date we met and the date she bought our condo here in Virginia Beach, which is now my condo in Virginia Beach.

However, the most important dates, or tentpoles, of course, are the day she died (May 18, 2019) and the day she was born (September 8, 1965). One of those dates is now upon me, leaving me to deal with everything related to it.

It’s funny how much significance this date has had tied to it through the years. For example, those who know me pretty well know that I am a fanatic about the New Wave rock band The Cars. As it turns out, the bassist and co-lead singer for The Cars, the late Ben Orr, was born on September 8. Laura actually shares her birthday with fair number of pretty well-known singers, including Patsy Cline, Aimme Mann, Jimmie Rodgers and Pink. Other noteworthy people who share or shared Laura’s birthday with her include Sid Caesar, Peter Sellers, Adrian Cronauer, Bernie Sanders, Lem Barney, Maurice Cheeks and Latrell Sprewell.

In our personal lives, we even tied a few things to that date as well. When we rescued our Turkish Angora kitten, Shawnee Catsidy, while living in North Platte, Nebraska, we did so around the second week of November when he was estimated to be about eight to nine weeks old. Given that estimate, we chose Laura’s birthday to be his birthday as well and, while Laura got birthday cake every year, Shawnee and the other cats got to partake in a large helping of canned tuna, complete with a rendition of “Happy Birthday.” I might add that, although we have different cats now, I still carry on this tradition.

Unfortunately, the date of September 8 turned dark in 2013. In fact, 2013 was the darkest year to date in my life until 2019 and 2020 came along. In May 2013, Laura’s older sister Kathy passed away at age 53 (oddly enough the same age that Laura would pass away at nearly six years later) from an accidental drug overdose. A couple of weeks after Kathy’s passing, Laura and I were charged with taking care of her two cats and, in the process of trying to capture them, one of them hurled himself down the stairs of Kathy’s condo and separated his knee from the joint and had to be put down the next day. Her other cat, who turned out to be antisocial with other cats, a biter, and much older than he was thought to be, passed away nine months later.

Then, our cats took ill. First, Laura’s beloved Russian Blue — Ardent Blue Spike (or “Spike,” for short) — who we got free while we were living in South Florida and was with her every day of his 16-year life, came back from a simple teeth and ear cleaning at the veterinarian’s office in mid-August 2013 with neurological damage — possibly a stroke. He never recovered and slowly got worse. Our 18-year-old cat, Hopalong Catsidy, who was his mate and had two litters with him, empathized with him and started to not eat and drink. By August 31, she had gotten so bad that we decided to put her to sleep. Spike never recovered from losing his mate and died in Laura’s arms on her birthday. Then, two months later, their offspring, Butch Catsidy, who had been fighting thyroid issues for a couple of years, took ill (maybe because he was missing his parents) and we had to have him put to sleep in late November 2013 at age 15. Finally, Shawnee, also age 15, had been battling a systemic infection for several months in 2013. In December, it got real bad. I also think he didn’t like being the only cat remaining. He died in my arms on December 13, 2013 — meaning that we lost our entire cat family in a span of fewer than four months, including Laura’s beloved Spike on her birthday.

Now, these days come and go and I am left with my memories. Having also lost all close members of my family makes this difficult for me because it means that I am basically the only one with these memories and when I am gone, so are they.

Thank goodness there are outlets like blog posts that allow you to put them out there — although I guess there’s no guarantee for how long. Oh, well. Happy birthday, Laura. I hope you’re right about the Rainbow Bridge and you and Spike and all of the rest of the animals from your life are all playing idyllically together.