It is never easy, getting that all from the vet after the deed is done, for
the deed itself is never fina; they must let us know that the ashes have been
returned to the office for pick-up. When i got the call I was at a friend's
house all the way in South Buffalo (we live in one of the northern suburbs)
and Louie drove down to pick me up. it was after 9 at night, but the office
is a 24-hour shop.

We received Odessa's ashes in a tiny tin painted with roses on a black
background. The pattern had an oddly Russian feel to it, like the decorations
on a matryushka doll's round little nesting body. How appropriate. Odessa was
our Dolly and our Black Russian Princess. Louie found her collar, the one she
came with. Her enire litter was black, so they all had color-coded collars in
the shelter, and as she was used to it when we got her we saw no need to
remove it until she got sick--somehow thinking this would help her breathing.
All the other cats ended up getting collars, and this had helped Odessa
integrate; it was like now there was solidarity. The siblings had collars,
just like all her littermates.

We knew what we had to do. In Sikh religious tradition, the ashes of a loved
one are cast into running water. The idea is that the essence of the person--
soul or spirit--has gone on to God; the mortal remains are consigned to
Mother Nature. One of our prayers reads the Earth is the Great Mother of all.
Not far from our home is a charming litle park running with creeklets in
little waterfalls and minirapids; it is a popular place for weddings and
picnics. But here we went in the dark of night,  shaking off traffic, trying
not to look around like we were doing anything other than fulfilling our
faith. At a bridge overlooking the creek, where the water ran and a gentle
mist hovered over small round rocks, Louie and I asked Odessa in the heavens
to forgive us for any undue suffering we may have caused her; and for
Luonnotar who is Mother Nature to take her little one back to herself and
grant her peace. After that, we cast the ashes off the bridge, into the water
and mist.

Our regular vet had sent flowers, and the one who did the deed had sent a
card though she had never known Odessa. (I wondered why our vet had not done
a card, then figured it must fall upon the one who administers the Draught of
Mercy.) The flowers were a bright fall mix of carnations, small roses, little
dried purple flowers that grew in bunches on thin stems, and a bright purple
lily. Into the tin box we put Odessa's collar and her makeup brush, then at
least one of every flower in the arrangement. All the roses had dried but
were still perfect blossoms on the stem, so they went in; a carnation, and
the dried petals of the lily, and some of the purple ones. There was an
unopened bud, probably a carnation, and that went in too. It was fitting, for
one so young as my Odessa-Doll. Her little gift of flowers and mementos of
her playful presence among us sits anong our books, next to the handsome
rosewood box filled with rose petals, that had contained the ashes of her
elder brother Fritzie.

God, I miss them.

Blessed be,
Baha