1.
By Sydney Gore
I remember the first time I met Snuggles. It was almost 15 years ago this month. I was eight years old, sitting cross-legged on the carpeted floor of a room full of kittens. Snuggles came up to me and curled up in my lap, and that subtle gesture was how I knew she was mine; she chose me. Two weeks later, we took Snuggles home and she has been by my side ever since. I am an only child so my cat has always been more than a pet to me—she is my soul sister and my best friend. We grew up together.
Leaving Snuggles behind for college was one of the hardest things I had to do— while everyone else was homesick for their high school squad, I was always missing my furry feline friend. The semester I studied abroad in London was the hardest—while I could FaceTime with my parents, I couldn’t reach through the screen to scratch behind Snuggles’ ears. We were able to spend most of the summer together, but when I came back for my last semester of college, I struggled to adjust to not having Snuggles around once more.
2.
So where does Sufjan Stevens come in? At the end of this month, Stevens officially releases his seventh album, Carrie & Lowell. In returning to his folk roots, Sufjan’s record is a testament to love, life, and loss in dedication to his mother and stepfather. This was the album I needed before I even knew it.
Because throughout our relationship, my beloved cat has been dying slowly.
The day when I realized it was happening, I was in a deep state of denial. Over the past few months, I had noticed a few changes in Snuggles’ behavior, but nothing too alarming. Nothing that made me think she would be leaving me soon. But one morning, she walked slower than usual and had a weird limp in her step. She had been looking thinner, but that day her bones were practically poking out. She wouldn’t eat from her bowl because she kept spitting her food up and she couldn’t make it to the litter box. Her health was deteriorating, and so was her life. I didn’t want to say anything out loud because I am paranoid about putting bad thoughts into the universe, but once I saw her trying to find places to hide—like dogs, cats also seek somewhere they can be alone to die—I knew what was coming. I texted a friend and seeing those four words made it real: “My cat is dying.”
I should have known better
Nothing can be changed
The past is still the past
The bridge to nowhere , I should’ve wrote a letter
Explaining what I feel, that empty feeling
Early in the morning that she died, I awoke inexplicably and uncontrollably sobbed myself back to sleep. I didn’t even know that she was about to pass that morning—I was just releasing the sadness that continued to build up within me. The more I listened to Carrie & Lowell, the more accepting I became of my cat’s inevitable death. Each track is part of the five tiers of grief—denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Pain hits you in waves and you start off overwhelmed by all of your emotions, but by the end Stevens has drained you dry of them. His vocals, alternately hushed and soaring, are supported only by guitars and/or piano. It’s a listening experience as intimate as the material within.
Two days before Snuggles died, she started making rounds in the house. She quietly crept into my room and sat under my desk for a few minutes before settling down on the floor in the hallway. My mom sat with her while I cried on top of my bed. “Death With Dignity” faintly played from my laptop, and as cliché as that sounds now, it wasn’t; it was what I needed to hear. “Spirit of my silence I can hear you / but I’m afraid to be near you / And I don’t know where to begin,” Stevens sings. The way that he talks about his traumatic experiences with life and death is beautiful because at the end of the day, it’s not a fable. We live and then we die—that’s the true story. This album marks the first time that Stevens gives us a full picture in his complex life story and goes into detail about his fractured relationships. He doesn’t shy away from the reality of this major part of life (his childhood) and while his tale is more tragic than most, it properly conditioned me in the art of letting go. Death is dark, but you can always find comfort in those rare lighthearted moments. (I think that Snuggles would have appreciated the humor of the line “You checked your texts while I masturbated” in the song “All Of Me Wants All Of You.”)
Snuggles was old and lived a long, healthy life up until the end. No one ever wants their pet to be in pain while they die, and I am thankful that she passed in her sleep. All day, Snuggles never looked like she was suffering, even when she struggled to lift herself up from the floor. She looked so tired though. She was hanging in there, but I didn’t know what for. Was she ready to die? Was she scared? Or did she just want to get this over with? I couldn’t watch her like this anymore, dying in slow motion. You always want to remember the dead for who they were before, but it’s hard to un-see them as they pass.
Should I tear my eyes out now?
Everything I see returns to you somehow.
Should I tear my heart out now?
Everything I feel returns to you somehow.
I want to save you from your sorrow.
5.
“We’re all gonna die,” Stevens flatly sings in “Fourth Of July.” The way he repeats it at the end reminds me of a nursery rhyme chant. When I was a kid, we knew about death, but we never really internalized that people don’t ever come back from it. When the journey comes to an end, it’s really over. Death is final and permanent. When Stevens pleads “I just wanted to be near you,” it breaks my heart because “Eugene” captures the sensation of yearning someone you’ll never be able to get back again.
I can’t relate to most of the things that Stevens has experienced throughout his life, and I’m not saying my loss was as profound as his. I merely found common ground through this album to deal with the loss of someone I was deeply attached to. I have no idea what it’s like to grow up without your mother being around or to have step-parents. I can’t even imagine what it’s like to have parents with alcohol abuse problems, let alone mental illnesses. I am a 21-year-old woman and Stevens is a 40-year-old man. He is devout to his faith, and I have always questioned mine. On paper, we don’t have a lot in common. However, there’s one thing that brings us together and I think it’s the most important similarity between us: we are human beings. None of us are immune to pain, no matter what form it may take.
In an interview with Pitchfork, Stevens said, “With this record, I needed to extract myself out of this environment of make-believe. It’s something that was necessary for me to do in the wake of my mother’s death—to pursue a sense of peace and serenity in spite of suffering.” This was exactly what I was trying to do leading up to Snuggles’ death—find a sense of peace despite the weight I would carry from the blow of this loss.
Snuggles didn’t know anything about Carrie’s assortment of issues (depression, schizophrenia, and alcoholism), but she suffered from her own manic moments. My dad raised her like a dog so she was always very aggressive when she wanted to play. My friends were all terrified of her and never wanted to come over my house. Sometimes, she would have this demonic look in her eyes right before she attacked someone. Snuggles always sank her teeth deep into every bite and drew blood from her victims, and she never liked being pet for more than 10 seconds. But I loved her anyway despite the abuse that I often endured. Every scar that I still have serves as her mark, and I laugh when I think about how it all happened. Snuggles wasn’t always well-behaved, but she was sweet when she wanted to be. If spirit animals were real, Snuggles was definitely mine. As Stevens says, “There’s only a shadow of me/ In a manner of speaking I’m dead.”
“At worst, these songs probably seem really indulgent,” Stevens told Pitchfork. “At their best, they should act as a testament to an experience that’s universal: Everyone suffers; life is pain; and death is the final punctuation at the end of that sentence, so deal with it. I really think you can manage pain and suffering by living in fullness and being true to yourself and all those seemingly vapid platitudes.”
I’ll always have a fear of the unknown, but there are some things in life that we will never have the answers to and we can’t let that drive us to a point of no return. Carrie & Lowell is not a how-to guide on grief, but it helped me get in the proper state of mind to reflect and cope with the loss of my beloved cat. The album ends with the hymn-like “Blue Bucket of Gold,” the moment when I am finally able to compose myself. We have no control over the timing of death, but we can dictate how we handle it. In the service of Sufjan Stevens, we pray that the deceased rest in peace and those that survive them live in serenity.
In loving memory of Snuggles, the best cat in the entire world. I love you forever. RIP *~*~* 3.16.15
9.
