Until We Meet Again My Sweetness & Light

This is the last photo I took of Miss Mint and myself, about 4 days ago is all and yet it seems long ago in another life.

Miss Mint fell from our balcony eight floors tonight and died. I have been holding her for two hours and my grief is so great I think I shall die. We'll have her body cremated tomorrow and then keep her earthly remains with me always. She is now with Jesus and romping and playing full of life and love in heaven. I wish I were with her! I really do. She has been my true, steadfast and dearest friend for sixteen years, almost as long as Mark and I have been married. I know if you two get to heaven before me that you'll look her up and hold her tight, so tight for me and tell her I'll be there soon! Mark says she died instantly and felt little fear and no pain. I wish I could say the same for me. mark was so wonderful and went down and brought her up to me, he was weeping, too, and we blessed her, wrapped her in her favorite cashmere scarf which I bought in London years ago - she was a world traveller! - and we each wrote a goodbye note to her, and I smother her with kisses and scratched between her ears. I feel so guilty that I didn't notice she was outside until she walked on this little ledge and looked throught the glass and meowed for me to let her in - when she saw me coming she got excited and turned, but the ledge was too narrow and she was to eager and she lost her footing. I saw her little face go over, and my heart sank. The parking lot was lit and I could see her frail broken body in the slush of the snow, darkening red. I couldn't even cry for a bit because I knew this could not be true, it's a bad dream, not real. Please God it can't be real. But it is, Mom. It is Dad. My most precious gift I've ever received is gone for a little while only and perhaps the shortness of the parting will see me through. I'm telling you because I know you understand when you had to put down your puppy. A little part of you dies, too. Or, maybe, a pretty big bit of you. Well, ask Jesus to snug her tightly to his Sacred Heart and scratch her at the root of her tail and especially the little glands on either side of her mouth, she likes the feeling of the secretion - which is how she marked her territories. I was her biggest territory and I loved it... she was just sitting with me an hour ago, purring, recovered from her surgery, full of life and pep. It was just about our evening playtime after dinner. She loves ribbons to chase and bags to pounce upon! Oh, God, let me awake from my dreadful nightmare.