fflo | multiple choice

susanstinson's cat Black Kitty died. She wrote of the loss in her blog. Sad.

I am put in mind of an old exchange with kind counselor I revisit often. The deft touch of it, along with its underlying point, impressed me even in the immediate aftermath of its occurrence.

Back a coupla years ago when things were in such turmoil for me, I found myself having many moments of worrying that my older cat was about to up & die---beyond what his health problems at the time merited. This channeling of fear, squirrely as it was, at first went towards practical questions, like what to do if the ground was frozen when such a thing would go down, even more than to underlying feelings along the lines of the (false) thought "I couldn't take it!" False cuz of course I could take it. I wouldn't want to take it, but, you know, when bad things happen, we take it. What else can we do, and how can we not do? The fact that life goes on, if it does, is sometimes a horror in its own way, but that doesn't undermine the factuality of the continuation, even if fear of some potential amorphous unbearability may abide right along with it.

Anyway, I'm digressing. The conversational snippet was me saying something like "I don't know how I could handle it," prompting her brilliantly simple nugget: "How would you want to handle it?"

Poof. Turned an "either-or" into the proper type of question, if a question had to be asked: multiple choice. You come up with the options; you influence the selection of answer or answers, to whatever extent you get to, or have to. Which, even if it's only a little, is something.

That moment was worth weeks of co-pays, easy. And now I give it to you, reader, gratis, fwi may be w to you. And just to note it again & celebrate it a little myself.

And it sounds like some of Susan's choices, in an actual aftermath, have been good ones.