An Unsavory Subject

I tried to think of something else to blog about this week but I couldn't find an other subject , so i guess I will just have to write about this unsavory one. When I married and bought a house, 15 years ago, the first thing we did was get a cat. The next year we got a golden retriever, years later a stray kitten showed up and joined us. This past Tuesday the oldest cat ,Tiger pasted away, he was over 15 years old . His health had been getting worse and worse ,my husband and I discussed having him put to sleep but neither of us could make that tough decision. Tiger didn't seem to be in any pain but it became more and more obvious that he was having major problems.I didn't realize till later in the week, after he died , how much the whole ordeal had been affecting me.The subject of death came up again this weekend with our assignment on challenged books. In fact the book we selected was banned because it was a children's book that dealt in part with the subject of death. It got me to thinking that for a culture that thinks it's so enlightened we still don't deal very well with this subject. We drape it in rituals and taboo and hide it from our children and our self's. I think this makes it twice as hard to deal with when the time comes and the time always comes. Every thing that's born owes a death, maybe it's not an end but a beginning, anyway I'd like to think so. I know one thing this spring when it's time to work in the garden again I will miss my gardening companion , Tiger.