Language of Grief
Two weeks ago, my 6-year-old Maine Coon cat died tragically, abruptly, without warning, in my hands. Barely ten minutes earlier something nudged me stop on my way into the room and return to give her a cuddle where she was sitting in her favourite box by the window. Minutes later she was dead - a defect in her heart she was not supposed to have had, not supposed to have died from and that we never knew existed in her. It was terrible and shocking.
I was first to reach her when I heard an odd sound coming from her direction. She was laying on her side on the floor twitching. I thought she was choking so I tried rubbing her back and pulling her upright trying to get her to breathe. In alarm, I was shouting out her name, Nyssa, over and over. And, unbidden, the Languages flowed out, clearly and loudly. When my husband and son arrived, it was already too late.
In those brief minutes I heard the English speaker in me say ‘save her’. I felt waves of utter grief, despair and helplessness cascading through my entire being as my beautiful cat lay dead in front me.
I kept stroking her body and her large paws, tears streaming, words spilling out of me that I couldn’t and didn’t try to understand. Only as I became more conscious of my husband’s and son’s shock and grief, that I felt myself forcing me to speak in English to them.
This is a very hard post to write. It’s taken me a while to want to talk about what happened. To share how the Languages of the Self can be a part of our lives and help us express the emotions held so deep within us that our own languages of today do not give the adequate means.
The Languages of the Self and the Ancients did not stop my cat from dying, they did not heal her. They shared in that moment and allowed me to experience raw pain as if it was theirs.
It’s not the first time I have spoken in these Languages when there has been a death, but I leave that for another post as the circumstances were different. And… I don’t want to dwell for long on this event as the wound is still too fresh and time is needed.
Instead, I leave you with a brief recording I did 2 days after her death. Her name, Nyssa, is spoken at the end and I felt a small peace afterward, as if it had been allowing for a final goodbye.
She was named from what I read was the Scandinavian meaning for friend to faeries or elves or little elf. I hope she is playing with them now somewhere and forgotten any fear or pain she may have endured in those tragic minutes of her passing.
