Dead

For the past couple of days, my husband has been complaining about a foul smell around our backyard shed. He asked me if I’d noticed the smell, but I’ve simply been too busy this week to investigate. The truth of the matter is, I secretly suspected that it might be some figment of his imagination.

Today he came home from work a bit early to satisfy himself once and for all that he wasn’t crazy. He emptied the shed and, finding nothing more interesting than some weed killer and the kids’ toys, began pulling rocks away from the base of the structure. At this point – and being the dutiful wife that I am – I headed out into the yard to lend some moral, if not physical, support.

And then I smelled it: Death. Michael was covering his nose and mouth, and he was in some obvious distress, so I got down on my belly and pointed a flashlight underneath the shed. “You smell it now?” he gagged, and I nodded. “Yes, I do.”

And then I saw it: fur. And a little eye socket without an eye. “It’s likely a cat,” I told him matter-of-factly, as he prepared to vomit. “They like a little privacy when their time comes.”

Now, my Michael’s a good soul. He’s also been in some of the more awful hellholes that the world has to offer, and he has smelled some rather nasty stuff. But he wasn’t ready for the whole circle-of-life thing. “I think I can get it,” I said quickly, letting him off the hook in much the same way as I did when our children vomited in their car seats, or pooped right through their diapers and onto everything within a half-mile. I popped back into the kitchen, got a barbeque fork we never use (and will never use again), and began to remove the corpse from under the shed.

And for some reason I can’t explain, I just started talking to it, right there in the yard, while Michael tried not to upchuck and the kids were inside watching Shark Boy and Lava Girl. “I’m so sorry, sweetie,” I told the poor dead thing, “but this is no one’s idea of a proper resting place.” I deposited it into the family wheelbarrow, and Michael hauled it off to the woods. I was tempted to say a prayer, but chastised myself for the very childishness of it all.

Then I went inside to finish cooking dinner, and to confront my own mortality in a way I haven’t since 1996. And I decided the following: the next time I wake up to pee at 2:00 a.m. and find a spider in the master bath, that man of mine had better leap out of bed to mash it …