Bella’s Story

A decade ago, I began a lengthy reflection on a deeply moving event that affected me when I was an undergraduate in the 1980s. The act of writing if often therapeutic for me, and the massive website that resulted from that project not only gave focus to thoughts and emotions that had haunted me for a quarter of a century, but also gave me focus in the shadow of the loss of another pet: Angel, our fifteen-year-old calico, who died on October 17, 2013.

It was with that project in mind when I started this site nearly four months ago on the day Bella died. But words gave me no solace of focus as I attempted to move through my grief. I still break into tears when I look at photos of her. I took Angel’s death hard, but I was particularly close to Bella, and her death was particularly traumatic.

But I’m ready to begin telling her story. Some of it will certainly focus on the cancer and our experiences with the initial lesion in 2020 and the recurrence last fall that ultimately led to her death in February. This will be hard, as I still relive her final weeks and days regularly and I don’t want to neglect the almost nine years of joy she brought us. But my thinking is that by discussing what we observed and learned, I hope that someone going through a similar experience might have a better idea of what to expect.

Most of all, I’d like to celebrate her life.

She was truly special.

I miss her every day.