Returning to the Places from Before...

 

Fultondale Public Library.

This library was the first place I'd gone to with Brutter when I'd brought her out onto the road. We'd been charging our electronics out in the front. Just as we had done numerous times in the past. That time, however, the local cops told us to leave for no good reason. Nobody had even complained about us being there, they simply decided they didn't want us enjoying public state property that our tax dollars pay for.

Brutter was perfect during that. I simply guided her to her carrier and she scurried in without a fuss. She was a travel cat from the start. She was so intelligent and picked up on things so quickly.

 

It's difficult being back in this area. Those memories of her pierce my heart. Even as I lay under a pavilion, keeping out of the rain in a park I'd never been to, I think of Brutter. I keep remembering the park pavilions I'd slept at with her. I keep noticing the lack of her presence. She should be here.

I'm lying awake, running on four hours of sleep. The sun's not come up yet. But I can't relax without running my hands over her fur. I feel the emptiness where there used to be fur and warmth.

These thoughts and emotions are shaking me more than they have in a while.

 

For a few months there, it's not that I wasn't thinking about Brutter, but rather, I was coping better somehow. But you can only hold a dam up so long, I suppose. Small leaks are springing up, and they're hard to patch up again. Besides, coping, keeping those thoughts and emotions in check, it doesn't change them, nor this reality.

It makes my skin crawl when I hear the old new age precept of "change your mind change your life". While I agree that having some control over one's thoughts and perspective can be beneficial, it only goes so far.

I could convince myself up and down that there's a mysterious reason for everything. I could insist that Brutter had died for the sake of some alleged grand scheme. I could even say that the entire purpose of her life and death was to teach me something substantial enough for my soul's spectral education.

However, disregarding the fact that I could never sit right with such disgusting theories, it would do me no good to reduce the life and death of another to a mere lesson for me to simply learn and move on from. No, I can't even treat her memory as something to celebrate and then push to the side.

I've lost the brightest light of my life. The world has lost the brightest light.

 

I'd tied my happiness and even the brunt of my identity to that little cat. Every decision made by my road dog and I were made specifically with her in mind.

I am nothing without Brutter, and nothing matters without her. That is how I feel, and quite frankly, I don't know how I could see it any other way. But that's just a lingering effect. The true travesty of the matter is that she died too soon, and she died alone when she should've been curled up safe on the sleeping bag like every night before. That morning should've been a normal morning for her. She should've been pawing at me at sunrise, until I woke up and filled her bowl with kibble from the new bag of dry food I had bought from Aldi the previous day. She should've spent the afternoon liking up a can of extra gravy wet food. She should've been there, scampering alongside us as we traversed forest and fields to the hop out. She should be here right now, curled up dry and warm in our sleeping bag as the rain comes down around us instead of being cold and buried in the ground of Superior fucking Wisconsin. 

She should be here. She should be happy...