Modern Loving and Dying

I was sat down, enjoying my morning coffee when I got a call on Good Friday 2020. I hear a voice on the other end of the line, thick with emotion, simply say my name, “Is it Promethea?” I replied. I hear a sob then I immediately take up the chorus.

Promethea was a black British Shorthair, a elderly feline lady that had had liver cancer for several years so, although her death wasn’t a surprise, it was still a shock nonetheless. In times like these there is often a tension between the pain of loss and the relief that the one we love is no longer suffering. If not channelled in a constructive way, this tension can grow into guilt and can have negative ramifications for years, stunting our healing and ongoing emotional development as human beings. This is one of the reasons why a good funeral is so important.

We were in Lockdown 1 at the time so the funeral ceremony would have to be done remotely, but since I have been an undertaker and funeral arranger for about 5 years I drew on that energy to apply to my dear cat’s farewell ritual. As there would only be three of us attending, we decided on a whatsapp video call the next day.

The first thing I see is Orlando (my friend who made the call) reverently carrying a bundle of fabric into view and laying it out on his living room coffee table. I can’t hear him but can see his torso shake as he gingerly unfolds the material to reveal a skinny feline form of oily black fur. She looks so peaceful, just like she is sleeping, which was oddly reassuring; it’s clear she isn’t in pain anymore. In this moment I realise that I will never hear her little breathy purrs again, never rub her warm belly or dangle a piece of string over her happy little face as she attacks it.

In the last few years her girlish soprano mew had become more of a slightly cantankerous growl, her patchy, matted fur from the difficulties of grooming with arthritis, her little face in an ever present scowl. All these memories flood through me, and endeared her to me in that moment, for the millionth time. I talk about my favourite memories of her, the times (usually just after I’d washed my hair) she would creep along the back of the sofa and furiously sniff my hair and rub herself on my head, how the happiest I’d ever seen her was when she was chasing a moth around my flat, until finally she caught it and I watched her proudly swagger across the room with half a moth hanging out of her mouth.

The next day, I came to take her to the pet crematorium, a wonderful establishment that I have used several times. The people there are clearly all animal lovers and there isn’t a whiff of judgement at the cascades of tears as we say goodbye to our furry little friends.

Orlando brings Promethea’s cat basket out onto the step outside his house, the same one that webrought her home from the cat sanctuary in all those years ago. His eyes rimmed with red and fresh tears gathering on his eyelashes.

Here we stand, a flight of stairs between us, no hugs, no hand holding, just almost two decades of unspoken memory shared with silent eye contact. Our faces, a mirror of each other’s emotions, without the catharsis of contact. He puts the basket down, there is a slightly uncomfortable pause, “So what, do I just close the door and leave her here?” I shrug, thinking, “Yeah, I guess’ as the tears start to fall again. There are a few moments of awkward silence as he works himself up to say goodbye to her for the last time before her final journey…

It was in this moment that the full force of what my relationship with Orlando has evolved into hit me. We were a couple for 10 years and had a very amicable break-up about 10 years ago.

I have a, shall we say, complicated family, and for many years he has been the first person I go to for advice and solace. We are family and he is by far the person that I have spent the most time with in my adult life. When people develop this kind of closeness, the barrier of flesh doesn’t armour us from another’s pain, empathy is like a knife when it can’t be tempered through touch. But I could do our little girl this last thing, which he wasn’t able to do.

When I returned with the ashes a few days later, we did an exchange, I handed over the tiny box containing little Promethea’s remains and he gave me an even tinier box containing a lock of her fur. Looking into that box, being able to touch it, having that physical connection to a lost, loved creature has helped my grieving more than any multimedia, video link funeral could. Grief is essentially a visceral experience and, I believe, is met best with visceral solutions and participatory practises. We need to feel that we have done right by our lost loved ones and in that, the doing is what is crucial. This is the essence of ritual.

Sarah Delmonté is an associate artist and celebrant at Brass Bathtub Community Arts company.

Everybody is welcome to Brass Bathtub Online Death Café and to their free workshops about creating your own funeral celebration: https://brassbathtub.com/getinvolved