Dwelling in the Past

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Until I was fifty-three, I spent most of my life dwelling in the past. My childhood had been somewhat difficult with health and family issues. College brought four years of relative calm, followed, upon graduation, by eight-and-a-half years in the convent.

Those years had also proved difficult as I was emotionally immature upon entering. I thought that if I became a saint—which in my mind meant that achieving perfection—everyone would finally find me worthwhile and not desert me. Striving for perfection led to an emotional breakdown toward the end of my convent years. I left, nearly catatonic.

Then came my re-entry into the “secular” world. The Vietnam War raged. I entered the age of hippies and war protest. Between 1969 and 1971, I attended grad school at the University of Minnesota. However, that experience also proved difficult as a depression led to a near suicide. Upon graduation I taught. That ultimately gave way to a career in publishing and in curriculum development.

In my early forties, the third psychiatrist I’d seen since leaving the convent recognized that a ten-year depression had resulted in a chemical imbalance in my body. She prescribed an antipsychotic drug that took away the hallucinating I’d been doing all that time. Because the drug worked, much of the lassitude of my existence disappeared.

Still, the present wasn’t inviting; I dwelt in the known past: on all that had happened to me as a child and in the convent; on my own immaturity; on my inability to be authentic; on how I faked normality, knowing that I felt not only inadequate but worthless.

In 1989, when I was fifty-three, Dulcy, the cat with whom I’d lived for seventeen-and-a-half years, died. She was more than feline; she was friend; family. I grieved her loss and the loss of the unconditional love she’d offered me.

Two days after her death, I woke on a Saturday morning and felt compelled to go downstairs to the computer. Turning it on, I placed my fingers on the keys and began to type. The first words that came were “At the end all that matters is love. My love for my human and hers for me. I have planted the memories of our life together in her heart. She will find them there when I am gone, and they will comfort her.”

My fingers stopped typing, and without understanding, I gazed at the words that had come unbidden. Who was speaking? Not I. Then who? . . . Dulcy.

That day and for one hour each day for the next two months, she remembered—through me—our life together. From some deep place inside me—the place where Oneness dwells—came the story of the loving relationship Dulcy and I shared.

Crown, a division of Random House, ultimately published A Cat’s Life: Dulcy’s Story in October 1992. The slim gift book sold over 14,000 copies and was reprinted in Germany, Korea, Taiwan, and Japan. The event changed my life by lifting me out of my obsessive dwelling on the past.

For years, I’d sifted through the tragedies of my life and found myself despicable. Then Dulcy’s book came to comfort me. Slowly I moved out of the past. I began to see possibilities. All during my life as a teacher, editor, and curriculum developer I’d just lived. I’d never thought of what the future might hold. In fact, I’d never even invested any money so as to have a future beyond retirement. The past was my home. To it I would retire.

Next week, I hope to share with you what happened next.