Family van life won’t ever be the same again. We’ve loved you since forever, our very best buddy, Vata Man, and we lost you on the way.
I don’t know why I thought it would always be the same. It started out as an idea in 2018, with two kids, three pets, and enough love and barely enough room to hold us all. But by 2021 it had become a life, a passion, the best stories we could’ve imagined we’d ever make. Filled with such a free joy, an energy of making grand possibilities. All of this abruptly ended on May 20, 2021.
Our Van is Missing a Piece of our Heart
We lost you, Vata Man, our very best buddy, a piece of our hearts. You were always the best of our whole van life, our cuddle bear, the best lap cat, a part of our family’s soul. The star of the show, from the very beginning. Why the kidney stone took you out, and two surgeries failed and didn’t let you stay with us, even for just a little longer, we will never know.
What I do know is that now forever, the van is forever more empty and has less laughter without you. For your whole 15 years, I used to sing to you, my buddy, my buddy, wherever I go, Vata goes. But now, you aren’t going wherever I go, and you left a space that can’t ever be filled.
How many memories of silliness and care. What are we supposed to do now that you aren’t here, trying to perpetually escape? Or without you cuddling us, and your sister kitty in your spoiled van cat cubby. What is life without you as the alpha of the pack? Making us all laugh as you scared a German Shepard ten times your size into complete submission. How can you not be there outside at the campsite taking in the fresh air? But then going missing in action.
You could open any kind of door, and let yourself out at leisure. Such a trickster you were. If I could count each hug and kiss, it would have to be over 5,000 in 15 years. It seemed like was creation of a million memories in almost 100,000 miles. While we had the naive belief that we had time for a million more.
Vata, We’ve Loved You Since Forever
Then when we finally hit the record mark of 100,000 miles on the van odometer going over Siskiyou Pass, you weren’t there. I can’t believe you weren’t there. And the start of van life, all of us, now as we know it, fades away. Your perfect sister kitty Pitta, and loyal German Shepard, Chandra, someday will fade too. What will be left is the ghost of of how it all began.
Truly irreplaceable, our very best buddy, our one of a kind forever. It’s only now I really get the fact that someday this van will have no pets, and two kids, but then that will fade too. Into this van having two parents, missing their grown-up adult kids, and Spirit World pets. What we will have is all those memories, from the beginning to the end, when we fade away too.
What a ride back to the beginning in 2018, when people would be shocked that we could fit 7 human and furry family members into a 22′ van. Van life isn’t always easy, and we juggled stress and tears, cramped and cranky, but very moment was held by unconditional love.
Had I known it was your last van adventure, I would have held every moment so precious, but one rarely gets that lesson. Even now we are back to the false expectations and forced amnesia that tomorrow is guaranteed. It is always true, no matter how it happens, that “death will come, always out of season” – Big Elk, Omaha Chief. Evermore, I just wanted to hold onto that season forever.
We Lost You But Will Find You Over and Over
Making a family van life started out as an idea in 2018, when Vata Man, you had just turned 12 years old. And we all wanted to have you with us until you turned 20. I guess I thought I could wish it into being, because I could not imagine life without my cuddle bear.
What is van life without our handsome tuxedo lap cat known to all? At the toll booths, ski resort check-ins, the coffee drive-thrus, there you were right there in my lap. Our handsome, wearing-a-tuxedo most regal cat, with the biggest heart. Right there in the front of the van on my lap, saying hello.
Our very best buddy, who always let the girls carry you like a rag doll, with love, throughout their whole childhood. How loyally you loved them to the very end. Vata Man, the cat that made adamant non-cat people, actually decide they love cats.
Vata Man, your imprint across time is bigger than you ever were in your furry kitty body. The cat who never quite knew he was a cat. We hold you in our hearts forever, and will never leave your memory behind. My imagination could not comprehend how much a heart was capable of loving, until you filled our lives, and then had to leave.
For Eternity
You were the first to explore what comes after this life in this family. So time will pass, but I believe it will somehow always be the seven of us, together forever. No matter where we wayfind, in this life and beyond, our hearts are always connected. So then, you’ll find us, and we’ll find you; we’ll find each other over and over, for eternity.
On the winding way, in some cosmic space, will be our souls, unchanged. Long, long after the van is a rusted, hallowed out shell echoing with memories, and growing wildflowers on the mountain.
