Her body twitched. Brilliant, glittering emerald eyes bulged as they frantically sought mine, and mine alone. Her breathing became more ragged, her jaw clenched in pain. I screamed profanities and threw things at God on the inside as slowly those orbs dulled and began to close. Outside I wept, clutched, sobbed, prayed, and pet, whimpering 'I love you baby, I love you' pathetically like the weak mortal I had always perceived myself as. I cursed Him as she relaxed. I cursed the doctor for not trying hard enough. I cursed my mother for allowing me to shatter my innocence. But most of all, I cursed my selfish pride as dying emeralds whispered what she could not: good bye.

She had been one of those rare creatures only entering your life once-and then it's gone. A beautiful, elegant, shimmering jeweled fire; words could not possess her grace. The moment I had laid eyes on her, I knew she was special. The way she looked at me in that cramped, caged room of screaming animals: almost as if she had known something about life that I couldn't, and her intelligent eyes said she could only protect me from that knowledge only as long as I could protect her from the reality of the world. Beautiful, always so very beautiful we often considered showing her off professionally.

Sassy.

She was my guardian trapped in an animal body. I loved her with all my heart, and told her everything those dark nights when nothing was right and everything was lonely and cold. It was strange how she seemed to listen, take it in, and understand me even though reason and society (not to mention the Church) claimed she could not possess this intellect. So I banished this reason, because she was silent and quiet and calm while I raged and screamed and kicked and clawed because life was so unfair with deaths, divorces, and fights and endless disorientation where everything went far too fast. Amid my self-absorbed thoughts, she became my pinnacle of peace.

Beautiful, elegant, to me she was perfect.

Perhaps all perfect things are taken away in time, undeserving as we are to have them. But I was too young, too arrogant, caught up in my own cleverness and foolishness and supposed 'immortality' to see what was really out there. At age thirteen, my friends and I refused to see it.

Because of my self-made veil, it only made sense to me that if I was invincible, then so was she. Death? Not again, God wouldn't do that to me, oh no I was too good too smart too perfect to let that happen to me again!

I came upstairs one supposedly bright, sunny, happy day to see smooth silk fur in the exact same place she had been that morning.

I picked her up.

She fell over, collapsing in exhaustion. To me, her fur had never stood so limply, her bones never so weak; she was too thin, her eyes were too glazed..

She had kidney failure. The vets told me that my baby kitty Sassy of four years old was going to die.

"Put her to sleep, make it less painful." They said.

I was still unable to face reality, so I shoved it away. Sassy wouldn't die, what kind of crack were these vets on. I refused to let this baseball of reality break my window. I was insecure and frightened. Erratically I dove into normal routine, refusing to see, refusing to believe my serpentine emerald was turning to a normal dull grass. The truth was always there at the edges of my mind, puffing its chest and demanding entrance and making cracks in my strong, stupid pride wall, but I stubbornly shied from it.

She grew weaker but kept fighting for me. I couldn't see that. I couldn't see that the only reason her life was kept going was not because of the hydration tanks, or the medicine, or all the soft foods and love and not pushing herself to energy, was because she didn't want to leave me. For reasons unknown consciously, I had begun a nightly ritual of sleeping on the floor. She was too weak and would most likely break something from the fall of not being able to jump on a bed. But of course the latter of that sentence never occurred to me since she wasn't going to die; there was nothing wrong with her.

Until one night, I woke up to hear a sick noise, like a dying car battery or the after-noise after a heavy machine is switched off. I opened my eyes and saw dull plain green. Shaking limbs and sweaty fur, but dehydrated body, I realized what she was trying to do.

That sound of sore throat, hoarse voice, dying birds, and OFF machines, I realized what it was.

She was purring.

And for one moment she was human to me: hot, feverish and trembling. She was not perfect, she was not healthy, she had not had the energy to bath herself in days, her fur was limp and her rib bones were beginning to show. Her ears once so tall and extended now wilted. She was not an angel anymore, her wings had been clipped.

But she had never been more beautiful to me. There in my room that now held the faint stink of her urine and water bowls because she never left my room, I loved her then more than ever. She was brilliant emerald again, bright and shining with terror and unshed tears, flickering flame ensconced in shadow, sobbing and restrained beneath the oppressing darkness. I bawled idiotically, stroking and petting the dying, flaky fur as her sick body literally fell against mine in surrender to her limits, her neck just fell oddly on my arm, she was too tired to care.

I hated them both then, light and darkness. God had let her die, and Satan's hell of lies and secrets only killed her too. And I knew what would happen: I would have to face the season of autumn that smelled like her with the crisp wind and musty earth with cold and warm rays all at once alone. My first day of high school she would not be there sitting on my bed. She would not whine and pout on top of the refrigerator any more. There would be no more dancing for food and pouncing or chasing or tiger like stance for terrorizing the squirrels. I thought of how I would think of her often, especially in autumn with the leaves that crunch under your feet, like they did that one time she got out and I ran after swearing I would kill her for making me run so far AFTER ALL I'M OUT OF SHAPE YOU STUPID CAT. I knew I would laugh but eventually forget about how we could never have flower vases. I knew that after she was gone and later when all is quiet at night, and everyone else is asleep and I would lie awake and for a split second it would be 2002 again, and I knew I would feel the familiar warmth of her body that wasn't feverish then but soft and warm like Mom's hugs, and gentle steady purrs. And then it would disappear, leaving me clinging and begging like a homeless person for more and more and please God no don't do this I'm not ready yet! But no one would ever answer, because I refused to talk to God.

Nervously, anxiously, that night I held her frail, too-light body tighter to me as I cried silently and she slept.

So I handed her to the veterinarian in the white coat in the too white building in the too white and happy room with too many suns and flowers and rainbows. Dark, gloomy and sad, I was comforted that the angels of the sky would cry my tears for me that day so Sassy wouldn't be frightened. Despite my mother's warnings, I couldn't let her die here. I had to be with her. For once, I wanted to give something back to her. I didn't want her to die alone. I stroked her tired, worn body once, twice, I lost count. There had been no need to put her in the pet carrier; she was too weak to do anything so we wrapped her in her favorite blanket which had always been on her favorite chair by the fireplace. I kissed her again, and just once more told her she was beautiful and I loved her. My pride said I could still say no to the vet and she could get better. Her eyes looked to me, so tired and sleepy.

I banished it.

The doctor came in; I said I loved her again.

Her body twitched. Brilliant, glittering emerald eyes bulged as they frantically sought mine, and mine alone. Her breathing became more ragged, her jaw clenched in pain. I screamed profanities and threw things at God in a fury of tempest on the inside as slowly those orbs dulled and began to close. Outside I wept, clutched, sobbed, prayed, and pet, whimpering 'I love you baby, I love you' pathetically like the weak mortal I truly was. I cursed Him as she relaxed. I cursed the doctor for not trying hard enough. But most of all, I cursed my selfish pride as dying emeralds whispered what she could not: good bye.

I was lonely again. Angry, confused, scared of death once again because there was no beauty in anything to confide in. Broken pride poked at me constantly: my fault my fault my fault, it often screamed like a broken record outdated and unwanted.

Yet somehow, somewhere down the line, my heart knew I couldn't hold onto her memory forever. Experience lightens its shade and turns into memory. And memories.fade. As time grew on and the pain began to subside, I realized one morning pulling my hair up that oftentimes we are given challenges in life, obstacles ranging from as high at the heavens, or as low as jumping over a twig. My beauty, my Sassy was taken away from me. I had seen death and watched it snatch my loved one in its rotting, cold, clawed hands. My lowest point in life, feeling the emptiness and dissatisfaction with myself, the alone and darkness where I wished for light but then wanted darkness, running and sprinting from unseen predators and not daring to look back or slow down, drowning in my own tears of pity and the illusions of security I fell forever and a day. And looking back, I had seen that maybe we are given this pain, this ultimate unbearable burden, this dark swirling dangerous void of depression, to appreciate our own self-worth and happiness. To experience the best, you have to first experience the worst to truly acknowledge that best. I stared at my bedroom mirror again. My reflection stared back blankly, soft and confused with this new discovery. A light hit metal, and my eyes automatically moved to the source. It was her collar, green like her eyes with a black tag bearing her name, address, and number to call if she'd ever gotten lost. I smiled for a moment, and pocketed it. The darkness could not reach me now; the light could not pierce me. I was no longer empty, lonely, or confused.

I was whole.