ALICE

This is a story for animal lovers, for people caring for sick parents, and for anyone who has lost a loved one and needs to be reminded how to grieve.

This is the story of Alice – an animal, a person, a cat, a being, a soul.

***

Alice moved in and took over the house. She was small and everywhere. Any hand left unattended was attacked. Pant legs were ascended; knees, besieged; shoes were wrestled and subdued. Our hallway turned into a racetrack and the back of the couch was now a launching pad.

Suddenly everything was interesting. Unassuming corners of coats, tables, and books became regions of mystery and indefatigable attention. A fly was astounding. A flower was a universe. Alice was figuring out the world.

It was a situation of great privilege to see a young creature in its first encounters with life. To her, nothing was taken for granted. All was remarkable. Simply witnessing the explosion of energy was inspiring. In a way, I was myself given a chance to start over, to look at everything with new eyes, ears, and nose. What Alice was experiencing in this strange new place, the world, could have been a catalyst for my own fresh appreciation of life.

We lost her a few times in those days. Posters were printed and pasted on hydro poles in the nearby streets, with promise of great reward for the safe return of our striped wanderer. But she always came back on her own. She had to. I needed her even if I did not yet know it.

***

When my mother was suffering from her long illness – she was eleven months in hospital – I would receive phone calls almost daily from doctors reporting the results of her medical tests, discussing her prognosis, or alerting me to a new crisis in her disease. At that time I was writing music for episodes of a television show on a tight schedule. The phone would ring and it was usually bad news. Many times I was required to make instant decisions regarding the course of my mother’s treatment: matters of life and death. After these calls, I had to continue writing in order to meet my deadlines. Each evening I visited her and saw her pain and terror firsthand. Then I returned home to come up with some more music for this comedy series. Now I was witnessing my mother’s reward for a lifetime of kindness: a slow death in a stark room filled with the tubing and medical paraphernalia of a science that could neither seem to heal her nor let her go. I desperately wanted to help her, save her, get her out of there. But if I were going to be of any use, I needed a clear and calm mind.