Today another family member died of cancer, our brown tabby Valerie. Since we’ve owned her from birth (her mother was also our cat), deciding to put her down was agonizing.

Although we’ve never had more than one dog at a time, the cat population was another story. Catherine, Kennedy, Patch and Val got along well and shared the litter for many years. By the time we moved from our old farmhouse last year, only Val was left.

Returning from Florida two weeks ago, we noticed Val looking unusually thin. Her shoulder and hip bones protruded, and she seemed weak and wobbly. Yesterday the girls took her to a vet in Illinois to see what was wrong and called me in Michigan as they were receiving the unexpected news of terminal kidney cancer with a mass pressing on her intestines, blocking most of it.

All of us were stunned. Despite Val’s continual purring and rubbing up against anything and everything, the vet suggested our best decision would be to put her down, offering to do it that very hour. “Acute pain will soon come,” she said.

But we needed more time to absorb what we’d been told, so the girls took Val home to lavish attention on her and wrestle with the life or death decision. We figured it’d be easier to know what to do, after sleeping on it.

The vet had told us Val was most likely nauseated and feeling uncomfortable. Her vomiting had already begun, and its pinkish hue indicated she was probably bleeding. We knew what had to be done. This morning, however, there were second thoughts. She’d been playful overnight and had eaten a bit of food. When I arrived at the apartment, she climbed on my shoulder and tried to burrow into my hair just as she’d always done.

Wondering whether or not to keep our appointment for Val’s euthanasia, I prayed and asked the Lord for his decision. We got his opinion by way of a timely email from our Michigan next-door-neighbors who detailed the story of a cat they’d waited too long to put down. He’d had to endure a difficult death as a result, and they vowed never to wait that long again.

The girls and I quickly agreed to go ahead with putting Val to sleep, although they declined to accompany me. Mary met me at the vet’s, and Val’s purr-motor quieted quickly as she fell asleep with the sedative. She never even noticed the lethal injection. While I cried having to face death again, in three minutes Val’s heart was still.

All of us couldn’t help but be reminded of Nate’s terminal cancer and his rapid weight loss, the first discovery of a mass in his abdomen, and the discomfort that led to his acute pain. Val’s parallel situation opened those barely-healing wounds all over again, and I wondered why her death had to come now, in this way.

The vet gave us a white box, placing a curled-up Val inside with her head “burrowed” as she loved to do in life. She looked lovely with peace written all over her pretty face. We buried her in the family pet cemetery behind Mary and Bervin’s house, putting a cement marker over the grave.

Looking at her birth and death dates there, I thought about how insignificant the numbers were compared to the gap between them. She lived her life in that gap, and we are thankful for Val’s unconditional love, lavished on everybody… except, of course, Jack. After all, she wasn’t stupid.

”God made… all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.” (Genesis 1:25)

Today when I woke up, my right eye was swollen, badly bloodshot and dripping with tears. This is the eye that was slammed to the pavement during my bike crash a couple of weeks ago, but it’s been healing at a good pace.

Now I’m going backwards. I prayed to our Great Physician, my heavenly husband, asking him what I should do. His assurance was that the tears were washing my eye, keeping it clean. “Just use clean tissues,” was the thought he gave me.

I left Jack at home as I biked around the neighborhood but stuffed both pockets full of clean tissues. The tears flew from my eye into my ear like raindrops off the windshield of a speeding car.

Feeling sorry for myself while running errands later, I was distracted and didn’t see the red-tailed squirrel bolt across the road in front of my car. “Oh no!” I said out loud, realizing I didn’t have time to brake. But the One who is healing my eye was also protecting his little squirrel. It ran under my car but came out the other side without breaking stride. “Thank you!” I shouted out loud. Jack wagged his tail as if to say, “You’re welcome.”

I’ve become a friend of sorts with a peppy red-tailed squirrel I frequently see outside my windows. The first time I noticed him was during a blizzard. With a foot of snow already on the ground and big flakes plopping out of the sky, Little Red was scurrying about the yard as if it was still autumn, burrowing his head through the snow in search of acorns. He had no competition, since all the other squirrels were nestled in their winter hideaways.

Little Red would nose-dig through the snow again and again, popping up repeatedly to check for danger. When he found an acorn, he’d scurry up the nearest tree, sit on a branch and chew on his find, stuffing the bits into his cheeks before heading back down for more.

Two things about Little Red were endearing: his perseverance despite big odds against him, and the way he used his furry tail. He’d figured out how to shelter himself from the snow storm as he chewed, by curling his tail up and over his body like a broad umbrella. I watched him go through the burrowing, retrieving, climbing, chewing, body-sheltering process again and again, admiring his pluck.

Today when my car went over the squirrel, I was sure it was Little Red. If I’d felt a bump, I would’ve pulled over, retrieved that mangled little body and conducted a full-blown funeral service to the tune of a thousand tears. Death is awful, more so now than ever, even the death of a little neighborhood squirrel.

Although I’d been feeling sorry for myself with my swollen, bloodshot eye, after Little Red’s victory on the road I felt better. And the Protector (the squirrel’s and mine) encouraged me further during a second bike ride later in the day. Little Red appeared fifty yards away, romping around on a sunny spring afternoon and accompanying me for most of my ride.

“Are not two sparrows [or squirrels] sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground [or be run over] apart from the will of your Father.” (Matthew 10:29-30a)