2007 - 2025: Darth Vader

    The start of the semester has not been the best for me. I already talked about the struggles I had the first week. The second week also started with a great deal of stress because I have an online class that I'm taking with one of my professors back at Southern and I had to double up on my work so that I would be ready for a ski trip the following week. Then, on Tuesday, I received some very devastating news. 

   My kitty, Darth Vader, was very sick and we had to put him down. Saying goodbye to him was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. Darth has been with our family since 2007 and I can't remember a day of my life without him there. He was one of my first friends and a constant companion. He never scratched or bit, and he always wanted to be near us kids even though we were not always the gentlest.

   Perhaps it may sound strange that I am talking so personally about a cat, and maybe I sound silly to be this heartbroken, but I really cannot express what a huge space he occupied in my heart and in my life. The thought of not getting to cuddle with him at night when I return home makes my heart ache. 

  For the past few years I've struggled with some severe Insomnia and every night that I lay awake in my bed in tears because of the panic and anxiety, he was always there with me to comfort me. Recently, I was looking through my camera roll and found dozens of pictures of him sitting with me while I wrote my first novel. That is one of the greatest achievements of my life, and he was there for the whole thing. And that's how it's always been. He's always been there.

   I will miss kissing his nose and squishing his little paws, but I know that he lived a very good life in which he gave a lot of love and received a lot of love and I'm grateful for the time I had with him. So here are a few photos in honor of my first friend. 

I remember my mom and my aunt were looking for me 
everywhere until they finally found me sleeping with my kitty


Darth fit perfectly in my purple chair and he loved to 
sleep there and soak in the sun that came through my window.

We always used to say that we named him Darth Vader because
his fur was black, like Darth Vader's armor, but that the little
white speckles on his paws represented the good that Darth Vader 
 always had inside him.

The older he got, the more attention he needed. Not a moment's peace
with this cat.


Me and my Kitty.

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