A heart can break and break and break, but still live off a hidden wholeness.
For this to happen, you must install a peacemaker.
“The floor” would have been an understandable place for a man we shall call Heart. When you are born flooded with love, you make peace with tears. Others fit themselves for chain mail by age ten, but Heart was born with his chest open. He was wired to read the letters B-E-L-O-V-E-D where others see only stripes. He was called to love the cats no armored heart would choose.
Heart was a Tabby’s Place man.
We are infatuated with all of our adopters, a genus of humans who deserve only grace. The instant they open their lives to our cats, we all run in like a horde of pacifist Visigoths in scrubs and PURRFECT T-shirts. We are a proud and rowdy family. They are stuck with us.
And we are stuck on them. When they grieve, we grieve. When they grieve three times in rapid succession, we all fall to the floor. When they are a man like Heart, the only rhythm we accept is a rhapsody. But we do not hold the power of life and death. We do not even know how to hold each other tight enough to stop shaking. So we could only watch as Heart underwent an unscheduled triple bypass.
Three times, he adopted. Three times, his beloveds breathed their last. Three times, Heart held an open chamber for his next best friend.
It was a day more marvelous than marinara when Heart adopted Spaghetti. The angels of his previous alumni Red and Frederick rode in his front pocket, purring their approval. Leave it to Heart to choose the rowdy chowderhead of Suite FIV. Leave it to Heart to bless the buoyant black cat with the full weight of love. Leave it to Heart to be left, yet again.
He had Spaghetti only two months. We wept and wailed and went into empathy arrest. We writhed on the floor, grieving for ourselves, grieving for Heart, grieving for a life where death cuts the electricity in the middle of the birthday party.
Heart did not stay down.
Heart could not bear the VACANCY sign on his fourth chamber.
Heart heard the rhythm of one more best friend.
This is not the normal way of humans, but as we have said, Heart was born flooded with love. Still dressed in grief’s galoshes, he slogged through his sorrow back to Tabby’s Place. He asked for an audience with the ragged cupids of Suite FIV — of course it had to be Suite FIV.
He met elegant Lina and prestigious Horace. He honored rugged Rawlings and enjoyed Mr. Mustache‘s twirl. But Heart was here for the cat named for Shakespeare’s peacemaker. Heart puddled on the floor beside the worried pudding whose courage couldn’t fill a teaspoon. Heart had come for Benvolio.
On the stage, Benvolio cajoles Romeo to the party where Juliet waits. At Tabby’s Place, Benvolio holed up until the National Weather Service’s Party Warning expired. He couldn’t quite make out his lines in love’s script. He stood motionless between “feral” and “future.”
We are all as still as terror until some great heart sets us in motion. If we are lucky — this is not the word — it will happen many times over the course of our lives.
If we are Benvolio, we will be Heart’s fourth best friend.
If we are Heart, we are too large for guarantees. The silver cat may live to twenty-eight, or he may cross the mist before Scene IV. He may lay across Heart’s lap until they beat as one, or he may whisper his lines from beneath the couch. Heart is big enough to love in the dark.
We all have no option but to love in the dark.
“Benvolio” translates loosely to both “peacemaker” and “good-will.” As he learns the sound of his own name, Heart will teach him the language large enough even for silence. They will know the wholeness that only comes for those who can be broken. They will be best friends. Floor to ceiling, the chambers will flood with grace.