Today my heart is broken

Greyson Thane Doyle, so named for one of my favorite heroes in one of my favorite books died suddenly yesterday. The name was completely fitting, because he was in fact my hero and the love of my life. I called him my baby boy, and I asked him all the time why he just had to be so Greysony.

I was away on a business trip, gone only for a day when my assistant came to feed my cats. He came up behind her, laid down, had a seizure and died she told me. This after she gave him mouth to mouth resuscitation which will also forever make her a hero in my book.

The vet asked if I wanted an autopsy but it will neither bring him back or comfort me. Maybe in the move to my new house he took an unfamiliar leap and fell. Maybe there was something genetically wrong and all I was ever going to get were these four years.

I spent the day after learning the news hating my new house for tempting him into some unsafe jump, hating my job for keeping me away. Hating the world for taking this beautiful little life that brought such joy and comfort into my life. He was the best part of my day.

Pet owners will surely understand this. Single pet owners with no children will understand it more. They let us poor all our affection, all of our mushy love onto them and they accept it so eagerly. My fear right now is that I loved him too much. Something else I used to tell him all the time.

But of course life doesn’t stop. His sister Hermione will not leave my side, and my 21 year old cat, Lex, who I thought the call was going to be about, has decided as long as there is food on this earth and a comfortable couch to sit on then she has no plans to leave me any time soon.

I have a major project at work, I have chapters due on Monday, I have a book coming out next week. But today my heart is broken. And writing about him, has helped. So thank you.

And to you Greyson, I will see you on the other side. And when I do I would prefer it if, like you did every day when I got home from work, you were there to greet me at the door.