Cats and Funerals

I'm typing this on the less comfy sofa, because the kitties are happily ensconced on the comfy sofa and I don't want to disturb them. This alarms me. I can see that, if I fail to exercise due diligence, I'll become a Crazy Cat Lady.

Crazy Cat Ladies are not, in general, Good People Persons. I am not, by nature, a Good People Person. I have become one through sheer will power. But I grow old. Will power, like everything else, droops these days. I find myself less and less inclined to make the effort. Crazy Cat Ladyhood beckons.

Today, for example, I directed parking at, and attended the funeral of, one of my fellow church members. I didn't know Jack well but I respected him a great deal, and as the funeral wound on, and I learned more and more about him, I realized how much I regretted not knowing him better. I sat there and reflected on previous funerals I'd attended for church folks, and realized I had felt this way many times before--this sense of, "I had no idea" and "Gosh, I'd have loved to talk with him/her about that" and "Shoot, that is so cool--I wish I had known that before." And then the funeral ended and I zipped past the fellowship hall where the reception was being held so that I wouldn't have to talk to anyone. I drove home to my cats.

Keith is a trained Myers Briggs assessment giver and counselor--you know, the personality profile that puts you on a grid of Intuitive/Judging/Sensing/and something else that I can't recall. He's a Myers Briggs cheerleader; as an historian trained to look for the particular and the unique as opposed to the general and universal, I'm a huge skeptic. But I have learned one very valuable thing from M-B: some folks, like Keith, get energy from being with people whereas others, like me, draw energy from solitude and find other people's company to be energy-draining--and (here's the Important Bit): one way is not better than the other; it just helps a lot to know who you are and what you need.

Which is all well and good, until one day you wake up and realize it's just you and a bunch of cats.