A few weeks ago I watched one of our beloved animals die. Our companion and friend for more than twenty years, one of our kitty cats, wizened with old age, lay on our bed with us and breathed his last. We wept over him. I prayed that he would be allowed to go peacefully. By the grace of God, he was.

For months we had known that any day might be his last one with us. I have had a dog or cat near me, often many, ever since I first came home from the hospital as a newborn, but with the joy that animals bring comes the heartbreak when they reach the end of their days. More times than I care to remember I have seen the nodding head, the sunken haunches, the grizzled muzzle that means that time is running short. More times than I care to remember I have seen the final hour, seen one of God’s creatures suffer bravely as the end draws nigh. Last Christmas, my wife and I steeled ourselves for what we knew was coming. We were grateful that our kitty was with us for the new year. Not long after that we asked the vet to make a house call. He told us what we already knew—there was nothing more that could be done. A couple of days later and our precious family member was gone.

Our kitty was holding on because he wanted to be with us and his other kitty family for as long as he could. But as I watched him fight for each extra hour on earth, I began to marvel at the strange separation between the creature and the life it’s been given. Our cat fought for his life, and then we watched as that life slipped away. The life and the living of it are different. So, too, are the life and the life-force—the power beyond us all that animates our world but which none of us access except indirectly, through the life that makes our own hearts beat and lungs fill, but which is not ours, and which is not us, either. Someone who is not his or her life holds on to that life because the life-force from which it springs is good, is all that we have. All good things in life come from that source of life. It is good to be alive, no matter how much it costs us in suffering, because of the infinite goodness that all life in the universe confesses.

There is goodness in life, but bitterness in death. How I hated the death that took my friend from me. How I hated not knowing where animals go when they die. There are theological disputes about it, I know, but my Heaven, I hope, will be jumping and yelping with critters. All of my dogs and cats of years past will be there, alive eternally, waiting for me. Down here, where death still has a say, I have seen the lives of many animals fade out and flicker away, leaving the body still and cold. Humans, too, are subject to this terrifying triangulation. We can will ourselves to go on living for reasons that go far beyond the self. We can hold on to our lives, mindful of our souls. We know, in a way that we know nothing else, that our lives are not ours forever, and are not even ours while we are alive. When there is pain we can feel ourselves holding on, fighting through. But that self, and the will that steadies it, are merely participating in a life-force that is infinitely bigger than anything we, in our human minds, could imagine.

Animals don’t tell us what they think, but in one of the great miracles of our universe we humans can communicate with animals in our own ways. As I stroked the drooping head of my emaciated feline friend and watched him silently struggle to stay alive for just a little while longer, I understood that he must also sense that the life he has is not his own. Still, he held on to life.

When the end comes for me, I will probably hold on, too. Whatever is good here, where death has stolen in, is life, and life is from the place where there is only goodness forever. It is worth holding onto. It is all that we or any other living thing have.