This is a post long time coming. I just haven’t been able to write it because my grief has been too sharp, too deep, too wide, too painful. But now I think I’m ready to do this one. In it, I tell of the presents ʻUkie brought to me during the last weeks of her life. She was so pleased with herself, and every single evening, she’d bring me another prize. It was as if she was saying, “Look, Mom, I have slayed the terrible yarn giants!” She’d meow so proudly and even though she kept getting into my yarn basket, it gave me a smile. Every single time. I put all the yarns she brought me together, knowing that one day I would want a record of it.

Numbah One day of July, ʻUkulele brought to me:

Numbah Two day of July, ʻUkulele brought to me:

Numbah Chree day of July, ʻUkulele brought to me:

Numbah Four day of July, ʻUkulele brought to me:

Numbah Five day of July, ʻUkulele brought to me… oh, try wait! That’s Kukui’s toy, not yarn!

Numbah Six Day of July, ʻUkulele brought to me:

Looks familiar, right? That’s because she kept bringing me different balls of this same yarn over and over! It was really weird, and I think that she must have really liked it the best.

Numbah Seven Day of July, ʻUkulele brought to me:

Numbah Eight day of July, ʻUkulele brought to me:

A strange knitted sample. That’s all.

Numbah Nine day of July, ʻUkulele brought to me:

By this time, ʻUkulele was starting to not feel good. Sometimes she’d skip a couple of days, then she would start up again.

Numbah Twelve day of July, ʻUkulele brought to me:

Yep. Her very favorite yarn ball.

Numbah Fourteen day of July, ʻUkulele brought to me:

Really pretty, that one, yeah?

Numbah Sixteen day of July, ʻUkulele brought to me:

Now my beloved ʻUkulele was really going downhill. (Ho, hard to write this part. I get plenny wai maka right now.) I was giving her Sub-Q fluids everyday as well as her meds. There were evenings when she wouldn’t bring me anything at all, and I felt really sad. I wouldn’t hear her “I saved you!” meow.

But then, she’d rally, and she began gifting me again.

Numbah Eighteen day of July, ʻUkulele brought to me… yep, you guessed it:

Numbah Twenty day of July, ʻUkulele brought to me:

Numbah Twenty-One day of July, ʻUkulele brought to me:

She especially loved that one, too. One time I found the end of it trailing all the way across the living room carpet!

Numbah Twenty-Five day of July, ʻUkulele brought to me:

Numbah Twenty-Six day of July, ʻUkulele brought to me:

By now, my beloved pōpoki had spent time in the vet hospital getting IV fluids and more meds, but it was pretty obvious that her time here with me was getting shorter.

The very last thing she brought me, and oh, my tears are flowing free now, was one of the handwarmers that I’d knitted for myself. It must have dropped on the floor, and ʻUkulele brought it to me, meowing proudly.

I like to think that my brave girl was telling me that somehow she would always be with me, like holding my hand, ready for me to pet her. How many times have my hands loved on her, carried her, scratched her chin as we both fell asleep at night! It gives me some measure of comfort to think that.

I still have all the yarn she brought me in a basket by itself. Different as the colors are, I wonder if I should knit myself a blanket out of all of them, like a coat of many colors. There would be a lot of this in it, that’s for sure.

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