Michael Meyer - The Three Kitties That Saved My Life

Dedicated to Kitty, Coco, and Pom Pom

THE END OF MY WORLD

I was a devastated man. I saw no way out. If I died, so what? I didnt care. I wasnt suicidal, but I couldnt care less whether I lived or died. Food, drink, and all the necessities and comforts of life meant nothing to me. I had always been a happy, optimistic guy, but that was now only of the past. I was but a shell of a man, listlessly meandering through life as if it were a terrible chore, which it was. I was living a horrible nightmare. I felt helpless. It was all I could do to get out of bed in the morning, and when I eventually succeeded, then all I wanted to do was to get back into that bed and curl up in the fetal position and go to sleep. Even permanent sleep seemed a welcome thing.

But I couldnt sleep. My mind was always working, never stopping for rest. My thoughts tortured me, strangling any want for personal survival out of my system. I no longer felt human. I was a machine, a robot, simply breathing, thinking and doing little else. The sudden death of a loving and beloved spouse can do this to a person.

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I HAD MET CIBA AT A singles dance. My friend had been to one of these dances weeks before. He told me to hang out by the bar, for my best chances of meeting someone. I took his advice. The bar was filled with seated men, drinking beer. I turned my back on them, standing a few feet away, near the front door. When I got back to work on Monday, I would let my friend know what I thought of his plan. I had driven nearly an hour to get to the dance, and here I was now standing there all alone, surrounded by men, nursing a bottle of beer, and thats when she walked in the door.

I was mesmerized from the very moment I spotted her. Ciba was the woman right out of my dreams. She carried herself in such a regal manner. She was a classy dresser. In fact, everything about her exuded class. And she was so attractive, with a smile that made me freeze. I could stare at her forever.

And I almost did. We dated eighteen straight nights in a row. Her dog met my dog, and they got along splendidly. I invited her one night to my house for dinner, and the first thing her dog did was to pee all over a case of beer I had just purchased, which was sitting in a corner of the kitchen. A week later, when I went to her house for dinner, my dog left his mark on the side of her leather sofa. I guess the two dogs were letting each know what was what, and what was what was that they really liked each other and that they got on together like long-lost pals.

It was truly love at first sight, for the two of us, and for the dogs, both of whom had left their marks and then got on just splendidly with one another. We had an idyllic life together, for close to nineteen wonderful years. We were both teachers, we both loved to travel internationally, we both loved animalsit seemed we had everything in common, and we did. We both watched what we ate, we took care of our health, and we both worked out regularly. Our chance meeting at the singles dance was like a fairy tale come true. We had it all, and we especially had each other.

But then it happened, one month after returning from a glorious vacation in Ireland, where we had danced and made merry with the best of them, laughing and joking and loving our way around the Emerald Isle, where Ciba, my dear wife, had had the vacation of a lifetime. Suddenly, upon our return home, though, she inexplicably had trouble walking. Her legs hurt. She would breathe heavily when taking just a few steps. Here she had been a physical marvel for her entire life, a walking advertisement as to why eating healthily, working out regularly, and staying in shape is so important. She would have topped anybodys list of people most unlikely to die at an early age, but, then again, life has a strange way of throwing us completely off balance, catching us off guard, showing us how little we really know.

She suddenly needed blood transfusions, sometimes only a week apart. She underwent every medical test imaginable, weeks on end, but nobody knew what was ailing her. We went to the top doctors, specialists, and hospitals in the area. Still nobody could pinpoint the problem. She got progressively weaker, and the pain became excruciating. Even morphine could not completely mask her pain.

Finally, the world famous City of Hope nailed it. She had had lots of biopsies before, but no pathologist could tell us what was wrong. But the City of Hope was different. Within twenty minutes of her biopsy there, we learned the awful truth. My wife of nearly nineteen years, my companion through life, had a deadly form of leukemia, and she was immediately put into the hospital for close to four weeks of treacherous chemotherapy. It was a hellish nightmare for me. For her, for the terrible toll those four weeks took on her body, it was so bad that words can not possibly come close to describing the terrible ordeal, the awful physical and emotional pain that she was forced to endure.

But she loved the City of Hope. It is a wonderful, caring place for both cancer patients and their loved ones. They certainly lived up to their motto, which is etched on an ornate entryway to one of their beautifully landscaped gardens: There is no profit in curing the body if in the process we destroy the soul. Everything about this world-class hospital and research center is absolutely fantastic. They provide comfort and serenity everywhere, within the confines of patients rooms, in the public hallways and meeting rooms, and especially in their landscaped grounds.

I was nervous. I was scared. I paced the grounds in worry. I felt so helpless, but I wanted to always appear strong and hopeful in my wifes presence. The gorgeous rose garden was an uplifting, calm sanctuary for me as I paced the grounds while my wife was being attended to by her doctors, or when she was sleeping. Likewise, the Japanese Garden provided me so many hours of comforting tranquility. The grounds were true beauty in the midst of the ugliness of what was taking place within the hospital itself, where the awful truth of the worst diseases imaginable were clearly evident on every floor.

But my wife loved the City of Hope. She loved her doctors, she loved her nurses, she loved her attendants, and she loved the other patients she met later in her treatment when she was able to walk for a short while down the hopeful and yet very sad halls, where she would cry at the sight of young children who were dying of the very disease that was taking her. She felt so awful for the children. She wanted to do something for them. She wanted so desperately to help them. They looked so sad, and so sick, as did she, and yet it was the sight of the children that seemed to matter most to her, not her own terrible sickness, the one that was tearing me apart as I forced myself to keep my own emotions in check while in her presence.