Frankie Weiss and Her Magic

For me, it was a long wait, I was anxious to take these little cats home with me and begin my fatherly duties. Finally, December 4, 1997 came. It was a day that gave my life an entirely new outlook; I became a father, a Mr. Mom. It was a date that I was celebrate every year, although Frankie and Johnnie were oblivious of its meaning to me.

I lost my wife Evelyn of 39 years, short of two weeks, May 8, 1997. That coming June, Evelyn would have been 84 years old, about 18 months older than me. She suffered a massive stroke and was in a coma for about three weeks. As a Jewish family observing the ritual of Shiva, the house was crowded with family and friends. Once Shiva was over and everyone departed to their respective homes and doings. When I closed the door, I was faced for the first time in my life with a deep sense of loneliness and what I now understand was depression. It was bad enough during the eight and one-half years of her illness that we both had to suffer with her gradual dementia. But now, this loneliness was an experience foreign to me. More than once or twice, my self-pity took over and my eyes shed copious tears due to the fact Evelyn was no longer with me, except in my heart. Her touch was in every room in the house. I could not move from one room to the other without knowing that it reminded me of her presence. In that way, I guess the tears released some part of the unending hurt of living alone in a home that was once full of our shared life. We were never blessed with children. I realized I needed something to love, something or someone to need me. I did not want to go “the another woman route,” none could supplant Evelyn and what she meant to me. All our years together had programmed me to the extent that I needed something alive to love and have that love returned. Adopting a pet(s) was the obvious choice.