When you are late for work because you spent the morning burying a cat you killed accidently when you turned on your engine, do not tell your co-workers about it. These people have sick children. These people have sick parents. Some even have dead children, more have dead parents. They will not understand. Mention nothing. Make yourself a cup of coffee with no sugar, no cream. Embrace the bitterness. Log on to your computer. Reboot your day.

If you are weak, you will cling to work, lose yourself in it. Be productive and replace your bad deed with a good one. You will help someone with your reports, someone will benefit. A stockholder in Los Angeles thinks of a nameless, faceless you and reminds himself, “good company, good work ethic, good returns.” Know that you have made his day.

This is how you start your morning. You do not dwell on the life that you have taken. You do not dwell on the responsibilities that you have mistaken. You do not attempt to justify or excuse. You accept your sadness as the undefined sadness that accompanies death. You do not allow yourself to talk trade in the concepts of grief or loss. 

You remind yourself that time is distance. Every minute your fault is fading, every minute is a chance at redemption. This is how you continue your morning. You won’t mean to, but you will slip up. The man in the cubicle next to you noticed your red eyes when you walked in, quietly, stiffly, because you were late, because you were sad, because you were guilty. Forgetting himself, he asks you what is wrong as you leave for lunch. Forgetting yourself, you answer. “I killed something today. I didn’t mean to.” 

He wears a strange look for a moment, then looks strangely relieved. He tells you that this sort of thing happens. He tells you that it is not your fault. He is not referring to your engine troubles, he is consoling himself for an unintentional murder somewhere along the way. He repeats himself. He tells you that “Yes, these things happen all the time.” 

This disturbs you. The meat of any piece of advice comes always at the end of the phrase. These things happen – not so important. All the time – important. As you walk into the café around the corner for a quick sandwich, look at the many people surrounding you. Know that at this exact moment, falling under the umbrella of All the Time, these people are miserable. They are suffering from things. They think these things are their fault, too.

Lose your appetite. Leave the café. Fast in the name of the nameless kitten. Fast in the name of your own loss of innocence. This is your first taste of death as something more than a witness. You have lost loved ones before to cancer, car accidents. You have wept. This is not that. Grow hungry, again. More hungry than the first time you thought you were hungry. Return to the café, order two sandwiches. Imagine this kitten as a shameless bird killer, a mouse killer, a genocide supporter. Tell yourself that this kitten had no business sleeping on your fan belt. 

If you are weak, you will begin to second-guess yourself. By definition, death should negate guessing, should negate thought, should negate function. You, like the rest of us, deny death its simplicity. Chide yourself for considering your co-workers so heartless, so capitalist. Blame yourself for blaming the cat. Package the second sandwich in aluminum foil. Save it to lie on the grave of the unnamed kitten. 

Wonder if the cat was owned by a family, if the cat was a personal pet and best friend of a small child. Wonder when exactly that family, that child, will recognize its absence. Wonder if you would feel better or worse had that cat been your own personal pet and best friend. If you might take solace in knowing that it is only you and the cat who suffer. Wonder if you should alert your neighbors to your misdeed. Wonder if you’ve robbed someone of closure by burying the cat or if you saved them the indignity of a bloody carcass as a last, and therefore lasting, memory. Wonder if you should post up a “Found Cat” poster though you don’t have a picture. You know you cannot take one now, even if the cat were not already buried. A picture of death is never a picture of life. It is always missing something. In this case, that something is an entire leg. 

Eventually, you will return to your work. You must. You will question your past decisions, you will question your past. You will wonder how you have found yourself a new murderer without a door to your cubicle to hide your criminal face. You will remember that once, as a child, you had planned to save the world. You will go home. You will call your mother, but you will not speak of the cat. You will hang up and invite your lover over, urgently. You will not speak of the cat. You will not be able to sleep, you will return to the strange mound in your back yard. You will not speak to the cat. You will never once admit, not even to yourself, that you killed that cat twice. Once with an ignition key and again - because you would be late for work, because you could not lose your job – with a shovel when you began to cover it with dirt, the kitten still pulling in occasional gasps of air, still believing that you have entered its life only because you have the power to save it.

~ No Room For Righteousness
~ Amber Lucik