Losses.

I have had a few this year.

Loss of a love that was so intense,

So sweet, like nothing else.

Now, I don’t even know if it was real.

That’s really what that loss was all about,

Because I’m coming to believe the man I loved

never really existed except in my heart.

When all the layers were peeled away,

Truth exposed,

He wasn’t there.

Then, I lost my mother.

My sweet loving mother.

I know that was real loss, but honestly

I know she’s still with me.

I miss talking to her.

I missed her hugs when I was in Florida.

I missed the way her face lit up when she saw me

And the way she still knew my voice on the phone, even a week before she died.

But her love, her unconditional, limitless, just-because-I-existed love

Is still with me.  Always.

It wraps around me, even at this moment, like a warm blanket on a cold winter’s night.

And now, I’m losing my kitty.

She was with me during all the dark days of my long contentious divorce.

She was with me when that man broke me into 1000 pieces

and she’d lay next to me purring whenever she heard me sobbing into my pillow.

She was with me when my mother slipped away, and slept next to me

Kept me company.

She and that man, who only told more sweet lies.

The kitty was true. The man was anything but. 

Now I embark on a new life,

Exciting life, a dream manifesting.

But without my mother, and my kitty,

Both of whom loved me unconditionally.

The man, over whose loss I cried the most,

Doesn’t even matter.

He was just a figment of my imagination.

The other two were real,

They gave me something to hold on to that no one can take away.

I’m not comparing the loss of my mother to the loss of my kitty.

They are just both loss in this context, real, painful loss.

They mattered.

Their presence always gave me something.

Their loss leaves the world lacking.

The man?  What was his name, again?

Priorities have been realigned for some time now.

But the illustration is just now finishing.