This beautiful long-haired house panther is my boy Pele. I know remarkably little about his backstory. I don’t know where he came from, how many homes he’s had before mine, or even how old he is. The only clear, inarguable fact I know about him, is that I adopted him from my co-worker Jeff during the upheaval surrounding Jeff’s expensive, acrimonious divorce. And that Jeff died last week.
Pele loves to cuddle in my lap and bury himself under my arm. He loves laps so much, in fact, that I’m typing this essay with great difficulty, because he’s draped himself across my forearms, with his paws wrapped around my left arm in a big bear hug. He desperately craves human attention, and when he discovered that I sleep lying on my side, curled into a semi-fetal position, he decided the center of that curl is a pretty cool place to be.
Jeff loved alcohol. Though he was a frequently diligent employee, who didn’t hesitate to accept additional task assignments and overtime hours when needed, he also repeatedly showed up to work at 7 a.m. with beer already on his breath. He told giddy stories of various exploits he’d accomplished, stories which almost invariably began with him already being wasted. He had one of the worst cases of alcoholic rosacea I’d ever seen.
I hesitate to say too much, because Jeff was actively in my life less than one year (I’ve known his cat nearly three times as long as I knew him), and because he leaves behind a ten-year-old son who doesn’t need a dark cloud over his adolescence, or anyway a darker cloud than he’ll have growing up without a father. But I’m a writer, and like most writers, I can’t comprehend difficult situations without writing about them. I hope Jeff will forgive me.
Problem drinking is widespread in my workplace. At least three co-workers are capable of drinking a twelve-pack on a weeknight and still showing up for work the next morning. One co-worker won’t be eligible to have his driver’s license reinstated until 2021. I’ve witnessed colleagues arriving for work so thoroughly hung over, they needed to find secluded spots away from bosses’ gaze to grab quick naps before beginning the productive day.
Alcohol is, of course, a painkiller. Before scientists invented anaesthetics, they used brandy and bourbon to numb patients before surgeries and dentistry. Nowadays, people use alcohol to numb their brains from the maladaptive effects of lifelong trauma. Scratch below an addict’s surface, I have learned, and you’ll find somebody who survived something horrific, usually at a very early age. The issue isn’t whether, it’s what.
Sadly, I never knew Jeff well enough to understand his full story. He fleetingly mentioned an adversarial relationship with his own father, but always changed the topic quickly. He was determined to not repeat his father’s mistakes with his own son; but he also hadn’t yet grappled with his own history, and therefore needed to numb the pain artificially. So he surrounded himself with living things he could love.
Besides Pele, he had two dogs, an energetic little lapdog and the chillest retriever mix I ever met. As his marriage crumbled, and he saw less of his son behind a difficult custody battle, he doted religiously on his animals. But as his divorce dragged on interminably, he couldn’t make house payments, and eventually needed to move back in with his mother—a humiliating concession in a 46-year-old man. So he needed to re-home his animals.
He was red-eyed, and even drunker than usual, the day I arrived to take Pele home with me.
Not much later, Jeff got into a heated argument with a manager and walked off the job forever. I only saw him twice after that. Both times, he had his son with him, as well as his wits. But I heard stories from other colleagues who ran into him without his son. His drinking had apparently intensified; one reported he’d begun suffering minor hemorrhages because his capillaries were shot. I also heard he’d begun shuffling when he walked, like a much older man.
I wonder whether Pele is capable of understanding Jeff’s absence. Like me, he knew Jeff less than one year. I’ve cuddled Pele and talked to him about what happened, but he just blinks his pretty golden eyes, so I don’t know. I’m typing this through tears, while Pele purrs contentedly in my lap. Maybe he knows he’s loved right now. Maybe that’s enough.
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