The gift of getting old
On my sister’s 19th birthday, Danny DeVito made us cry.
We weren’t expecting to cry while watching Jumanji: The Next Level, though I shouldn’t have been surprised — I cry at nearly every movie I see.
Danny DeVito’s character, Eddie, spends much of the movie complaining about being old and in pain. “Getting old is a gift,” he tells his grandson toward the end, after a change of heart caused by loss. “I forget that sometimes, but it is.”
DeVito was 75 at the time, eight years older than our grandfather will ever be. Pop had died a month earlier, and we cried because he wouldn’t get any older. My sister Ashtyn and I often noted, angrily, any man who seemed to be older than Pop’s 67 years. We were bitter toward anyone who got more of the gift of growing old than Pop did.
Today — August 4, 2021 — should be my cat Bowman’s first birthday. But forget growing old — he hardly got to grow at all. Just three days short of a year after Danny DeVito made me cry, and just one month after I adopted him, Bowman died at the age of four months and one week. He had FIP, an uncommon and almost completely fatal disease.
I didn’t grow up with pets, so I’ve never felt the pain of losing a lifelong companion. I’m at the age where many of my friends are experiencing that, so I know it’s terrible.
There’s a different kind of pain — not harder or easier, because pain can’t be compared, but different — in losing a pet so soon. When I think of Bowman, I think not just of the memories we did have together but also all of the ones we didn’t. The ones we didn’t — the 20 possible years we could have had together — are often heavier than the 30 days we did have together.
In those 30 days, I accumulated 329 photos and videos of Bowman. This morning, I looked through every single one and cried. The first picture is at the Humane Society, when I decided he was the one. There are pictures with every member of my family, including our labradoodle — 60 pounds to Bowman’s four. There are pictures of him in his favorite spots — on the WiFi router in my office, curled between anyone’s neck and chin. The last six pictures are from after his death.
A month after Bowman died, I adopted two kittens, orange-and-white brothers whom I named Leo McGarry and George O’Malley. (It wasn’t until after I chose the names that I remembered both of those characters die in their respective TV shows.) Just like Bowman, they were three months and one week old on the day that I adopted them.
I dreaded February 8 — one month after I adopted them, when they would be four months and one week old. I feared they wouldn’t get any older than Bowman, that I wouldn’t get any more time with them than I did with him.
But the day passed, and they kept growing. Almost seven months after I adopted them, I have 2,355 photos and videos. Some of them remind me of photos I have of Bowman — like when one of them sits on the book I’m trying to read or walks across my keyboard while I’m working. The photo I took of Leo’s swollen butt reminds me of Bowman, because it’s Bowman’s death that made me paranoid about every possible illness or injury, the cat owner version of a helicopter mom.
But most of the photos and videos of Leo and George are totally different from those of Bowman — because Leo and George grow up. From January to now, I can watch as the tiny kittens I adopted grew and grew — so much so that I was afraid I was letting them get obese.
It’s hard, sometimes, to watch them grow up when Bowman didn’t get to, like the 68-plus men I irrationally hate. It was especially hard at the beginning, when Bowman’s loss was so fresh. But mostly I’m overjoyed to have two healthy, happy cats to love — the best way I can think of to honor Bowman’s memory.
It’s tempting to want kittens to stay kittens forever. Looking through pictures, I sometimes wish that Leo and George were tiny again, so small that they flattened themselves under the dresser and both fit in their little cat hammock. But Bowman stayed tiny in the worst way, so mostly I’m thankful that they are big, fat cats who can knock magnets off the fridge and knock over kitchen chairs.
In a few months, on October 1, Leo and George will (they will — pipe down, paranoia) celebrate their first birthday. I’ll give them the creamy salmon treats I originally bought for Bowman that I save for special occasions. And I will celebrate the gift — the miracle — of getting old.
