Talking of cats

When Ben got sick we begged the real estate agent to let us have cats in our "no pets" house. Under the circumstances he relented and we got Teddy and Tiffany. Ben never quite got to know them but he would have appreciated Teddy's creative genius... Here's Teddy at work. (And for the skeptics: no, there is no one on the other side of the door.)

Of course!

I (Lindy) went to Ben’s plaque the other day in order to say hi and also to change the flowers. I only use artificial flowers as I hate seeing all the dead ones on the top of people’s resting places.

I took a little while as I had to extricate the old flowers which had buried their stems into the sand below the plaque. I was kneeling on a piece of cardboard as the ground was wet.

I was arranging little daisies in the plastic vase. They are bright and cheery and don’t look ‘kitsch’ I don’t think.  As I worked I became increasingly sure that there was something with me. My certainty of its presence grew gently but surely.

It is hard and inaccurate to put the experience into words because there were no words but it was a gorgeous and “of course!”  kind of  growing certainty that I was not alone.

I realised slowly but surely and again “of course” (and I smiled to myself): there was a cat sitting next to me. There was no cat in the flesh of course, but it was definitely the presence of a cat that I felt to be next to me and I thought “Of course there’s a cat here with Ben! If anything would be here with Ben it would be a kindly, smiling, purring cat.”

My growing awareness of its presence reminded me of a record of Alice in Wonderland that my sisters used to listen to. In it, the Cheshire cat would appear slowly with a musical sound that crescendoed and echoed announcing its gradual materialisation.

It really tickled my fancy as I thought “How neat heaven is going to be if it’s like this! The clumsy rules of gravity and existence and time and space just don’t apply and a veil of separation isn’t there. A bit like “Hmm. What does Mum need now? Yep. A cat next to her sent by me.”  Zap!

Of course there would be a cat where Ben is. Of course!

Ben home schooling in Argentina

"Losing Ben"

A piece I wrote a few months ago appeared this morning in Eureka Street.

High sticking - from Lindy

One of the passions of Ben’s teenage years was roller hockey. I think through watching the movie “The Mighty Ducks” he caught the “roller/ice hockey bug.” People who get the bug really get the bug!

We managed to find an equally fanatical group of teenagers/adults in Tucumán and so began a love for the sport. When we returned to Melbourne every few years Ben would join a club and play. He always spoke of wanting to play ice hockey. Just before he was diagnosed with cancer I found him a pair of ice hockey gloves. When Chris was in Europe Ben asked him to buy him ice hockey skates - again, just before the cancer kicked in.

While Tim, Andy and Pete all played in Tucumán along with Ben, it became too difficult to get to training and games far off in Melbourne, so the sport went quiet in the Mulherin household.

But…  last August Matt started playing. He quickly got the skating skills he needed under his belt and the game skills quickly followed. He and Pete are both keen (and good).

Chapter Two started when Matt found a very good pair of hockey ice skates while rummaging around in a Salvos store. How could I refuse when there just happened to be a summer course of ten weeks of ice hockey scrimmages and development classes that were suited for his age group? Matt is now playing ice-hockey for a club in the peewee level with some amazing young players, and Ice House and/or Oakleigh are part of our weekly experience.

This is another way that we carry Ben with us in 2010.  Matt is very happy to be carrying on something that Ben loved and did well. He often talks about him and together we smile as we imagine what Ben would say about his little brother ‘gunning it’ on the ice. We smile at how it would have made him start ice-hockey himself; he wouldn’t have been able to resist. These things help.