I think it was 2004 when I began to realize something was up. My cat died. She was my life – my little Penny. Only eleven years old. It was hard, really hard. She had been my constant since the age of fifteen or so, since I returned from camp broken. Major hives had sent me to the Emergency Room three times while up there, finally they said I couldn’t go back. They were internal, I couldn’t breathe. And I returned to what was supposed to be my mom’s cat, who became the only member of the family I could trust.
Penny’s story, like all of the ones I have, is a long one. We battled cancer for two years and I watched helpless as tumour after tumour erupted across her skin. Her fur was falling out in little clumps across my apartment, often with decayed flesh still attached.
I expected grief when she passed. I expected sadness. I didn’t expect flashbacks. Especially not ones so vivid that in my sleep I was throwing myself into the wall, scratching at my skin, waking up with bruises and bloody arms and legs. The worst one I threw myself out of bed – hard – and landed on my stomach, face, and hands. It felt like I broke my nose.
First I went to a grief counselor that specialized in the human/animal bond. She was provided free by the veterinary office I had taken Penny too. It was supposed to be ‘group’ but I was the only one there. We talked about how Penny opened the world to me – she visited neighbors, I walked her on a lease, everyone responded positively to her. We also talked a bit about my homelife and that was when she suggested I go see a therapist to deal with that. She also told me to expect a lot of stuff to come back up as Penny was the gatekeeper – the last vestige of that life- and kept the demons at bay. With her gone, everything rushed through.
The one I remember the most, that wasn’t just the huge black shadow deeper than night with storm-cloud eyes, was a dream I had when I was maybe a freshman in highschool. I remember because it was one I tried to tell my mom in an effort to understand.
In the dream I am in the attic and my mother is coming after me. She’s just pale waxy skin and those grey-blue eyes of hers that when I was young envied as more beautiful than my hazel, and as I aged feared as they were just thunderclouds. She keeps coming after me and I’m screaming and screaming and the only thing I have on me is this whistle she had given my brother and I. It was a loud one on a mustard yellow lanyard and we were to blow it if we were ever being attacked – but they were taken away since the only place we used them was inside with her. So the whistle is in my hand as she’s coming after me so I just keep swinging it at her and finally it hits her in the forehead with an awful squishy thud and imbeds in there. I remember her falling, then the look as she is on the wooden floor, hands curled into the wood, her face turned up at me smiling with the whistle in her head and the skin buckled around it.
“But I wanted you dead!” I tried to explain the next day. “I was trying to kill you, but you wouldn’t die. I just remember wanting you dead so much!” I cried trying to understand how I could wish any mother dead. Mother’s are the givers of life, right?
“Are you having troubles at school?” she asked me. “Is someone picking on you?”
I looked up at her in complete disbelief. “The dream wasn’t about anyone at school,” I told her, “it was about you. Me trying to kill you.” I left out the beginning part – that it was self-defense, that she was trying to kill me and I was fighting to live. What bothered me more was that image of the whistle in her forehead, her irises staring up at me from the floor.
“Oh honey, it’s that girl Neetu isn’t it. Is she picking on you?”
For some reason, as all the flashbacks swarmed around and overpowered my senses, that was the image that remained, the one of her attacking me and that damned whistle. The conversation when I tried to tell her what happened and it was blown off – as so much was. At least, that’s the one I remember the most.
I also started breaking out again after Penny died. One cry would turn into splotches then a rash then hives and then the occasional visit to the doctor. I wasn’t getting sleep, I was jumpy, depressed – really depressed – and just walking in a daze. I ended up losing a good thirty pounds in those months (maybe year?) afterwards before I got a better handle on things.
Penny’s story, like all of the ones I have, is a long one. We battled cancer for two years and I watched helpless as tumour after tumour erupted across her skin. Her fur was falling out in little clumps across my apartment, often with decayed flesh still attached.
I expected grief when she passed. I expected sadness. I didn’t expect flashbacks. Especially not ones so vivid that in my sleep I was throwing myself into the wall, scratching at my skin, waking up with bruises and bloody arms and legs. The worst one I threw myself out of bed – hard – and landed on my stomach, face, and hands. It felt like I broke my nose.
First I went to a grief counselor that specialized in the human/animal bond. She was provided free by the veterinary office I had taken Penny too. It was supposed to be ‘group’ but I was the only one there. We talked about how Penny opened the world to me – she visited neighbors, I walked her on a lease, everyone responded positively to her. We also talked a bit about my homelife and that was when she suggested I go see a therapist to deal with that. She also told me to expect a lot of stuff to come back up as Penny was the gatekeeper – the last vestige of that life- and kept the demons at bay. With her gone, everything rushed through.
The one I remember the most, that wasn’t just the huge black shadow deeper than night with storm-cloud eyes, was a dream I had when I was maybe a freshman in highschool. I remember because it was one I tried to tell my mom in an effort to understand.
In the dream I am in the attic and my mother is coming after me. She’s just pale waxy skin and those grey-blue eyes of hers that when I was young envied as more beautiful than my hazel, and as I aged feared as they were just thunderclouds. She keeps coming after me and I’m screaming and screaming and the only thing I have on me is this whistle she had given my brother and I. It was a loud one on a mustard yellow lanyard and we were to blow it if we were ever being attacked – but they were taken away since the only place we used them was inside with her. So the whistle is in my hand as she’s coming after me so I just keep swinging it at her and finally it hits her in the forehead with an awful squishy thud and imbeds in there. I remember her falling, then the look as she is on the wooden floor, hands curled into the wood, her face turned up at me smiling with the whistle in her head and the skin buckled around it.
“But I wanted you dead!” I tried to explain the next day. “I was trying to kill you, but you wouldn’t die. I just remember wanting you dead so much!” I cried trying to understand how I could wish any mother dead. Mother’s are the givers of life, right?
“Are you having troubles at school?” she asked me. “Is someone picking on you?”
I looked up at her in complete disbelief. “The dream wasn’t about anyone at school,” I told her, “it was about you. Me trying to kill you.” I left out the beginning part – that it was self-defense, that she was trying to kill me and I was fighting to live. What bothered me more was that image of the whistle in her forehead, her irises staring up at me from the floor.
“Oh honey, it’s that girl Neetu isn’t it. Is she picking on you?”
For some reason, as all the flashbacks swarmed around and overpowered my senses, that was the image that remained, the one of her attacking me and that damned whistle. The conversation when I tried to tell her what happened and it was blown off – as so much was. At least, that’s the one I remember the most.
I also started breaking out again after Penny died. One cry would turn into splotches then a rash then hives and then the occasional visit to the doctor. I wasn’t getting sleep, I was jumpy, depressed – really depressed – and just walking in a daze. I ended up losing a good thirty pounds in those months (maybe year?) afterwards before I got a better handle on things.
