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Charlie, My Companion One morning fourteen years ago, my then-husband said, "Rus, it's me or Charlie. You have to choose." Up to that point it had not really dawned on me that I could do something about my unhappy marriage. The big sticking point was that I was newly disabled with a doctor-husband who wouldn't accept my change from able-bodied to Crip. Charlie could. He didn't give a damn that I went from mostly standing to mostly sitting. So, I picked Charlie. It was both a scary and easy choice. During the brief and pointless counseling so many ending couples seem to go through, I noted that First Spouse had never given me flowers, not one time. The next afternoon I came home from picking our son up from daycare and there were three dozen red roses on the front porch...about five years too late...I cried all night about the timing. When I woke up the next morning I saw that Charlie, with whom I was living at the time, had scattered those impossibly late flowers all over the house. Not only did he put that last ditch offering into perspective for me, but our home smelled wonderful for a very long time. Charlie was a great comfort for me and my son during the divorce process and ended up moving with us from New York to Maine to California and finally to where we live now in Florida. Along the way we picked up a guinea pig and a variety of disabled small dogs. He didn't warm up to them much, but learned to tolerate them all from afar because he knew we loved them, too. His favorite food was black olives. Charlie was known for more than once barring access to more pizza for the rest of us until we handed over the black olives from the veggie slices. He often joined us at the dinner table whether he was invited or not. Charlie was the King of the Roost in actuality and then as figurehead when we remarried. He knew me as an abused spouse and expecting Mom; a lonely new mother, scared divorcee, single parent, returning student, second wife, newly ordained minister and newly disabled person. I am now a Crip writer who has become comfortable, finally, with who she was and is and may still become. But Charlie won't be here to see what happens to me tomorrow and the days after that. You see, my cat Charlie died this morning. I know all about the Circle of Life and that Charlie was more than sixteen human years old. I know many times that you are ready to lose someone and you aren't. I know many times that you aren't really ready until after the loss happens. I know many times that it isn't until much later you finally realize sorrow over your lost loved one was actually confused joy for a life fully lived. I know and I don't know all these things. I'm not at that place yet. I don't know when I will be. But there are three things about my companion cat Charlie I know right now and for certain: I love him. I always have. I always will. Rus Cooper-Dowda is a minister and freelance writer in St. Petersburg, Fla.
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