The Importance of Closure

It’s unfortunate timing and irony that I was notified by Substack that I’m listed as #64 in Humor.

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We buried our last cat, Ahsoka, this weekend. We walked out the front door of our house to meet our friends to walk to get ice cream. Like I always do, and always have in almost 30 years of having indoor/outdoor cats, I look around for them. Ahsoka, especially since Virginia is a literal melting pot starting this time of year, has been curled up under our hostas and rose bushes, so I usually find her there. This time, however, I found her laying on her side in the middle of the yard. She lays like that in the house on the floor or on the couch when she’s completely at ease, not when she’s outside. My brain already knew what my mouth hadn’t yet said.

I stood over her and looked down. There were flies on her open eye. I was simultaneously mad at the flies for being on her but thankful for the confirmation.

And so I said, “Oh my god. Ahsoka’s dead.”

My words cut through the air. They lacked emotion. It was just a statement. My heart hadn’t caught up yet and I was momentarily appalled that I would say that without tears, without a faltering voice. That I would say that with so much confidence. Had my days in Petersburg finally turned me into a heartless monster?

I crouched down and touched her side. Solid. I’m always shocked at how different a body feels without blood flow. Her fur was no longer soft. There was no cute squish to her belly that would normally cause her to look up at me and meow. Her body was hard, though we had only just seen her a couple hours earlier when she came in to get some treats, her usual trick. She had trained us to give her treats every time she came in. And then eventually every time anyone came in.

She hadn’t been dead for long. And yet life didn’t linger. That always surprises me, too, the line between life and death. When your heart stops for the last time, life leaves quickly. The energy around her was already different. Still. No energy came off of her. None of her energy surrounded her.

My brain went into a mode I knew all too well, it prioritized what needed to be done right now.

I walked inside to text our friends at the same time Clint told me to text our friends.

We can’t go. We just found Ahsoka dead in the yard. I have to bury her.

I typed it without my glasses on, sent it, then dropped my phone back down onto the living room table.

Clint came in to get the key to the shed for the shovels. I went to the spot where the key was so I could get the shovels.

“I have to bury her,” I said. “Do you have the key?” I bumped into him in our narrow hallway.

I was irritated that he was already on the task, doing the things I needed to do. The things I had done so many times before because this is my way of properly handling grief. I’ve done this before. I know what I need.

Ahsoka was his cat, too. Or rather, he was her human, too. I let him help.

I walked out front and without hesitation picked her up. Only her tail flopped which caused my heart to flutter, but I knew better. Her legs remained straight. Her head didn’t need support, but I still gave it.

I stood and turned to walk around the house to our backyard to bury her. That’s when my tears finally came, fortified by the anger that I had only recently been able to calm to a kind of mist or fog. This anger had been a simmer in my belly since the day in early December of 2025 when I found Sera’s collar, but never her body. The subsequent death of our cat Lloyd only six months after Sera fed that anger. Other things have, too.

My tears came. As I carried her, I cried a guttural sound through clenched teeth, something like a scream, but from a place much deeper. It was a cry to break apart and release my rage.

I cried in waves. Sobs. Screams. Wimpers. Sadness. Anger. Rage. Hatred.

Hatred for this city that had taken all three of my cats in 18 months. Rage over the lack of care or consideration by the people that drive well over 40 or 50 down our street. Anger for the unfairness, avoidableness, and irreparableness of it all. Sorrow for letting her down. For not being able to bring her back to Montana with me.

Earlier that day, I told her we all needed to make it just a little bit longer. For days I had felt a sense of dread in the pit of my stomach. As if I knew this day was coming. Any minute now. Though I wasn’t sure if it would be her or me.

I put her down in a soft spot out back and picked up a shovel. I have buried almost all of my cats. I’ve dug the deep hole because I hate digging, because that’s part of the mourning process. That’s how I work the emotions out and prove to my cat, one last time, that I loved them.

But god damn this hard fucking soil.

I went to get a different shovel that had serrated edges. But even that one couldn’t do it. My inability to move earth for my Ahsoka stoked my anger. Clint had to use a mattox to make any dent in the soil. While he dug, our friends walked around to the back yard. Terri walked up to me, already sobbing, and hugged me hard for several minutes. Her husband Dean hugged me. And then our friend Bob. Bob’s wife Cindy called from out of town later that night. Everyone knew what Ahsoka’s death meant to me.

I heard Clint wonder aloud about a box or something to wrap Ahsoka’s body.

“I have a towel,” I said. This is what I do. This is what I’ve done for all my cats that I’ve been able to bury. I wrap them in a towel, usually a purple towel. But all of my purple towels are gone. Buried in Ohio. So, I grabbed my purple, pink, and yellow striped beach towel from the bathroom. I knelt by Ahsoka’s body and wrapped her well. And then, I folded myself over her, wrapped my arms around her covered body, and sobbed more. I felt the shape of her one last time in my arms. I laid my head on her one last time. In life, she wasn’t tolerant of the way I loved her. But I know she never doubted that she was loved. We both loved her well.

“Is the hole ready?” I asked Clint. He said it was.

I carried her over, knelt in the overturned soil, and placed her at the bottom. She fit well. He dug a good hole. I placed my hand on her covered body one last time and then used my hands to pull the cool, dark dirt from the pile next to me onto her body. Every so often, I’d spread the dirt to make sure it was covering her nicely. And then pull more into her grave.

No longer a hole. Now, a grave.

Once it was filled, Bob pushed a little more dirt over her grave with his shovel. I placed a large piece of black slate over her, so the dirt stayed, so I knew that was the spot. That’s where Ahsoka was now, below the dirt, below the heavy piece of slate. I had felt her dead body and the flies knew it, too. There was no question. I hated the truth but my brain understood it was sure.

I saw her dead body. I held it. I wrapped it. I buried it. And I can look out the kitchen window and see her grave. I know where she is. My heart and mind are at ease. Sad and angry for a lot of reasons, but settled.

My grieving this time included getting rid of all the litter boxes and throwing out the one remaining food dish. I got rid of almost everything and moved the cat blanket off the chair. We had no more cats in the house. This is a first for me in nearly thirty years. My grieving this time was total erasure. I wouldn’t walk past dishes for remaining cats and think of the ones that should be there. I wouldn’t watch the other cats eat and see the ghost of the ones that should be hunched up between them smacking their food, too. I wouldn’t experience the difference between how the gone cat had interacted with us versus the ones left now.

This time, this burial was the proxy for finally burying Sera and Lloyd. All of our cats, their ghosts, were buried in that grave with Ahsoka.

And so this time, my grieving process is different.

This time, I have closure.

I need that. My brain doesn’t handle not knowing very well. I learned that back in high school when my step-father died. I didn’t see his body and didn’t go to the funeral. For years afterwards, I had the feeling that he was just on a work trip and could come home any time. My brain was aware of the fact that it would accept him walking up the front porch and through the front door, even though my mother was mourning. I knew it wasn’t some elaborate scheme. Still. I never had closure.

Since then, I’ve made a point to see the body and go to the burial. I held my grandmother’s hand for three days and was holding her hand when they unplugged the ventilator and her heart finally stopped.

It was for her death that I asked hospice to explain to me exactly what would happen to her body. And then I watched it and felt it happen, from her feet up to her chest. I needed to do this. To honor my grandmother and to heal myself.

I saw my grandfather’s body. And my mother’s. Perhaps the burial wasn’t as important but seeing their bodies was. I’m not big on grave sites and don’t go visit them. For closure, I know their bodies are there, but I don’t believe the spirit of the person is.

It helps me to know that Ahsoka’s body is in the backyard.

For months, probably a year, I wasn’t able to heal from the loss of Sera. Not knowing is the worst sensation. My imagination made up horrible things in the absence of truth. I tormented myself with these thoughts because I wasn’t able to know where she was and if she was dead. I wasn’t able to get to another step of grief. With Ahsoka, I can.

Ahsoka’s energy has been gone from the house and our lives for a few days. I’ve been through several mornings without her and several full days. My brain glitches as it rewires for the new routines without her. Just like when I lost Sera. I no longer had to consider her mediation times twice a day, and everything that impacted. With Ahsoka, we no longer factor in if she’s going to follow us when we go for a walk or run. We don’t need to get her inside at night. We don’t consider “take my vitamins, brush my teeth, feed the cat” before bed. I no longer have an excuse to get up from working on the computer , walk around the house to find Ahsoka, pet her, get her treats, and hang out with her outside.

I miss Ahsoka’s energy, her meows, the way she squinted her eyes when she wanted treats or pets or to go outside - when she expressed any of the ways she felt she was unfairly suffering.

The house feels empty even when we’re in it. I’ve never lived in a house that didn’t have animals. I’ve never spent a day where I didn’t have a pet to think about, to miss when we were on vacation, to come home to, to cuddle with, to feed, to talk to. In many ways I feel lost.

I know it’ll take time, though this time is different. There are no others, and there won’t be until we leave Petersburg.

Each day, my routines slowly readjust. I slowly readjust.

When my brain is confused about why I’m not doing any of the things I’m used to doing, when I get up to look outside, or simply wonder where she is, I intentionally remember her dead body and tell myself that I know where she is, she’s buried in the backyard.

This is the kind of closure I needed to finally fully heal.

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