Love, Loss and the Brighter Side

I never gave too much thought to the term roller-coaster – as in a roller-coaster day, week or year – until I was buffeted by my own this year.

You may recall a brief mention of my cat, who we rescued mere weeks after I moved to Paris nine years ago, becoming quite ill at the start of the year. Since then, caring for her and monitoring her progress attentively became second jobs for both of us. Amid the wrenching low points of the year were several professional highs, making that roller-coaster sensation all the more challenging and confusing. There were excellent days and disheartening ones but all of them were thinly veiled with grief. We were fully aware, though we could hardly bear articulating it aloud, that her condition would invariably worsen, leaving us with a painful decision to make.

Despite our greatest efforts to become an exception to the rule, that day arrived last week. Within ten minutes our trio was shattered. Now, our tiny apartment feels massive with pin-drop silence.

She was our little child, our greatest stress reliever and a true friend. But beyond her role as companion, she taught us to intuit the subtler symbols in life. She couldn’t speak but the tiny signs she emitted spoke volumes when we finally allowed ourselves to pay attention.

Four days after we said goodbye to her, we forged ahead together hand-in-hand. In a week of loss, we still felt profound love and hope. On Sunday, our 7th wedding anniversary took on much greater meaning. We had experienced very different travails last year but this was a new, all-consuming cross to bear which, in hindsight, we handled with more grace and fortitude than I expected.

The idea of celebrating the milestone in any way seemed incongruous with grieving but shutting ourselves in at home would do nothing to uplift. So we upheld our reservation at La Cour Jardin, the courtyard restaurant in the Plaza Athénée hotel, for a change of scenery. What we got was the kind of urban calm and doting attention we had largely deprived ourselves of over the last seven months. It was peaceful and intimate, allowing us to talk privately about the future without our little Cali and reflect on the indelible ways she touched our lives. We managed a few laughs and enjoyed the moment when we realized how much she brought us together, right up until the end. Our petit monstre was a unifier.

Feeling the sun’s warmth on our faces as we ate and reminisced and surrounding ourselves with chirping birds and gorgeous greens was a reminder to see beauty even at our darkest points. For fellow diners, it was a lazy Sunday afternoon. For us, it was the push to keep going.