A few weeks ago, my entire world fell apart. My mom died from cancer. When she was diagnosed, she tried to make it sound small, like it was nothing serious — “just a bump in the road.” She said it the way someone talks about a flat tire, not an earthquake. But it was an earthquake. One that split my life into before and after.
Through every appointment, every round of chemo, every day she was too weak to leave her bed, one constant never changed. Her cat, Cole. A luxurious black cat, glossy like satin, with eyes that seemed too aware for an animal. Toward the end, Cole started climbing onto her chest and lying there for hours, perfectly still. It was like he was listening to her heartbeat, guarding it, refusing to let it disappear.
After she passed, the house felt unbearable. Too quiet. Too empty. Cole was the only thing that made it survivable. He was the reason I got out of bed. The reason I ate something. The reason I kept breathing at all. He slept beside me every night, like he knew we were both holding onto the same loss.
Then one day, the back door didn’t latch properly.
Cole was gone.
I searched for him the way I searched for my mom in the early days of her illness — desperately, irrationally, like if I looked hard enough I could undo reality. I walked the neighborhood in the freezing dark calling his name. I refreshed lost-pet groups over and over. I left food on the porch, staring into the cold like it might answer me back. Losing him felt like losing her twice. Like the world was taking the last warm thing I had left.
Christmas Eve came, heavy and hollow. And then I heard it — a soft thud at the back door. I opened it… and froze. Cole was there. Thin. Dirty. His eyes bright in a way that made it look like he’d traveled through something. I reached for him, but he turned and walked away into the cold, stopping every few steps to make sure I was following.
I didn’t even grab a coat.
After about fifteen minutes, Cole finally stopped. And when I saw where he had taken me, my heart began pounding wildly. He had led me to the place I had been avoiding since the funeral. The place I was too afraid to face alone. He climbed up, sat still, and waited — like this was the entire reason he had come back.
I fell apart there. The kind of crying you don’t survive without changing. Cole pressed against me, purring hard, grounding me in the present. In that moment, I understood something I still can’t fully explain. He didn’t run away. He returned with purpose. He came back to guide me through the grief I was drowning in.
Maybe animals don’t understand death the way we do.
Or maybe they understand love so deeply that when someone is gone, they know exactly where the pain lives — and exactly how to lead you through it.
That night, I didn’t get closure.
But I got permission to keep living.