On New Year's Eve I cried a lot, not wanting to leave 2023 for 2024, a year in which I won't have Sylvester at all.
I also went to a new friend Laura's place for a Cozy Pants / Fancy Pants themed party with Lilly, and met some new people including one named Nicole - we shared some similarities like in relationship philosophies and the fact that we had both had to put down cats (them earlier in the year than me). They asked how Sylvester went and I said cancer in 5 months and they said that was traumatic, which was very validating.
Lilly got me home at a reasonable hour because I wanted to be asleep before midnight because I didn't want to be awake for 2024. I got to bed before midnight but didn't fall asleep before then - I heard all the fireworks go off and people shouting and I felt riddled with grief thinking of Sylvester.
I also had the rainbow lights lit to accompany the transition from 2023 to 2024, the first time they were lit since Sylvester's last night with me.
On New Year's Day I wanted to see Al's queer mummer troupe, and was told that noon would be a good time to arrive at one of the performance intersections. Vinayak was there before noon and left, and I was finally reading the Animal Spirit Guides book so I waited until I finished, which is to say that I arrived at 12:30pm at the exact time that the troupe was performing at that intersection.
I thought I'd have to stand around waiting in uncertainty, about whether they'd performed already, or if I would have to wait a long time - and the Universe spared me that with a beautiful coincidence.
Afterward I found a cafe open to read all my news articles in, and the one that happened to be open was the one I'd been wanting to try for a long time - Chapterhouse Cafe.
After I finished reading, it wasn't yet time to meet Amy for dinner so I perused their bookshelf, thinking about The Book Trader and how it magically yielded books that Vanessa and I each had wanted/needed at different times.
The one book I actually sat down to read looked like a children's book, called Samsoon and the Moon. The main character Samsoon just wanted to go (return?) to the moon, but various animal friends asked her to help with things, showing that she was needed on earth. It was just the thing I needed to hear in this chapter of grief, as if Sylvester was the moon. Or the cat curled around the moon, just like that oracle card.