This ticking clock has more than a few meanings for me. 1)The amount of time that has passed since my last entry. 2)The time that has passed since Lily's death. 3)This exact cat clock - Lily bought for me when I moved to Hollywood in 1995.
So, like everything else I've posted, it's bittersweet.
I guess I decided to pick up writing in this blog is only because I've been in a hopeless/negative mood the past two days. It started Sunday night.
It was around 2am (as usual) and I swear I felt Rhonda's foot accidentally hit my left calf. This was normal behavior for Lily, even pre-cancer. She would be dreaming or just moving and kick me. It was never with any force, but strong enough to wake me up.
When it happened on Sunday, I immediately thought it was Lily. I was jolted awake and, like usual, I forget for the first few seconds that she is gone. Long enough for me to say: "Honey...." and turn my head to her side of the bed to tell her to stop kicking me.
But the words never left my mouth. Reality had slammed me just prior to speaking and in the dark, I could see that it was Penny who had stretched and accidentally kicked me.
I sat up in bed after I put the pieces together. Why? I don't know. I guess I knew I was just confused for a brief second or two and maybe by sitting up I could more definitively confirm that she was gone.
And, of course, she was.
My eyes welled up and I layed back down to try and change my position, which I hoped would change my mood.
It didn't. I turned on the tv to try and distract myself. Eventually, I found something on that did just that.
After an hour or so, I shut off the tv and tried to go back to sleep. But all I could think about was how much money I would pay to have her next to me. Kicking as much as she wanted.
But then I thought about my own actions. I turned on the TV. To distract myself.
And that led me to think of a famous Woody Allen quote. On his 50th or 60th birthday, he gave a Q&A interview with Rolling Stone. In that interview, he was asked "Woody, why at 50 (or 60) are you still making movies?"
Anf the answer Woody gave has stuck with me for years, if not decades. To paraphrase him, Woody said that he made movies for the same reason anyone over a certain age does anything: "To pretend that our collective and inevitable ending isn't going to happen."
He does it to distract his mind from focusing on his own mortality.
Like turning on the tv.
