Crushing Guilt

WHEN MY MOTHER DIED at ninety three, I grieved, grieved at the loss of my best friend, and I rejoiced at her long life well lived, thanking her for everything. Grief can make one angry, feeling deprived, self pitying, somehow "cheated". Soon, on a dark and grieving night my precious little female cat jumped up on the kitchen counter, screaming, demanding five dollar cat food instead of four dollar cat food. Amazing, how picky a formerly stray cat can be...You little shit! I saved you from a scavenger life on the streets, saved you from the burden of litter bearing, from constant fear, from cars and human beings, and from a lonely unloved life and lonely unloved death. I vaccinated you against nightmare diseases. I feed you good food, I love and protect you. I give you Warmth in winter, air conditioning in summer, a life without parasites. I give you a cat bed made of silk, but you choose to sleep in my bed, and I allow you to snuggle and purr. Now my mother has died, and this? Enraged at an innocent little animal with a brain the size of a walnut, I slapped her off the counter and halfway across the kitchen, where she, true to legend, landed on her feet, and scampered off, yelling and daddy what the helling. Within mere micromoments I was consumed with a self loathing and guilt which would have turned a confessional into a horror story with sequals. I willed myself into hell, far away from my sainted heavenly mother, self immolation. Destroy me, oh Lord! Punishing a sweet cat for my grief. In fact, In fact dear God, i was ashamed. Self loathing unabated, unforgiven, becomes self pity. Goethe said: "Since everyone errs, since even the greatest among us has erred, we have no grounds upon which to regard our own errors as inexcusable" He said: "Only by our errors which really irk us do we advance." Would I have forgiven anyone and everyone else who mistreated a cat, and then remorseful, sought redemption? Yes, everytime. Are my own mistakes of grief and passion any greater, worse, or unforgivable than anyone else's? Was I truly willing and wanting to atone, repent, confess,learn, and become a better person? Why, indisptably. Theodore Roethke wrote: "Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire. My soul, like some heat maddened summerfly, keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I? A fallen man, I climb out of my fear. The mind enters itself, and God the mind, and One is One, free in the earing wind...". The forgiving of the self does not erase the memory of our mistakes. But by damn I have learned, and I have grown, and I will not relapse. Mandi, more forgiving than any person on the planet, sleeps and purrs in my arms and in my bed, and all is again well with her sweet world.