It hits out of the blue sometimes, the strange reminder that time is linear, that you’re broken in ways you didn’t know possible before. It’ll hit in the grocery store, or when you return from a trip, or even when you’re on a bike ride in the crisp spring air. The grief comes over you like a weighted blanket; it washes over and drowns you. In the beginning, after your dad and beloved cat passed in rapid succession last year, you were fearless and didn’t care. You fully expected “LMFAO saw Balloon Guy weeping in the aisle at Safeway” tweets, but that didn’t happen. You cried whenever you needed to, and often.  

Now you’re mildly embarrassed. Still? You think to yourself when it happens. We’re still doing this? You remind yourself of all the mantras you preached to others over the last year, now that you have firsthand experience with grief: “Grief is the proof that love existed, it’s a large as the love was deep”, “Take as long as you need, there’s no set timetable for grief”. Now you have to take your own advice; now those platitudes don’t seem adequate to sum up what you’re going through.  

Spring is here, and with it, the sun. You took lots of trips to sunny places during the winter; it’s a necessity for someone raised in the desert like you were. When you quit your job in October, so many people asked where you were moving to, and you were so puzzled by the question. “Why would I want to move anywhere else?” You love Portland, but during the winter you love the sun more. You visit Miami, Mexico City, and attend SXSW in Austin and soak up the sun everywhere you go. You only pack shorts. You’re living the life you love as a full-time artist, but it’s ironic that the person and creature you’d want to somehow share these adventures with, don’t exist anywhere but your memory now. 

There’s a low-lying guilt about the grief for Ned, your cat who was 15 when he was diagnosed with a cancer that, while rapidly eating through his body, seemed to cause no pain until the week you decided to put him to rest. The fact that you lost him and your dad in the space of a few weeks made the grief into a stew for a while, you were just mourning with no specific direction or focus. Over time though, it became clear that you had time with Dad before he passed to communicate everything you felt about each other. He was quite aware he was passing in hospice, and his mind, while sometimes cloudy, was still sharp the rest of the time and he was aware of his time left. You had language and nostaligia and blood to bond the two of you at the end. You had a dignified closure.  

But the grief for Ned surprises you, even though you knew it was coming, even though you spent half your adult life with this animal. You keep getting asked “Are you gonna get another cat?” and while well-intentioned, it’s the worst question. Are they going to ask next if I’m going to get another dad? In sympathy, you like a couple posts on social media about someone’s cat who passed, and suddenly the algorithm thinks that you’re some kind of dead cat enthusiast, your entire feed becomes dead cats oh jesus oh god it’s the Dead Cat App every time you go on. ALL DEAD CATS ALL THE TIME.  

With Spring comes the hopeful, optimistic thought that maybe you’re ready to foster soon. You might miss a little of the freedom to travel freely that you’ve enjoyed, but having a creature to come home to would be so nice…but then the pang of missing Ned, specifically, hits. Your big heart is a blessing most of the time, it’s annoying as hell currently. Slowly, you realize that the bad stuff has fallen by the wayside: the memories of your confusion and irritation at his early symptom of peeing in unusual places, the horrible memory of his difficult and stubborn passing. Those have faded and made room for the memories of the two of you hanging on the front lawn on warm summer afternoons, him chomping on grass and you drinking rosé. They’re made room for the times he padded onto the bed cover after you’d gone to bed, nestling in the crook of your arm or leg. But then the idea of getting another cat looms large, and you realize that a not unsmall fear is: What if the new cat is an asshole?

The grief, while present in the background, fades to a dim whisper while you make art. Ironically, this is the happiest you’ve been in your life. After you quit your job last October, you now fill your days with catching up with old friends you’d neglected while essentially having two full time jobs, traveling, and making art. You chat with a financial planner and it becomes clear from the conversation that you’re now living as if you’re retired. You loved your old job, the brand, the people you worked with, but the sense of relief and relaxation you feel now is akin to how Portlanders feel from winter into spring: we don’t think we have seasonal depression until that really gorgeous 70-degree day in Fenruary or March, when everyone’s mood skyrockets, and strangers are grining at each other in the sun.

“What is next?” is the dreaded question that a lot of artists loathe to hear. You ramp up production on your puppet horror webseries again. You commission a letter made out of metal from a manufacturer, as proof-of-concept for permanent installations! You get ready for a big trip with several notable guest models. You steel yourself for the release of your first book published from a major publisher, with your second coming right on its heels in the fall. This is the life you wanted and that you’re proud of. All these past years of struggle, you just never knew how close you were to acheiving it.

You’ve also answered that age-old question you’ve always asked yourself: does pain or happiness produce the best art? Well, you’re experiencing both now, and you’ve never had a better life. Maybe it’s not an equation that simple. Maybe it’s not as binary as happy/sad, or pleasure/pain. Time, that old stalker, is frustratingly linear.

People ask if you…if I- if I’m an old soul. I’m definitely attracted to old souls, but if I did believe in reincarnation, I would say I’m a brand new soul. I have never been on this goddamn planet before, I am an alien. But I embrace that, there is so much I don’t know and so much I have to learn, and unlearn. With my Dad and Ned’s ghosts at my back, pushing me gently forward as I carry their memories with me, I keep my head down, I keep making art. They can be my old soul companions, Ned swatting me in the face with his ghostpaw when I’m about to make a dumb choice.

As a child, I used to be so scared of the dark. I needed nightlights to light every corner of my bedroom. I grew out of that as an adult, but there was still a deep fear of the dark, of what lay beneath the bed. This year I have slept soundly and well. I’m not afraid of sounds I hear at night, creaking floorboards in my century-old apartment. I no longer fear ghosts because I know they’re the ones I love, their hand and tiny ghost paw at my back as I stumble into my bright future.

Go faster, they whisper. We can’t wait until you see what’s coming.