An elderly woman seeks solace and comfort in her pet after losing her husband.
Elderly Emerald Duhon was beside herself with grief. She had just lost the very love of her life: her husband of over fifty years, Ocie. He had suffered with esophageal cancer; six months later he was dead when the cancer spread throughout the rest of his body. It was a horrible, grisly death.
She holed herself up into her apartment after the funeral, wouldn't let anybody come see her. Even her children were driven away. She did not want to see anybody. She sat in her chair and wept; if she didn't do that she just stared out the window, a vacant look in her eyes, face devoid of all expression.
Weeks later, her children came to see their mother, they were shocked: Emerald was losing weight and was eating but very little. They did not know what to do in order to help her; they knew she was grieving, but they knew they had to do something, fast, before she ended up in the grave.
That was when the oldest, Belinda, suggested a pet for Mother. The other three children (Molly, Casey, and Belton) agreed. It was often reported that pets could help with healing and depression and improve the health and well-being of those with depression or suffering from deep grief.
They went to the local animal shelter in Lafayette where they lived and picked out a solid black kitten named Hercules. Herculies had long blue-black fur, a bushy tail, tall, well-tufted ears, and luminous orange eyes. He was beautiful. He was only two months old (eight weeks); he was full of energy.
Belton said that maybe a kitten was too much for their 96 year old mother to handle; but all four children agreed that this might be the very best thing in order to help her before she, too, ended up dying from a broken heart.
And that was how Hercules came into old Emerald Duhon's life.
Reads like the beginning of a wonderful love story.
My mother hated cats, and especially cats in the house because of all the cat hair. I have returned home for the weekend, and my brothers were watching me change the tire on my Toronado, a difficult task because the wheel and tire was so big, with my paralyzed hands and arms. I had just about got the tire mounted, when a black kitten jumped between my arms and really startled me! My younger twin brothers, about seven years old at the time, yelled in unison, “Ron! What a beautiful kitten! Can we keep him! Can we! Can we, huh!"
I told them, I didn't know, that they would have to ask Mom. Knowing Mom's distaste for cats, I wasn't too sure about the outcome. Fortunately, Mom accepted that kitten with open arms and Blackie joined Pete, our faithful mongrel dog as a member of the family. After Blackie came a butterscotch striped cat named Peanuts and many more. Both Tim and Tom still own cats, although Tom has trouble keeping them with predators in rural Arizona.
After being at Dad's bedside for four months in 2006 while he slowly died from pneumonia and other infections after a successful heart surgery with a bypass, exhausting his Medicare enforcing them to go into Medicaid, Mom showed little or no grief at his passing after 62 years of marriage.
