Every year when our kids drive themselves back from our annual beach vacation, we monitor their progress until they arrive home safely, making a little game of it by guessing where they are at any given moment (Round-O Road? Orangeburg? Enoree?) rather than admitting the obvious—that we will never stop worrying over their well-being no matter how old they are.
This year, our annual Edisto Beach vacation has been especially good. Jac brought his girlfriend for the first time. The girls spent most of their days on the beach with us, and retired to their room each night to binge-watch Game of Thrones while Tammy and I sat out on the screened-in deck watching the deer stroll around the golf course after the golfers had surrendered at last to the encroaching dusk.
We played putt putt, a tradition for eighteen years here. We played Pickleball for the first time, pausing every few minutes to review the rules. We rode bikes around the island, and to and from the beach and the swimming pool.
We waited in a long line for sixty dollars worth of ice cream. We drove through Charleston to Cypress Gardens, where we paddled a boat through a swamp, navigating around and between the trees, every one of them festooned with Spanish Moss. We spotted a couple of sleepy gators eyeing us from the shadows. We saw an eagle surveying the world below from his nest at the top of a very tall tree.
Every one of our eighteen years at Edisto has been a great time here, but this year may rank as the very best. Kayden said so herself, even on the last morning as we packed, cleaned the rental, and began transporting suitcases and storage bins to our cars, which is usually a somber affair.
“This has been my favorite year ever,” she announced. “I liked coming in June instead of July because it was so much cooler. The weather was perfect all week.”
On the way home, everyone made a list of their favorite parts of the vacation, another tradition intended to both document our experiences and serve as a practice of gratitude. Kayden’s list this year was the longest it has ever been: those late evenings in the pool with Alex, teaching her mom how to play Mario Kart, starting and finishing a good book, showing me her favorite parts of Cypress Gardens, which I had previously seen only in her photos of a prior visit.
By the time Tammy and I moved from Wyndham down to Steamboat Landing, where we spend the second week in our friends’ cottage, the kids were already home, meaning we could relax a little as we finished unpacking, mixed a celebratory Maragarita, and sorted out our dinner plans.
We took our drinks out to the sun porch, where Tammy opened the bird app on her phone so that we could see what kind of birds were coming around on a fine Sunday evening—a Tufted Titmouse, a Great-Crested Flycatcher, a Northern Cardinal, a Carolina Wren, a Red-Shouldered Hawk, a Chuck Will’s Widow, a Painted Bunting—and then we spotted a deer in the neigbor’s yard.
I stepped inside for a moment to get more ice, and when I came back, I saw that Tammy was on the phone. Something was wrong. Seriously wrong. I could see it in her expression.
I could hear Kayden’s voice trembling and small, but I could not make out what she was saying.
“Lucy,” Tammy whispered.
It is not enough to say that Lucy is Kayden’s cat. Lucy has been Kayden’s best friend and confidante since middle school, when she talked us into getting her cat if she made all A’s in school for an entire year. She did, and along came Lucy, an adorable little puff of white not much bigger than a cotton ball.
She got him immediately after our beach trip before the beginning of eighth grade. We spent a lot of time on that beach trip talking all about the cat she would get, and what she would name it. Her heart was set on Lucy, so even after we found out that Lucy was, in fact, a boy, the name stuck.
The bond between a pet and a child, especially one that spans a child’s transition into adulthood, is probably too profound to comprehend, much less describe. Lucy was there for everything, all the big moments, the milestones, the moves from one school to the next, one place to the next, one stage of life to the next, in some ways more of a witness than anyone else in the world to the inner workings of Kayden’s life.
Lucy saw things that we could not, knew things that we did not. Kayden talked often of the essential role that he had played in her life, and would play in the future, including the relationship that he would develop with her kids, in the bright and unknowable future.
But something was wrong. When the girls got home, Lucy rushed over to see them as soon as they came in the door, but he wasn’t himself. Before they knew it, they were driving him to Asheville to the emergency clinic. Alex drove, while Kayden was holding Lucy, sobbing into the phone to Tammy and now me as well.
The most acute and searing form of helplessness that I know is a parent’s futile attempt to console their children when they are in great pain. We’d take it away and bear it ourselves if we could. We’d do just about anything to spare them, to protect them, to extend the innocence of childhood for another day, and another one after that.
Lucy was dying in her arms. Kayden knew that but did not want to accept it. We didn’t either. We tried offering hopeful words. We reassured her over and over that it wasn’t her fault, no matter what. We cried with her, for her.
Lucy was barely alive when they arrived and died almost immediately on the table, even before they could try CPR to revive him. It did not seem possible that this day could begin one way and end this way, the contrast between them so stark and dreadful.
“It’s not fair,” she said. “He’s not even eleven yet. He’s supposed to be here a lot longer. It’s not fair.”
Another thing we can’t protect them from. All this beauty, all this pain, all of it so tangled up.
Beautifully written, my heart breaks for each of you❤️🩹
Another beautiful story of life.