Alteration

(from personal journal)

The cats are such good company for me! Now we are settling down into a 'we three' consciousness. We stop looking for him, who was so much a part of our home, our family, our lives. We know he has moved on. We know that now it is indeed just we three. We bond together into this tighter unit.

Not that we were not bonded, of course; it's more a drawing in closer, a re-configuration of the shape of this little family that we are. We make new routines — only slightly different from the old. All is familiar, reassuring, habitual — and yet it is subtly changed. We have got past the first awful weeks of feeing the gap, the vital ingredient gone missing. Now we have seamlessly closed over that gap, so we have not a gaping hole but an alteration in the fabric, a different pattern to the weave.