Tales of Cormac and Dante

I met Dante the day after my sister died. I had taken a redeye flight from Chicago home to Salt Lake City, to be with her family. I cried the entire flight, sobbing and blowing my nose countless times, and would wonder, years later, what the person in the aisle seat must have thought of that. I wouldn’t remember the arrival at SLO, or the ride back to my family home.  I was on autopilot, pure, simple survival mode. I hadn’t slept since the morning before I found out about Ashley, but I was determined to get at least one thing done: Ashley’s cats were at her apartment, and they needed to be fed. 

On the day you leave this world, I imagine you’ll hope certain things will be cared for. I’ve heard people say that they can die happily only if their children were cared for, or their legacy assured, or some other grand item of unfinished business were completed, business that might otherwise bind them to the earthly realm. In the case of Ashley, her unfinished business was the comfort and care of her familiars, two cats and a dog. The dog, Jake, stayed with her parents and was at their house. The two cats, however, were at Ashley’s apartment and hadn’t been checked on since before Ashley died, around 7:30 the night prior. I arrived in Salt Lake in the morning, having departed Chicago on a midnight flight. They’d been without a human for too long. Probably endlessly, if you run on Cat Time. 

The cats needed to be fed. 

I was welcomed at the airport by much of the family. Ashley and my mom had 12 siblings, and all of them married at least once, sometimes more, so with the spouses and ex spouses of the siblings, I had over two dozen aunts and uncles. They had been gathering, I imagined, in Salt Lake since the news of Ashley’s death spread through the family like wildfire, and more were on the way.

Aunt and Uncle hugs are some of the most potent hugs you can experience in this world, and I needed them. She wasn’t going to be without a loved one within earshot for the foreseeable future. But the impending dissolution into a sobbing useless wreck, letting the parents, aunts and uncles hug as best they could and comfort me, would have to wait until the cats had a visit, fresh water, and some food and scratches. 

For me, in the full knowledge of Ashley’s wishes (as far as the pets were concerned), this was a nonnegotiable thing. 

The drive home from the airport is lost in time, probably a simple, terrible car trip filled with me crying in a carful of crying family. I never can recall, looking back. I lost a lot of time that summer, actually. Most of it was blurry. However, I remembered, with stark clarity, taking Ashley’s keys and heading to her apartment, leaving the family at her parent’s house. She remembers exactly where she had parked in the apartment complex, a needless detail that still endured as part of the memories of the first few days Post Ashley, for some reason. After parking, she walked around the building, looking for apartment numbers and finally spotting Ashley’s. 

Since I had been living in Chicago, I had never been to Ashley’s apartment before, and I was deeply dreading what I might find. Ashley had been sick, so very sick, and eating disorders are an ugly disease. Would the kitchen be brimming with junk food, and fast food wrappers? Would it be unused and sterile? Ashley had cycled through restriction as well as binging and purging, so either option was feasible. Whichever state of the kitchen, it was assured to be unhealthy and awful; lots of food or no food at all, both indicative of dysfunction.  

The kitchen was, at one time, one of the warmest and most welcome gathering spots in the family home. The kitchen and dining room, with only a tall countertop separating the two, were the focal point of activity for the household. In the afternoon there were snacks made in the kitchen and homework projects on the table. Dinner wasn’t always a full-family, sit-down meal, but most nights there would be food on the stovetop for the kids coming home from soccer practice or visiting friends after school. Over christmas, their mom would make dozens of batches of cookies and treats to give out to friends and neighbors. On Halloween, they’d put down newspapers and carve pumpkins. On Easter, they dyed and decorated eggs. When someone had a birthday, they’d put their presents on the table to be opened after a homemade or store bought cake. Some nights, they’d play cards or games on the tabletop; Monopoly was an intergenerational family favorite. Thanksgiving was a day-long marathon of cooking and eating. There was no lack of joyous, admittedly cliche, yet lovely family time in those rooms.    

And yet, an eating disorder will take all the joy out of a kitchen, and out of a holiday, and out of a meal. A person so far down the path of disordered eating that they had literally died of it, therefore, would likely have quite a miserable, lonely, and sad kitchen. I had not looked forward to seeing the state it would be in. But the cats were more important than my comfort, and I considered it my job, my duty, really, to find and remove anything too awful or embarrassing for the parents to find in Ashley’s apartment, before they had to. Ashley deserved that much consideration from her sister, even if it hurt to be the one to do it. So, upon finding the correct entryway, and the key on Ashley’s keyring, I gritted my proverbial teeth and opened the door.