A year ago, when Sharky passed, I vowed to keep his spirit alive through stories. There are so many Sharky stories I wanted to tell, but I haven’t yet. Not here. Today, I don’t have an old Sharky story to tell, but I do have a new one.
When I picked my daughter up from preschool yesterday, she ran out of the classroom with a mischievous look in her eye. She gestured to something near her feet, clapping her hands together like she would toward a dog. “Come on Sharky. Let’s go Sharky,” she said to the air.
“Who are you talking to, Zelda?” I asked, unsure I’d heard what I did. She carried on, running around the courtyard and playing.
“Let’s go,” she said.
“Are you talking to Sharky?”
“Yeah. He’s a ghost now.”
I love that Zelda continues to play with Sharky a year after he passed. I love that she still thinks of him. One of the many things I grieve is the fact that she won’t have many memories of him, if any, and that she didn’t get a chance to bond with him as a more regulated older child. Sharky was as tolerant as they come, but no cat mixes well with the chaos of a toddler. Now she’s almost five, and I know they would be friends. Perhaps they still can be.
Despite the fact that they never bonded much, Zelda was deeply affected by Sharky’s passing. It was her introduction to death, and it rocked her foundation. It did for all of us, but I knew it was creating a core memory for Zelda. Sometimes we talk about him, but this was the first time she interacted with his ghost. It delighted me and made me sad.
When we got home, I looked out over our balcony to the place where we buried our sweet kitty. We planted a lilac bush there, and to my amazement, I discovered the bush had blossomed. Little purple blooms dotted the dark green leaves. We were so worried that it wouldn’t establish itself in the canyon, but with all the rain this here, it appeared to be doing just fine. The rain made the flowers grow.
I came back inside and closed the sliding door. Zelda looked out and said, “You locked Sharky outside.” She still had that mischievous grin.
“Oh I’m so sorry,” I said. Opening the door once more. “Come on in, Sharky. Although he is a ghost so maybe he could just go through the wall.”
“Yeah,” Zelda said.
At that exact moment, Brad got an email notification on his phone. He looked at it to discover a reminder message from our vet saying: It’s time for Sharky’s annual exam.
That hurt more than the ghost. More than looking at his grave. More than anything. And why the hell did it come right now? So uncanny.
Sharky, are you really hanging around?
I don’t know about that, but if he is, he is welcome. If he becomes my daughter’s imaginary friend, I couldn’t ask for anything more. I hope that I too can always approach darkness with the imagination of a child.
Miss you, sweet boy