For Molly, Whenever I May Find Her

What makes a planet habitable?

Is it a blooming so sudden, without end, whose start we will never see?

Is it the pockets this bloom left behind, where a few more atoms happen to cross and cool and let the first light shine through?

When these atoms formed gases and fell unto themselves, when the plasma blew and rocks grew in an instant, was it those rocks that made a planet’s surface, so it could be habitable?

Is it the swells of a tide-swept seaboard, wetting and drying its inhabitants, ebbing and flowing and pumping this water through singular cells so that they may learn to pump it themselves—to build their own veins and liquid blood?

Is it a planet with the right amount of gravity, allowing rocks to roll up unto rocks, creatures to crawl up unto land, and their ancestors to build engines that lift unto the sky, surpassing the pull of g = 9.8 meters per second squared—to the moon and to the planets and someday to the space between the stars?

Is it the energy of a star just the right size, the right color, the right distance away? Is it an atmosphere that swallows the right light, shields its shores from high-energy X-rays and gamma rays and DNA-mutating—cancer-inducing—light the star cannot help but emit—is this what makes it habitable?

Is it the warmth of that energy that fills the green growth, and dances in our skin and our pink lungs and mouths, to course through the blood, back out through our fingertips as we touch the things we love? Is this what makes it habitable?

Or is it the things we love?

It is every one of these things, I suppose, that let life strike lucky.

✶✶✶

When I was eight, I wanted an orange tabby female cat—the “rare” type, determined by the hand of genetics. We searched for weeks until we finally found orange tabby kittens nearby, but in a stroke of luck, we took the wrong cat home. The vet informed us that “Hermione” was male. And so he became Hermy.

Hermy was a rambunctious kitten. He would bolt across the house, attack his toys with vigor, demand food, and often end up scratching us. While the demands for food would remain, Hermy would later calm down—no doubt with help from the cat we adopted a few months later, a female kitten from our local shelter.

We singled out a black, white, and brown kitten named “Jamie” when we saw her gallantly defend herself against the other shelter cats. We knew she’d be able to handle Hermy’s domineering character—and sometimes be the one to put him in line.

When we first took our chosen one to the greeting room at the shelter, I picked her up, and she immediately flopped her head over the side of my arms. From then on, she was always my floppy kitty. She became our Molly.

Molly would do backflips in the air to catch string toys. She would sniff every shoe, lay on top of them all. She would hang her legs off of chairs as she slept. She would let us hold her in front of computer webcams, featuring in silly videos with my elementary school friends. But she wouldn’t let us keep a collar on her; Molly realized she could activate the safety release if she hooked it around a corner and pulled. She was a clever little escape artist.

Molly would grow ecstatic over catnip, but also over a bite of marshmallow. She would bite the heads off flowers we bought, decapitating any plant that wasn’t on the highest shelf. The only exception to her plant rampage was our yearly Christmas tree. She was content just to sit beneath the canopy, on the soft tree skirt, guarding our Christmas gifts.

She liked to meow whenever I approached. She liked to nestle under the blankets when we took them off the bed. She loved being enveloped in things—sweatshirts, backpacks, cardboard boxes, paper bags. My arms.

Molly was beside me ever since I was a child. She understood me as much as any animal ever could. She would let me cry into her fur when I was sad, purr to cheer me up. And she would cry, too, from below the balcony after we all went up for the night, until finally she relented and came to bed with my parents.

Now, the house at night is quiet, and it is still.

✶✶✶

I find it hard to keep in mind that we are the lucky ones.

I had someone ask me, once, after I presented Cornell’s antique telescope to them, if studying astronomy helped me have a philosophical perspective on life. I wasn’t sure how to answer. Sure, it does—many nights I can’t help but ruminate on the big picture, on the size of the universe, on the marvel of it all. But then I go to class and get frustrated over homework, or burn the pasta sauce, or stress over emails, or worry that I can’t do enough.

I still get lost in the little painful things. But in the end, it’s never all those little bad things we remember—it’s the life-changing moments, for better or for worse, but also all the many small, wonderful moments. This is how it feels to me now, remembering all the lucky memories I have with Molly.

Molly was, in many ways, just like any other cat. But she also filled a space no one else ever will. No one else will ever chatter at bugs in just the same way, or flip in just the same arc, or study the exact same snowfall as it floats beyond the screen door.

The funny thing about grief is that it’s always the same story, told a little differently, enough that it feels like no one understands. And it’s true that no one can understand it perfectly—I can’t hope to convey every moment, every afternoon on the couch with her. But there’s a comfort in knowing that the story is always the same, that it will happen again, somewhere on Earth or somewhere beyond.

Somewhere a child will meet their lifelong companion behind the glass, and somewhere they will hold them for the first time. Somewhere it might look different, but feel almost the same.

Their star is just the right size, the right color, the right distance away. They feel the warmth of that star as it traces a path through the grass through the lungs through the body of the creature they hold. They realize that none of their little worries have ever mattered. Not the busywork, not the burnt food. Not even the time limits. Just the warmth.

And when the child has come of age, on the night before they leave home, when the world is closing in, they will cry and cry and hold their cat. They will tell her I have to grow up now. I have to grow up, and you have to grow old.

The cat will not quite grow old.

They will learn to live with that, someday.

✶✶✶

What makes a bedroom habitable?

Here I have placed all my posters, strung up soft yellow starlights. In the light of these stars, I have stood in the wake of the fan on my desk as it runs its fingers through wet hair.

Here I have scattered my college class notes across my desk, laptop open to endless Zoom meetings. Here I have perfectly balanced my coffee machine atop a microwave and fridge. In the fridge there are two halves of two birthday cakes. I selected the red velvet myself, before I realized my parents had sent a chocolate one. Proof that many people love me—but they are too far away to help me finish a slice.

Molly is halfway across the country. The picture of her on my cork board is a poor substitute.

It is a poor substitute when I get kidney stones, feeling nauseous for days, throwing up in my single-occupancy room. It is a poor substitute when I am wheeled into the operating room for a standard surgery that scares me nonetheless. They will use a laser—much stronger than the kind my cats chase—to break up the stones. And in a few weeks I will get to go home, to my parents and brother and Hermy and Molly.

Two years later, Molly’s kidneys will swell. Her lymphocytes will skyrocket. This will happen seemingly overnight.

I think kidneys are my least favorite organ.

But for the time being, I never have to know. I come home for the summer and winter breaks, and she follows me to the couch, jumping up as quickly as she can. She lays by my side, in the crook of my elbow. Sometimes I lay on my back and try to type on my laptop—often to no avail. Often, she presses her wet little nose against my arm, and I rub her soft fur with my other hand. I pull her toward my chest and close my eyes. We do this in January of 2023, just thirty minutes before I leave for the airport, the last time I will ever see her healthy.

I sit with my couch buddy.

✶✶✶

Here, now, it is hard to believe that our planet is the lucky one. Everything is cold—the apartment, the car, the planes, the airports. The hospital where my lovely Molly holds out for me. She only needs to wait a little longer.

When I get home to St. Louis, the hospital calls, and they tell us what we already knew. She has cancer, has had cancer—which is a condition that blooms so sudden, without end—and her body has been fighting for her as long as it can, so she could still feel happy and safe, until a few days ago, when she grew so thirsty and tired. But today she is well enough. We can take her home before we say goodbye.

When we pick Molly up from the hospital, her back legs are tide-swept locks of hair curling with water and chemicals they used to clean the skin where the IV was. She does not make a sound as I sit on the floor of the car with her, the crate open, reaching my hand to her side so she’s calmer while we drive.

When we place the crate down in the house she meows. It’s the last time she ever will—the next twenty-four hours are reserved for purring. She scratches the front mat like she always does, and her fur brushes by the shoes she always loved to sit on.

She goes downstairs and dumps her head under the drinking fountain waterfall, over and over, wetting and drying, ebbing and flowing. She licks and rubs her face against the corners. I pet her, and she purrs the whole time. She loves me. She is happy to feel me even now, when she is so thirsty, so tired.

I stay with her all night, though both of us can barely sleep. I feel nauseous over and over again, but she is there for me. In the morning, I open the washed-out curtains, and I place her on the windowsill for just a moment, so she can see outside before she jumps back down. I bring all her favorite toys, even if I know she can no longer play with them, and I bring her favorite food, marshmallows, even if she will no longer eat. She sniffs each of these things. I hope they bring her comfort.

I call a childhood friend I haven’t seen for over four years, and they give a final wave. My neighbors come to pet her goodbye. My partner cries over the phone while I list to Molly all my favorite memories. He only met Molly for one week, but he knows how much we love each other. How much we all love her.

I pull the drinking fountain into the sunlight, and Molly lays down in the rays. I tell her I love her. I tell her she is suspended in a sunbeam. Suspended—we are warm here, forever. And she will be warm in my arms, on the bed in the bright basement nook, on a blanket embroidered with the planets and the stars.

I spend the last twenty-four hours with her, until the doctor comes with his smile, his warmth, and his first syringe. She does not flinch.

What makes a planet habitable?

What makes a deathbed habitable?

She loves me. I hope that is the answer.

She stands, disoriented, staggering steps. Then she comes right back to my arms. She knows she belongs here with me. She places her chin on my skin. It is time.

The doctor gives her the second shot—anesthesia. I whisper over and over that I love her. I love her, my brave, beautiful Molly; my floppy kitty; my couch buddy. It is time.

She will always be safe, now and forever.

She’s deep asleep, but her eye still stands open. I make sure my reflection is visible in the pupils. Her heart beat slows. I love her. I love you Molly. It is time. I love her. She loves me.

The last shot is for a vein in her leg. She won’t feel a thing. Pupils as wide as her eyes; I hope that even if she can’t see me, somewhere in that brain the image of my face blinks by. She loves me. I love you Molly. Stethoscope. I love you. It is time. She is gone. I love you.

✶✶✶

My brother and I take a walk that night. The clouds let the light shine yellow through one million molecules.

I hold a lock of her fur, from the softest spot behind her ear, where she always loved to be rubbed. I put it in a bag in my backpack the next morning and I study the final scratch she left on my skin, just below the sleeve, from her teeth as her jaw went slack—relaxed into her final seconds, her final feeling our embrace.

That morning I am afraid to wash my skin. I am afraid to watch as the pink line fades, marking the beginning of a world without her by my side. A world where she cannot love me for the person I’ve become. Where she no longer mews at the sight of me, where I cannot turn the corner expecting to find her, to find her napping in the sun and to feel her on my arm, to let her trace this line upon my skin.

She cannot love me as I am in this moment. But she loved me for nearly thirteen years. Unrestricted love, enough to last a lifetime and more.

As the plane leaves the ground in St. Louis, there’s a bump, then we’re lifted, carried to the sky in a movement stronger than g, no longer weighing a thing. Every time the engine slows I fear we will drop from the sky. But I am safe. I know I am safe, here or then, forever.

The words do not end on I love you because my story cannot end when her heartbeat stops. My story cannot end when I see the last glimpse of the car with the pink blanket and her soft, still-warm body, even if it feels like the end of my life, too.

I do not know where the story ends and I am not sure if the story will even end, or if the fact that it happens means it is always happening, somewhere in time, safe in the sunbeam forever. Even if we cannot feel a thing. Even if the light blinks out.

We love each other.

I know that is the answer.