Right around 10 seconds.
If I’m right, and it is always possible my perceptions were even then faulty,
it took PC about 10 seconds to pass on. We had been in the room about 15 minutes
or so, waiting for a mild sedative to take effect to calm him, Tatsumi, Kimiko
and I… all sniffling, all miserable. Oddly though, it was something I drew
strength from. We were not strangers in a room upset about a cat… we were an
odd sort of family and we were upset about our cat, that
we had to let go.
Then the doctor had a needle in a vein in his leg, asked if we were ready (we
sniffled yes) and he slid the plunger in. It took him about 15 seconds to
finish… and I think it was at most 10 seconds after that till he said "he’s
gone".
Another one; gone.
I shouldn’t be surprised at the speed… now that I think about it all the
big things happen in a very, very short amount of time… seconds or less in
fact. You either act or not, speak or not, know or not. Whatever it is your
supposed to do or not do at that point – there is always a split moment in time
when it happens… or when it doesn’t. The plunger begins to move… and in the
final analysis that is when the story was scripted… not in the
10 seconds that follow.
Tatsumi mentioned that there is a tradition that you can ask the recently
deceased for a wish, that as they straddle the worlds between here and hereafter
they might, just might, be able to nudge your life on a different course. There
in that room, at this point in my life, as I looked back on the last months my
wish was simple… and seemingly impossible.
I don’t want to lose anyone else I love.
That, my friends, is a whole lot of wish to lay on a cat full of sedative and
tuna. But then, he was a hell of a cat.
More later.