A pet reaching 20 years of age is not that common. I am sure many pet owners would back me up on that. My best friend, a cat named Sox, died at that exact age a few months ago. He had a few health conditions, so reaching 20 was indeed remarkable. However, the emotional weight of his passing did not leave much room for celebration. It was still a complete shock and something I am yet to recover from. With each day that passed, I was very much aware he was living longer than he should be. Every time he got sick, we would assume goodbye was on the horizon. Yet, he pulled through from infections and injuries like they were colds or a sprained ankle. The years of preparation were futile in helping to stop his death from feeling so painfully unexpected, though. I know there would never have been enough time on earth to prepare me.

Sox was given to me as a gift for my 8th birthday. He was six weeks old.; a tiny, fluffy ball with feet far too big for his body. I remember him launching onto the rails of his crate, screaming at me with his high-pitched meow. He became my best friend and was a constant in my life for twenty years. Every day he sat on the stairs waiting for me to come home from school. We'd eat together, and he'd sleep on my bed every night. He cared little for other family members. I'd invite friends to my house, and Sox would mooch around the house with a firm eye, not trusting them. My protector. He consoled me when I was bullied and refused to go to school. He always knew when I needed companionship, you could catch him curling up next to me whilst I wrote my assignments. If he were still here, he'd be nuzzled into me; I'd bet my whole life on it. He always gave me his time.

This close mother/cat relationship bond had not always existed. Sox was quite aggressive, hyper-independent, and rarely at home when he was younger. As a teenager, I was the same. My responsibility for looking after the cats was minimal as my mum oversaw their care. It's hard to recall if I considered any of the cats as mine back then. Let's put it down to my immaturity or at least to avoid cleaning the litter box. I was at my angsty, asshole stage, so I probably thought it was cool not to care about things, even if that "thing" was a cat that had made me the centre of his existence.

Whilst I can't help but cringe at my childish and somewhat emotionally neglectful behaviour, it's not hard for me to believe Sox had no recollection. If he did, he wouldn't have held it against me; I was his favourite person. When I grew up, Sox was treated like a king in every way possible. Only a few cats live to be as ancient as Sox; even so, the years flew by too fast. As the years passed, it felt as if death was peeking around doorways at the sheer mention of his seniority. I tried hard to manage the reality of his passing, doing anything I could to prepare myself for that dreaded day (not possible, by the way). However, whilst death is inevitable, I wasn't sure what it would look like. Whenever I attempted to visualise or speak about it, it stuck in my throat like a boiled sweet. Talking about it in the past tense does the same. I have been lucky not to experience a lot of death in my life, but when I have, there have been emotions beyond sadness and loss that have made it difficult for me to process.

Guilt is one of them. Not because I felt guilty for living when they were no longer able, but because of my inaction, laziness, and fear. The things that cause us to leave it too long before visiting someone, making amends, or asking questions to which we'll never know the answer. Feeling guilt after someone’s death will eat away at you; like a parasite, there's no treatment for it; you've got it for life. You'll spend many nights contemplating how you would have acted differently, made plans, picked up the phone etc., had you known how little time we would have had with them.

One day, barely a week since Sox had gone. Konrad and I were talking about all of Sox's favourite things - where he liked to sleep (by Kon's pillow), his favourite food (chicken or whiskers, the McDonalds of cat food), and what he enjoyed doing (lazing in the garden in the summer for hours, baking his little arthritic bones). Going down memory lane reminded us of a plan we had made to memorialise Sox in the way an old, graceful cat should be; we wanted to make a family portrait. We had also planned to take him to the local park; he loved to roam far from home, but his arthritis wouldn't let him jump the fence - he hadn't seen beyond the garden fence for years. Unfortunately, my business took off, and family drama and more to do meant that I never got around to it. I always thought I'd have another month or see the end coming far in advance. I didn't. The longing and guilt planted itself comfortably in my chest, and I carried around what felt like a weight that got heavier every hour.

It took many weeks and reassuring conversations before we made peace with our forgotten plans. It became apparent that most of the frustration and guilt wasn't because we'd fallen short of a promise to Sox; it was the one we'd failed ourselves. I've had a long-term bad habit of putting things off. Work-related and personal. I haven't been away since 2019, not committed to any hobbies, taking myself out on dates, and my social life - well, that's another blog post! Instead, I constantly worry about the future and concentrate on making decisions that will give me the best outcome, which is a long-winded way of saying I live too far into the future and not enough in the present. I don't know when I started being like this, but what I do know is that it is all-consuming. For years, everything in my life has felt "paused". Friendships, family, rest, and even eating correctly. It became an expectation that everything could wait - until Sox's passing broke the illusion that I could make life standstill.

Accepting that I could not control something so significant enabled me to swallow the difficulty of processing my old man's death. It was quite a humbling experience to be met with death in such a visceral and sudden way. Nothing will bring you back to the reality of being a mere speck in this world than receiving a box of ash back to replace your furry son. I don't want to go into the morbid because I don't need to remind any reader of our short lifespans or that "we only get one life", but I want us to digest that this cannot just be words. Often when our loved ones are dying, we try to make their lives easier - however, we can. The goal is to make them feel more valued in the time they have left, that their life was meaningful and fulfilled. We can't judge whether this is true, as only we know our hearts' most actual desires - no matter how absurd it may seem on paper or coming out of our mouths. Whatever someone's dying wish is, we'd do our best to make it happen, lest they make that final journey without us feeling regret or guilt. There's an opportunity for us to tick off our "dying wishes" now, the small and the big ones. It means making solo dates a weekly occurrence, hanging with your friends for monthly gossip and belly laughs, quitting your job, planning that trip, going back to education, starting your own business, or even making time to take a family portrait with your cat.

Don't let your dying wish wait until you're dying.