Jake

We didn't mean to get a cat that day. We were just going to look.

Our then-only cat, Zenobia, had been kind of restless and irritable for a few months, since before we'd moved out to California, so we'd been thinking about getting her a companion cat. On our way out to do some shopping one September morning in 1994, we stopped by the Pasadena Humane Society, just to have a look at the cats there. I had a specific cat in mind -- damned if I can remember what; a Siamese, I think. It doesn't matter -- you never choose the cat anyway, the cat chooses you.

The cat who chose us that day was a five-month-old black-and-grey-and-brown tabby named Jacob. (We found out later that he was a California Spangled, a breed created the same year I was born.) The story the Humane Society told us was that Jacob's owner had gone away to college and left Jacob with her boyfriend, and the boyfriend turned out to be allergic to cats, so he'd brought Jacob to the shelter.

And Jacob wanted out of the shelter, let me tell you. He was alone in a small cage, and he kept climbing up the cage door to the top, where he'd realize he couldn't get out that way; then he'd jump backwards to the cage floor, prowl a little, and climb right back up the door again. I identified with him right away. If I were in that cage, I'd be doing the same thing.

But Jacob wasn't the cat I thought I wanted, whatever that was, and my wife, Candace, had spotted a beautiful and much calmer calico. So we kept looking at the other cats, and I kept coming back to Jacob.

Eventually I asked one of the attendants if I could take Jacob out of the cage for a little while. Even if we didn't go home with him -- and we weren't going to do that, of course -- I figured it would be nice for him to get out of the cage for a bit. He really didn't like it in there, and I knew just how he felt. We played with him in a little side room the Humane Society had for the purpose -- and then put him back. We did the same thing with the calico, and she was nice, but, well ... then we put the calico back and brought Jacob back in ....

It was nearly time for the shelter to close, and the attendant was doing a good job of concealing her exasperation with us, and I was still playing with Jacob. Candy wasn't really convinced that he was the cat for us, and, uh, besides, we weren't actually going to get a cat today anyway, right? We were just looking?

The thing was, I just couldn't send him back to the cage. He was me.

Oh, hell. So we took him home.

We spent that weekend introducing the two cats to each other. Zenobia was as wary of Jacob as he was of her. We also spent a lot of time playing with him -- he'd play until he was absolutely exhausted, his little lungs heaving. At one point, while we were playing, he ran inside the shirt I was wearing and down the sleeve, poking his head out the end of the sleeve, tickling my hand with his little whiskers. That proved to be a theme: Jacob liked to climb into my shirts, preferably while I was wearing them.

Like many young cats, Jacob watched TV. He was especially interested by one commercial in which a skunk crawled up out of a shoe and then waddled off the screen. Little Jacob tried to chase the skunk, darting to the side of the TV. Only the skunk wasn't there. Confused, Jacob ran to the other side of the TV. The skunk wasn't there either. He ran back to the front of the TV and looked at it. The skunk wasn't in the TV any more. Where did it go? Distressed, he looked around to us for help, but we were too busy laughing.

We thought about renaming him -- "Jacob" seemed a little formal. But we liked the name "Jake" -- it was simple, and it had personality. We were also fans of the humorous science fiction writer Ron Goulart, many of whose books feature a character named Jake. "Jake" it was. (His middle name, "Marley," was added when we felt we had to say things in a threatening tone. You know how you knew you were in trouble when your parents used your middle name? There's "Jake, get down from there," and there's "Jacob Marley Maxwell, get down from there!" Jake couldn't tell the difference, except that it crept into our tone, and he was sensitive to that. So it worked.)

Monday morning brought an alarming sight: Jake looked freaked out, and he was drooling. Candy took me to work and Jake to the vet, who told us Jake had an upper respiratory infection -- common in cats, and highly contagious; he'd probably caught it at the shelter.

We isolated him in the spare bedroom, hoping Zenobia wouldn't catch the infection (she did, and went to the hospital with pneumonia, but pulled through), and I nursed him back to health. Which is less complicated than I always thought it would be; it involved giving him the medicine on schedule -- he was very good about taking it -- and holding him. That's what I really remember about the experience -- Jake just wanted me to sit there and hold him and pet him. So I did. I'd come home from work, go in the spare bedroom, pick him up, and sit there with him all night. I slept in there with him, too -- he kept sneezing on me, poor guy, but I didn't mind.

Jake recovered well, and after that experience he was always my cat. I read later that cats can bond with people the way they do with their mothers, up to about six months of age, and I think that's what happened in his case. Maybe it was the trauma of the illness that did it, or maybe Jake just needed someone to feel that way about -- I don't know. But he was my cat.

He'd come running to greet me at the door when I got home. I'd pick him up, and he'd hold onto me with his front paws in a sort of hug, wrap his tail as far around me as it would go, tuck his head under my chin, and purr. I don't know if he was just happy I was home, or if he was comforting me because I'd had to be outside (Jake was agoraphobic). Probably both.

He came when I called him. Indeed, he came when either Candy or I called him. We didn't even have to call him, as such -- if we were talking about him, and said his name, he'd perk up immediately and trot over to us, looking up at us hopefully with those big green eyes.

And he slept with me. At bedtime he'd come bounding into the bedroom, leap into bed, walk up to me, and nose his way under the covers. He slept cuddled up next to me, head tucked under my chin -- often licking my chin as he purred, the way you see cats groom each other. Imagine a warm teddy bear that purrs.

He didn't sleep with me every night, or all night, but even if he left he'd usually return later and sleep on my legs or Candy's. At the very least, he'd almost always curl up with me for a few minutes at bedtime. Jake and Zenobia had some arguments about this at first; she was used to sleeping with us, and she didn't like him much. But they sorted it out eventually.

Jake was extraordinarily well behaved, even eager to please. If he were human, Candy and I agreed, he'd have worn bow ties and lived at home with Mother, and he'd have written beautiful poetry no one ever saw. He had only one vice: scratching the furniture.

I'd had cats all my life, but we'd always declawed them as a matter of course. Candy and the shelter somehow talked me out of declawing Jake. Now that I know more about the procedure, I agree with their point of view, and I wouldn't declaw a cat for love or money, but for a while there, Jake was making us awfully unhappy about our decision to leave him intact. (Intact in that respect -- we did neuter him!) We were dumb enough to try to fix the problem by yelling at him. Jake saw that we were unhappy with him, and he obviously felt bad about it, but he never seemed to connect the yelling with what he was doing at the time.

Eventually we realized what was wrong with our approach: it just didn't match Jake's personality. Jake loved us and liked to make us happy, so we just plain gave up on the negative reinforcement and switched over entirely to positive reinforcement. We put a tall scratching post by the corner of the couch where he scratched most often, and started to make a point of petting and praising him lavishly whenever he scratched where he was supposed to. No matter what we were doing, as soon as Jake started scratching on the scratching post, we'd go over to him and pet him and tell him he was a good boy.

Now we were talking his language. Before long, he almost completely stopped scratching on the furniture. Sometimes he still forgot himself, but we started using SoftPaws (fantastic product, I highly recommend it). Problem solved.

In fact, Jake turned out to be a little smarter than we realized. He eventually figured out that he just had to scratch on the scratching post long enough for us to notice him, and he'd get attention. So when he was lonely, he'd scratch on the scratching post halfheartedly, just for a couple of seconds, watching us closely as he did so. When he saw that we'd noticed him, he'd quit scratching and walk over to us for attention. And, what the heck, he got it. Good boy.

Life went on. Despite his fear of the outdoors (if you took him outside, he'd start to mewl in fear and shiver and hide his head in your shoulder), Jake proved to be an escape artist. It started with a sort of obsessive-compulsive habit of batting at box flaps -- you know, when a cardboard box is open at the top, and the flaps hang down at an angle? Jake was obsessed with this. He'd push down on the box flap with one paw, and the flap would spring back up. And Jake would push it down again, and it would spring back up. And he'd just sit there, for minutes at a time, batting at it, trying to make it stay down, developing an increasingly annoyed and perplexed expression. Then he'd run away.

Well, he pulled the same trick on the window screens and discovered he could make them open. He'd push at a loosely secured corner, and it would open a little bit, and then spring back -- but not all the way. And he'd bat at it again, and it would open a little more. Eventually it would open just wide enough for him to escape. And he did.

If he was afraid of the outdoors, why did he do this? I think Jake was fascinated by what he saw outside -- as humans are fascinated by the things they fear -- and just didn't realize, at first, what he was doing. I think his thought process went something like this: "Look, a squirrel! Hey, I can jump out this hole and chase it! ... Uh-oh."

As soon as he found himself outside, Jake would panic and try to get back in. But he couldn't get back in through the holes he got out of, because the window screens would partially close behind him. (Which made it hard for us to figure out how he was getting out, by the way -- the doors were all closed, and the screens appeared to be in place. It was some time before we saw him batting at the screens and worked it out.)

So he did the best he could. Once, he clawed his way through a screen door outside the French doors, but found that he couldn't claw his way through the glass in the French door itself. So he sat there between the two doors, meowing pitifully until I found him there and let him back in. Another time, he figured out a way to crawl into the basement, but he couldn't get into the house itself from there, either. So he waited anxiously until we found him.

Eventually, when we figured out what he was doing, we nailed the loose screens shut, and that was the end of Jake's misadventures outside. From then on, he spent plenty of time watching the outside, but a lot less time being in it. I think that suited him fine.

If anything, Jake's agoraphobia seemed to increase over the years. He would often hide, even indoors -- he loved to sneak into the closet when the door was open, and later we'd realize he'd been happily hiding in there all day. Often, not realizing he was in there, we'd close the door -- and there he'd stay, happy as a clam, until we realized we hadn't seen him for a couple of hours and tracked him down. (Of course, we quickly learned to start the search in the closet; it saved time.)

Since we meant him to be an indoor cat anyway, we didn't mind if he was afraid of the outside, but you can overdo anything. To keep his fear from becoming too extreme, every once in a while, when he greeted me at the door, I'd take him outside for a minute or two -- just on the front porch -- and then take him back inside and fuss over him, and tell him how brave he was. He always purred wildly at this. I don't think he had any idea what I thought I was doing, but he was happy that I was so happy with him.

Partly because he lived strictly indoors (well, after we put a stop to his accidental excursions, that is), Jake was a very healthy cat. He had that respiratory infection when we first got him, and developed a non-cancerous cyst in his tail when he was seven, but apart from that he wasn't sick a day in his life. That doubled the shock when he died.

Starting around September 21, 2003 -- almost exactly nine years after he'd come to live with us -- Jake started spending all of his time in the closet. It wasn't unusual for him to be in there for a day, even two days -- though he'd come out to eat, of course. This time he wasn't coming out to eat, and he didn't want to stay outside the closet for any length of time, either. He wasn't coming to see me when I got home, and he wasn't sleeping with me much. After two or three days, I tried shutting him out of the closet, hoping he was just a little depressed and would come hang out with us. That didn't help -- he just started hiding under a bed instead. I gave up and let him back in the closet.

When this had gone on for a week, I knew something was wrong. (Ever the brilliant mind.) We heard him sneezing and thought he might have another respiratory infection -- maybe he'd caught it from a neighborhood cat, through the screen door.

Monday morning (September 29), we took him to the vet. (Jake showed the same fear reaction to this that he did to every trip outside.) The vet wasn't sure what was wrong, but he found a painful mass of some kind in Jake's abdomen. Jake was dehydrated as well, so the vet kept him overnight to give him subcutaneous fluids and to take blood samples.

Homebody Jake away from home at the vet's? Overnight? It was best for him, but I hated the idea. I took a few hours off of work to visit him in the hospital, bringing him some shrimp (his favorite) to comfort him. Jake showed little interest in the shrimp, but a lot of interest in me. I sat there in the waiting room, Jake alternately lying on my lap or hiding under my shirt, for three hours, until they closed. (Incidentally, what a vet! Even when they got busy that afternoon, they didn't kick me out of the waiting room.) I went back to work, and worked late, but my thoughts were elsewhere.

The next afternoon, Candy called me at work. In tears. Jake had an inflamed pancreas, or something -- the vet couldn't tell; nothing showed up on the X-rays. (Jake was a solid mass of muscle, with a very compact body, and his abdomen showed up on the X-rays as an undifferentiated opaque region.) The hopeful scenario was that Jake just had some kind of infection, and antibiotics would fix it easily. Another week in the spare bedroom, nursing him back to health -- just like old times, buddy -- and he'd be fine. The less hopeful scenario -- the more realistic scenario -- was cancer. Our vet recommended a specialist, and we set an appointment for early Wednesday morning.

Jake spent most of Tuesday night in the closet. I tried to feed him shrimp, and he ate a little -- more to please me than for any other reason, I now think.

The specialist, Dr. Kurowski, took him in for an ultrasound and a biopsy. We had to leave him again, poor Jake, but at least we were able to carry him into the cage they had for him (I couldn't stand putting him in the cage -- oh, Jake), and we left him a shirt of mine for whatever small comfort it would give him. We got him back that afternoon -- his beautiful, luxurious belly fur shaved, sacrificed to the needs of the ultrasound device.

His beautiful fur for the ultrasound pictures -- that was a bad bargain. The ultrasound didn't show much more than the X-rays had, and what it did show wasn't promising. There was a big mass in there that wasn't supposed to be there, that was all we knew. Jake was bleeding internally, so they hadn't probed the mass itself -- for fear of making it even worse -- but they'd biopsied the surrounding fluid.

The biopsy results would take another day. We talked with Dr. Kurowski about possible treatment options, but without knowing what Jake had, there was only so much to say. She said we could take Jake home with us and -- in unintentionally chilling words -- that we should "try to make him comfortable." I should have put him in the cat carrier for safety, but fuck that. He rode home on my lap, covered by the shirt, meowing sadly. Halfway home I bent over him and started to cry, openly and wretchedly and unashamedly, for the first time in my adult life.

That night -- Wednesday night -- Jake was clearly worse. Candy remembered a fluffy blanket Jake loved -- it was like a big soft cat friend -- and we put it in the closet with him, which seemed to make him happier. I spent a lot of time Wednesday night trying to get Jake to eat something -- anything -- shrimp, turkey, various flavors and brands of canned cat food -- without much success.

Thursday brought the biopsy results. Cancer, for sure now. What kind? The biopsy wasn't conclusive.

The next step was exploratory surgery. Candy and I had discussed whether we'd even make Jake go through that. It was increasingly clear that he was going to die from this, probably sooner rather than later. We didn't know what type of cancer he had, but the types of cancers that were realistic possibilities were not very responsive to chemotherapy (thankfully, yes, there is such a thing as kitty chemo). Would we make him endure that for six months of happy life? Horribly, that was one of the more optimistic prognoses.

We had hoped the biopsy would tell us what kind of cancer he had, because then we might not have had to put him through the surgery. Jake was afraid of leaving the house -- it was where he felt safe and comfortable. We didn't want to put him through another vet visit.

On the other hand, there was another vet visit in his future no matter what. At most, he had a week to live, and it wouldn't be a good week. This powerful cat who once could jump all the way to the top of a door in one bound now had trouble walking a few feet down the hall to the litterbox. (He did it in stages, lying down and resting every few steps. But he had to make that trip only once: when she saw how it hurt him, Candy tearfully ran to the store and got him a new litterbox of his own, which we placed just outside the closet door.) He was having trouble finding a comfortable position to lie down in. In short, he was in pain, and I wasn't going to let him suffer: he would be put to sleep peacefully when it came to that, the cancer wasn't going to eat him.

One possibility was to just keep him through the weekend, spending as much time with him as we could, and have him put to sleep -- or go in for the surgery, whatever was the better option -- Monday. But he was losing ground way too fast. Monday would be too late, and making him wait through the weekend just meant making him suffer.

Even at this point there was hope. It might be a lymphoma, which would be highly responsive to chemo -- he could live for years. This wasn't likely, but it was a possible interpretation of the inconclusive X-rays and ultrasound and biopsy results. More likely, the cancer would be a less responsive kind, but the tumor would be resectable, and this would give Jake a chance. He could get some time, at least. This wasn't likely, either, based on what little they could tell from the ultrasound, but again it was possible.

The likely case was that Jake's cancer was neither responsive to chemo nor resectable, in which case there would be absolutely nothing anyone could do for him. And we'd have to put him to sleep during the surgery, because if we didn't he'd have to spend his final days in a hospital ("recuperating" from the surgery even as he died), miles from home, and there was no way in hell that was going to happen.

But there was hope. The upside of tests that don't give you enough information is that the news could be good. We booked an appointment with the surgeon for the next day -- Friday.

Candy had stayed home Thursday in case Jake needed her. I thought he'd spend the day in the closet, but I was wrong. He came out a couple of times to spend a few minutes with Candy, kneading her hair and curling up with her in bed. She got him to eat a little by trying something I hadn't thought of -- she fed him the gravy from a can of cat food, with just a little of the food mixed in, and Jake seemed to have an easier time eating that. She arranged a spot for him to look out the window, which he did for a little while. And he went back in the closet.

I cleared my Friday calendar and left work early Thursday. We tried to get Jake to eat again -- you never knew, it might be just the bit of strength he needed to get through the surgery -- but he didn't want anything more. I gave up at 10PM. We couldn't feed him anything later than that anyway, so that he could be prepped for the surgery the next day. I pushed the accumulated cans and plates of food out of the way, crawled into the closet with Jake, and closed the door behind me.

As I lay in there quietly for a while, I started to understand why Jake liked it. I had naively thought it was simply because the closet was dark and quiet, but there was something else. First, because our clothes and shoes are in there, it smells a little like us. So we're in there, even when we're not home. (I am selfish and jealous and shallow, also dumb. I thought Jake went into the closet to get away from us, but that was exactly wrong: it was someplace where Jake could be with us any time he wanted. I'm sorry I misjudged you, buddy. I should have known.) Second, you can hear a lot that goes on in the house from that closet, if you're quiet. You can hear people walking around or talking, you can tell when the TV or radio are on. You can tell when the house is empty. I lay in there with him for three hours.

I left reluctantly, brushed my teeth, and went to bed. A few minutes later, Jake struggled out of the closet, jumped painfully into bed, and got under the covers with me. He'd been coming out of the closet for only ten or twenty minutes at a stretch, but on that visit he stayed under the covers with me, purring quietly, for nearly an hour. Even after that, he didn't return immediately to the closet. He slept with Candy for a while, and then with me for a while, and briefly got under the covers with me again, one last time. All in all, he stayed for almost three hours, despite the pain. I don't believe Jake could have known it was the last time any of that would ever happen, but it's what he would have done if he had known.

Friday, October 3, 2003, was the last day of Jake's life.

I woke up early and watched the clock from across the room. 9:17. Thinking about Jake, thinking about nothing. 9:18. I tried to take comfort in thinking: He's still alive. He's alive right now, just a few feet from me. There will be a time when he's not alive any more, but not now. 9:19.

At last it was time to leave. As gently as I could, I slid the blanket out with Jake still on it -- he tried weakly to struggle back into the depths of the closet, but he couldn't move fast enough. I'm sorry about that, buddy, it was a mean trick. I took him, and the blanket, and covered him in a shirt, and arranged them all on my lap, and we took him to the vet.

We arrived a little early for our noon appointment, and Candy went in to set everything up. I found myself watching the clock in the car. 11:46. He's not dead yet, he's still alive. He's right here on my lap. I petted him. 11:47. 11:48.

We met with the vets, who examined him briefly but didn't have much to tell us. They'd have to open him up before they'd know enough for us to make our decisions. Preparing for the worst, I made sure I could be with him when they put him to sleep. I'd nerved myself up for a fight over it -- Jake might have to die, but no way was he going to die with strangers. But it wasn't a problem. They left, telling us they'd probably take him to prep him for surgery at about 1:00.

As it happened, they didn't take him until nearly 4:00 -- other high-priority surgeries intervened. Fine with us. The techs kept popping in, asking if we wouldn't rather they took Jake back to the cage and we could sit in the more comfortable area in the front. No, thanks. We'll stay right here.

Jake lay on the fluffy blanket, under the bench in the waiting room. He got up once to explore, briefly. He fell asleep for a while. I got him to purr a little. Mostly we waited.

Finally it happened. A syringe-wielding tech popped in. "He might throw up," she said brightly, injected him with something, and left. (Jake did try to throw up after that, but there was no food in his stomach by then.) Then one of the other workers -- someone from the front desk -- came to take him away.

Determined to spend every last possible second with him, I asked if I could take him back there myself. "Well, only as far as the door," she said. I thought she was humoring me, that they'd let me take him only as far as the door of the waiting room itself. But no, she meant a little further than that. I picked him up and we walked down the hall to a metal door, beyond which was the operating room. That's as far as we could go.

I handed Jake to her. Candy and I kissed him goodbye. I don't remember when I started crying. The woman was very nice about it, putting her hand on my shoulder and saying we were going to start her crying. I whispered to Jake that I'd be with him at the end, kissed him once more, and we let her take him away. As she turned he looked back and up at us, his eyes wide, and meowed once. That's when I really lost it. The woman took Jake through the door and Candy steered me back into the waiting room. A long time later we left and went to their lobby.

Less than an hour later an unfamiliar vet approached us. "Jake?" she asked. We nodded. "It's very bad," she said.

We followed her back into the waiting room, where she gave us the details. She was very nice, and seemed genuinely compassionate as she told us everything, but I didn't really listen. It didn't matter. The tumor was large and invasive, had probably started quietly in his bowels weeks or months before and was now feeding itself any way it could. It was all through him now, a spreading, ravenous, unstoppable barbarian eating my friend from the inside. There was no longer any hope.

I had to fill out a form that said they could kill him. "Euthanasia" is of course the official term, and at the time I was uncharacteristically grateful for the euphemism. We asked about cremation, which it turns out is a service they provide. They sold us an urn. That was awful. They have a catalog and everything. We went for something simple ("Jake wouldn't want anything showy," Candy said, sobbing, and I agreed).

A few minutes later, we walked down the same hallway where I'd had to give Jake up earlier. This time we passed through the metal door and into the OR itself.

Jake lay unconscious on the operating table, mostly covered by a green surgical blanket. His head and front paws were uncovered. He'd looked a lot like that sleeping in bed at home, if you ignored the anesthesia tube stuck down his throat and the plastic clip that held his tongue out of the way. And if you ignored the horrible glassy look in his unresponsive eyes.

Candy, crying, kissed him goodbye and went to wait outside the door. She didn't think she was strong enough to be there when it happened, but I knew I had to be. The vets gave me and Jake a last few minutes alone. What happened during those minutes is not for you to know.

When the vets returned, I was as ready as I would ever be. It all went very fast. They carefully injected him with some pink fluid and listened for his heartbeat. I was suddenly, and I suppose unjustly, desperate for this not to be just some goddamned routine event for them. I wanted them to know Jake, to have some sense of what made him matter so much to me. "He sleeps with me under the covers every night," I said pathetically, crying hard. I couldn't find anything else to say. I don't think it made any difference. The vets were nice people, people who do what they do because they love animals and want to help, but they're human, and they just can't let it hurt them every time or they won't last long in the job. But I didn't want my cat to die with strangers.

Within a few seconds, the surgeon said gently, "He's gone," and that was just about it. "Thank you for giving him a chance," I said brokenly. "I wish we could have done more," he said, looking like he meant it. It would have been spiteful to agree with him. I left.

There's not too much to say about the aftermath. The house felt empty when we got home -- a phrase I'd heard a million times, but it had never been more than a figure of speech to me. Candy bought one of those magnetic poetry kits, one with a cat-related vocabulary, and we've used it to write little poems and phrases about him on the fridge, surrounding a picture of our three cats. My little poem ends, "suffer no more."

And one other thing. When we went to pick up Jake's ashes, the tech had a hard time finding them. She clearly felt distressed over the delay -- as she said herself, it's hard to come and pick those things up -- but she had to search three or four times before she finally found him, deep in one of the cabinets. "He was hiding in a little hole in there," she explained with relief.

"He did that a lot when he was alive, too," I replied.

I got all the way out the door without crying.

I seem to have written more about Jake's death than about his life, but that's only because it's more recent, not because it's more important. The important stuff will stay, even after some details fade. Stuff like how he ran to greet me at the door. How he kept me company at night. How he loved us with his whole heart, and how our love and approval meant everything to him. How he found a place in the house where he could be with us whether we were home or not, and that's where he wanted to be when it was time to die.

As for me, I'm fine. I'm fine. Except when I come home. Or when I go to bed. Or into the closet.

P.S. I read someplace that professional cat people consider green eyes a fault in a California Spangled. Not that I care, but look at those eyes and tell me they're a fault, in any sense.

Dirge Without Music

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,--but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love, --
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave,
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

-- Edna St. Vincent Millay