Sad Things

Some years ago, C told me about a cat who lived with her family, around LA. Said cat had kittens, and, for various reasons, they were not allowed in the house during the day, but every night Mama cat would bring the kitten inside. Except, one day, C and her mother and her family got home late, and were not there to let the cat in. And some of the kittens were gone. Presumably, probably, taken by a coyote. Upon hearing this story, which was just a casual "this is how we grew up" story, i didn't say anything. It stuck with me, and even though it happened many years prior, and wasn't anyones fault, and the death of those kittens wasn't a thing that affected me in any way... it affected me. It made me sad. And a couple of days or so later, I told C that. I told her it wasn't a complaint or a criticism or anything like that. I like it when C shares things with me, and I want that to happen. This thing still made me sad, and I felt like I needed to tell her that. C just looked at me. She said, There are sad things in the world, and it is okay to be sad about them. So when I am crying, about M, about Sinead, about Paul Ruebens. About all the sad things in the world, or in my own life, i will not apologize for it. I will try to do it quietly, or in a time and place where i am not intruding innappropriately with my feeling on someone else's life (that's another story). But it is okay, appropriate, perhaps even necessary, to be sad about sad things. And sometimes I need to remind myself of that.