Butterflies and Bones

I have cut some lilacs and brought them inside.

Their pale purple scent is a hint of a different world. Clusters of tiny four-petaled heads expressing love and beauty. What is their desire, but to be a sweet mercy breaking through to a hard cold world.

There's something eternal here and I'm back at Grandma's. She always had fresh cut flowers from her garden. The house had a smell that mixed wood burning in the stove, various bouquets and food: green onions with cucumbers as a salad and roast chicken and potatoes and parsley.

In my Grandma’s garden there was a very large cherry tree. Sometime in June when the cherries were ready to be picked, my grandmother would make a big dinner. Besides the cherry-picking, I’m not sure what we were celebrating. No wait, I do, at least now I do. We were celebrating life.

What a miraculous thing. What an idea! To celebrate life. Has that changed? Are we now too busy running around?

Who Tends the Garden Very Pretty; Who Visits Her Beloved Kitty

In Grandma’s garden, life bursted forth: Evergreens, sculpted hedge baskets, holly hocks, rhododendrons, tiger lilies, snapdragons… Grandma took me around teaching me the names of flowers and shrubs.

The charm of that well tended garden deserved the special attention—the chants—the magic that comes from children and old people at two opposite ends of the spectrum of life.

So here was this hidden paradise, set inside a cemented city. It didn’t seem like it was only separated by a white picket fence adorned with red roses. It didn’t seem like it should be so close to the pavement, the inevitable whir of traffic. But it was. So when you looked out past the fence, it was like there was an invisible shield keeping the garden safe.

But it couldn't keep this one safe...

Underneath Grandma's front porch was an area closed in on one side by a wooden trellis. I peered through it. A sandy dirt in mounds. I wonder now why that trellis even existed to look into. Into what? Dirt? Why hadn't it just been closed up entirely with sheets of plywood.

But then I wouldn't be writing about what I saw: The Dead Cat. It had been there a long while. It was too long dead to really be called dead, but not long enough I suppose because I named it for its consequence and visited it for mine. Now I wonder why I never gave it a name. Only, The Dead Cat. Maybe by the end of this, I'll come up with something right.

No longer animated, it had in its mind to exist here in a sepulchral state. To perhaps gift "the viewer" with a new kind of faith that what they were seeing was a lie.

It may very well be true that the lie is a test of faith. As I recall myself "a viewer" and recognize that it may have been a gift all along, I'm tempted to fall softly away from it all because a gift is a lot to bear, but anyways, I don't think it's time for those kind of dreams just yet.

A beautiful gift disguised as something else; so that had there been no trellis, but plywood perhaps, there would be nothing to wonder about, to pray about, to hope for.

Today I think the innocent little thing must have liked Grandma’s as much as I did and while wounded or sick, selected its final place of rest close to pretty flowers which brought butterflies.

A gift. A gift is a hard thing. I couldn’t save it. I couldn’t even bury it and give it a little marker saying “Good Kitty”. All I could do was spend some time with it. And I did. I was eight years old and I probably spent more time praying with the little remnant than I feel comfortable admitting.

And actually, I remember now, I did give it a little ceremony. I painted rocks. Now I think I remember thinking: The paint will wash off in the rain, (you know the kind with the paint tray and circles of washable colour) but I painted them anyways and put them near the trellis. I think I also used crayon on some, but yeah. A little ceremony.

I would gently step into Grandma’s flower bed and peer into the darkened area. Through the slits of the lattice I could see a dirty empty place, neither in nor out, but somewhere in between.

It lay slightly outstretched in unmistakable cat form—but now as only a dry rock like lump. What did I think? Of it crawling away—alone—to die. Poisoned? Injured? Maybe just old. As if any of it mattered now.

My eyes would be wet and I felt a quiver in my heart and I would imagine its little spirit bouncing around the garden, chasing the butterflies; but its days of climbing trees and warming itself in the sun were over.

I had to admit that it lay in that dark hollow underneath the house, away from the flowers and sunshine. Somehow I wanted to cradle the bones—my childhood mind fully fathoming the fact that it would do no good. But it didn’t deserve to die like this—it didn’t deserve to die.

After spending time with my lonely friend, I would walk away. I had to leave and go back to the living… abandon for awhile the kind of comfortable sadness that belongs in graveyards and near memorials—the humbling quiet that respects the shadows and the weariness of the indistinct possibilities of life.

Once inside the house again, I see my animated animal friends—my own special living kitty cats that welcome me back.

They were always rolling, romping, curling and decking out. They were always blending neatly into cushions and blankets. Furry and purring, eyes aglow, filled with mischief and affection.

So what now of all this? To go back to that place where a cat once lay to die alone. Why must I?

Maybe because it's June and the lilacs are blooming.

And now I know there are cherries again and kittens still… and I am sure there is a place where they chase butterflies that never get caught.

Now that old cat’s just a skeleton within my skull and the world presses on at its pace. It’s racing away from dirt and blood and moving to transparent things.

Electric waves are pulsing through wires and emptying through screens and more and more this is how the world sees itself. This is how it feels itself. Forgetting to walk barefoot sometimes, to even look up and maybe dig down.

Inside the computer there is light and there is sound as the world races away, but there is something else too. Some kind of indulgence that is flat and rude. Something that only knows knowledge, but can't feel the quiver.

Still, I cling to the softness. Petals and fur. To puddles, and grassy hallowed places. To the world. To thick cold fog, and ice and frost. To warm lilac scented summer evenings.

I now go back to that place where The Dead Cat lies, peer through the trellis again and wonder for a name:

Lilly the Lilac Cat. You've come to remind me. It's summertime again.

The lyrics to Golden Feather by Robbie Robertson proclaim:

When you find what's worth keeping
With a breath of kindness
Blow the rest away

And in a song without words, a greater Source speaks, without the hindrance of language:

The Vanishing Breed - Douglas Spotted Eagle and Robbie Robertson