Tuesday, September 15, 2009

My friend Chuck Rucker's Eulogy to his cat Buffy



I took my friend Chuck's good words and condensed and re-wrote them somewhat. CB




My cat Buffy was blue-eyed, nineteen pounds, and just over eleven years of age. Yesterday, I had to have him put to sleep. That morning at 6:00AM he came up on my bed to wake me with a long soft purr. This was unusual since it is usually the province of my other cat, M.C. to wake me.

My wife said she’d seen Buffy stretched out on the shower floor in the wee hours. Buffy had also stopped some of his routines lately, like jumping up onto the sink for his combing, and lounging in my lap while we watched TV in the evening. He started drinking from his water dish in full recline position. A real sign that he was unwell was the urinating on the front door entry rug and a dry nose.

Buffy was a “second thought” cat. I had already agreed to take one of my employee’s litter; M.C. (which stands for Mexican Connection because he crossed the Mexican/U.S. border without papers). But a customer asked about posting a notice for a litter she was giving away that had blue eyes. Thus came wee blue-eyed Buffy to our house eleven years ago. His whole litter had been tossed out on the highway near the airport, so he had scaredy cat syndrome. Any noise would send him scurrying under our bed.
That bed was his sanctuary for years. Only recently did he like to lay by the sliding door of a sunny morning, as well as stand by my feet when I put on my shoes to start my day. The last few years he decided that the TV room was HIS. He would try to chase M.C. out.

He seldom meowed, but he had a pronounced vibrational purr.
I am sad today.
Goodbye my feline friend. I will miss you very much.
Chuck Rucker

Exerpt from Letters to My Younger Self = Eileen Fisher


Eileen Fisher is a financially successful clothing designer and entrepreneur. These are the last two paragraphs of her letter to herself in her early twenties, taken from the Book edited by Ellyn Spragins titled: "What I Know Now" (2006) . I highly recommend the book and the practice of writing a letter to one's younger self in light of what you've learned since you started struggling to become an adult.


"... take care to listen to yourself and shepherd all the pieces of who you are through to the future.

"Meditation has become the best way I know to listen to myself. ... I give you ... the words I often say when I begin to meditate: 'Stillness is the ground of being from which all else emerges. It is within and behind every breath, every thought, every action. It is my starting point, my resting place, the home base to which I can return again and again. In stillness I notice how time and space disappear. All there is, is the present moment and my willingness to listen - to allow the stillness to speak.'

"The stillness takes me into a realm of conscious awareness that transcends my identity as body or mind. Stillness offers an experience of being and a recognition that my being - my essence - is a part of all Being, all Essence.*


*from "Meditation and Rituals for Conscious Living" by Nancy J. Napier and Carolyn Tricomi