“Who’s your buddy?” I asked my husband on Valentine’s Day, 1994.
A young male tabby sat in our
driveway, watching Ray chop down an oleander bush that made him break out in a
rash every time he brushed against it. The tabby had appeared seemingly out of
no where, and yet there was something familiar about him. For that story, read
Celebrating Buddy.
On June 18, 2013, at age 22, Buddy
had a stroke and took his last breath. Despite his age, his passing caught me
by surprise. I wasn’t ready for him to die. There were things we still needed
to do together. Like take another nap in the sun. Lie on our backs in the grass
while gazing up at the puffy white clouds dotting the summer blue sky. Stroll
down the driveway to inspect the frogs that lived in the drain pipe. Those type
of things that Buddy enjoyed.
But there was one thing I still
needed to do, for me. And I never did it. I kept putting it off because I was
caught up in my obsession to finish writing a novel that ultimately got shelved
anyway. Caught up in problems that belonged to others because I was asked
for help. Caught up in the upside down, sing-song world of Attention Deficit Disorder, which
amounts to over-committing and spreading myself too thin.
What did I put off? What did I keep
telling myself that there was time…I’d get to it later?
