Coco: Joy of After-Life (A Journey Beyond Death and into the Heavens)

By John Hennessy

John Hennessy grew up with animals as his constant companions. Each time he faced the death of a cherished pet, along with the gut wrenching pain and guilt trips came the same questions, to which there were no obvious answers. 

Then, mysterious things began to happen that he could not explain, almost pushing him to question his own mind at times. This led him on an incredible journey to uncover the truth about what it is to learn, to love, to live, and to leave a legacy, for ourselves and those around us.

Told in a heartwarming, revealing, personal but also uncompromising view that one could only expect from a writer of horror stories, the author steps out of his comfort zone to deliver a book that is more than a memoir of a cat who is sorely missed - it is a discovery of the self, and may challenge everything you think you know about the after-life.

The author leaves it up to the reader to decide for themselves what really happened, but life and death is a personal journey for each and every one of us and accounts vary from person to person. Those who have passed over never come back to tell us what it is like, and how we should shape our remaining days accordingly.

Coco: Joy of After-Life - A Journey Beyond Death and into the Heavens does not deliberately seek to provide explicit comfort and reassurance to anyone who has ever cherished and lost a pet, though readers can take some comfort from it of course. Instead, it sets out to answer some questions of anyone who has ever wondered how these creatures and ourselves fit into the larger scheme of things, both here on the Earth and beyond.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Hennessy
• Release date: Oct 16, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386406501

John Hennessy

Born in 1988, John Hennessy became entranced by the world of fantasy and sci-fi at a young age, playing video games and reading books for many long nights/early mornings. He started writing his debut novel Life Descending during his junior year of High School in 2005. He wanted to write something different for fantasy readers, something without any stock copy/paste characters, supreme evil lords, who you never see and who are just evil because they are evil. A story without class-defined skills, mana potions, and the usual D&D adventure group out on the same old quest. He wanted to write a new story that gets away from the stale fantasies with farmer boys, blacksmith apprentices, and peasants who turn world heroes. Oh yeah, and he really wanted to get away from stories with prophecies and 'chosen ones.'After he graduated from Western Washington University in 2011, he hired Sara Stamey, the editing/publishing professor at Western, edit Life Descending (The Cry of Havoc, Book 1), finally releasing his debut after six years of crafting, learning, rewriting, and absorbing caffeine as fuel so he could stay awake at the keyboard. Life Descending has since been praised by reviewers, even earning a finalist spot in ForeWord Magazine's 2011 Book of the Year Awards. Darkness Devouring (The Cry of Havoc, Book 2) has since been released in late 2012.In 2012 he released At the End (The Road to Extinction, Book 1) as a self-published book. Having spent all his cash on Life Descending (sadly without return), the book went unedited by a professional editor. Despite this major flaw, At the End was well received by most. In February 2013, Permuted Press approached him with an offer to re-release At the End and publish the rest of the trilogy. A second edition of At the End (fully edited!) is forthcoming 2013.John now lives in the Rose Lands of Portland, Oregon, with his wife Katherine, their furry feline Phoebe, and their two budgies Lola and Pablo. He is now at work finishing The Road to Extinction Trilogy. Visit his website at: http://www.johnhennessy.net

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Coco: Joy of After-Life

A Journey Beyond Death and into the Heavens

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Contents

Coco: Joy of After-Life

A Journey Beyond Death and into the Heavens

Copyright

Dedication

Coco: Joy of After-Life

Introduction

Foreword by the Author

1: The Day She Left

was the Day She Stayed

2: Homecoming

3: The Young Mother

4: The New Cat Order

5:  Cola’s Misgivings

6: Emergence of a Leader

7:  Hope, Fear and Denial

8: Coco’s Final Earthly Gift

9: A Bridge to Her Passing

10: Visions of Wonder and Dread

11: Katerina’s Crucial Guidance

into Coco’s World

12:  Euthanasia and Other Terrible Deeds

13: The Deal Your Pet Makes with You

14: Possible Answers to Difficult Questions

15: Joy of Life. Joy of After-Life

16: Precognition and Neural Wonders

17: Contemplation of Death. Joy of This Life.

18: Itchy & Scratchy

19: Cats Are Amazing

20: Things Your Cat Doesn’t Want You to Know

Tabby

Yi-Shara

Cola

Coco

Angel

Gui-Gui

Java

Kato

Jinxie

Tuhkah

Afterword by Xuyi (Kate) Hennessy

Final Thoughts

By the same Author

Forthcoming Releases

Copyright

First published in the United Kingdom in 2018.

Text copyright © John Hennessy 2018

The right of John Hennessy to be identified as the author of this work is asserted by him.

Cover artwork by Claudia McKinney of Phatpuppyart.com © Claudia McKinney 2018.

Typography by Angie Alaya. © Angie Alaya 2018.

ISBN-13: 978-1727763331 (CreateSpace-Assigned)

ISBN-10: 978-1727763335

A CIP Catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade of otherwise, be lent, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the author, John Hennessy.

This is a work of non-fiction. Names, characters, places, incidents, and dialogues are used in the context of this book with appropriate credit given where due. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincedental.

Dedication

For Coco, of course - my ginger haired little goddess.

(28th December 2003 – 1st May 2011).

Also dedicated to her second- born Gui-Gui, whose light was recently diminished, but now lights up the Heavens.

(23rd July 2004 – 28th December 2016).

For Angel, Coco’s first born, and for Java, her third born, who are alive and well at this time of writing. Thank you to you both for the gift of your life and for being present in mine.

Further dedicated to Kato, who was not related to Coco by blood but is still of incredible importance to me. For the best part of two years he was the briefest, brightest and most beautiful of fireworks in my life.

(Date of birth unknown – 26th April 2017).

Dedicated to Jinxie and Tuhkah who bulldozed their way into my life in 2017 and 2018 respectively.

This book would not be complete without mentioning the first cat that came into my life – Tabby. (1982-1988).

Also dedicated to anyone who was blessed to have a beloved someone in their life, be that someone a human or a pet and had to let them go, at least, you know, for a little while.

Coco: Joy of After-Life

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John Hennessy grew up with animals as his constant companions. Each time he faced the death of a cherished pet, along with the gut-wrenching pain and guilt trips came the same questions, to which there were no obvious answers.  Then, mysterious things began to happen that he could not explain, almost pushing him to question his own mind at times. This led him on an incredible journey to uncover the truth about what it is to learn, to love, to live, and to leave a legacy, for ourselves and those around us.

Told in a heartwarming, revealing, personal but also uncompromising view that one could only expect from a writer of horror stories, the author steps out of his comfort zone to deliver a book that is more than a memoir of a cat who is sorely missed - it is a discovery of the self, and may challenge everything you think you know about the after-life. The author leaves it up to the reader to decide for themselves what really happened, but life and death is a personal journey for each and every one of us and accounts vary from person to person. Those who have passed over never come back to tell us what it is like, and how we should shape our remaining days accordingly.

Coco: Joy of After-Life - A Journey Beyond Death and into the Heavens does not deliberately seek to provide explicit comfort and reassurance to anyone who has ever cherished and lost a pet, though readers can take some comfort from it of course. Instead, it sets out to answer some questions of anyone who has ever wondered how these creatures and ourselves fit into the larger scheme of things, both here on the Earth and beyond.

Introduction

Of all the books I have written, this has been by far the hardest. An author of works of fiction can play God – he can create characters and worlds, he can also destroy them, bring them back and destroy his characters all over again. He can make them fall in love. He can make them fall out of love. He can make them kill, find a purpose in their lives, or he can compel his characters to have a true vocation that will help others. When his characters are truly facing their moment of truth, he can help them find redemption. He can make them feel love, hate, passion, lust, jealousy, envy, insanity, benevolence. If the author as done a good enough job, he will bring you, the reader along with him too.

My mother thinks it is a great thing, that I have written so many books. She also says that I do not give myself enough credit for what I do. Personally, I think that’s for others to decide. With the book you hold in your hands right now, all I can tell you is that I have given you my very best.

Another author from my mother’s homeland, indeed, my ancestral homeland of Ireland, the author Frank McCourt, says in his cerebral work Teacher Man that ‘You have to give yourself credit, not too much because that would be bragging."

I agree with Frank McCourt’s assertion, of course I do, so I don’t spend time bragging. That may be at odds with today’s ego-driven and borderline narcissism that is the cauldron of social media, but I don’t wish to promote myself. Posting things about myself on social media almost equates to public flagellation. Perhaps one day I will not consider it so burdensome. But in the modern marketing practices, one has to have a social media presence. However, this book is not about me, it is about Coco, so if you like the book, consider giving it a review. It will make this author of several works of fiction very happy, but also give potential readers encouragement to try my works out. I’d like as many people as possible to read about my beautiful cat Coco.

Moreover, this book is not a work of fiction. It is the story of a beloved pet that dug every claw she had into me and wanted her story to be told. Not for ego, not for her own sense of immortality, and certainly not for mine.

She just wanted you to read it.

Perhaps it’s a way of the spirit – her spirit, reaching out to you, compelling you to just put aside any possible pre-conceived thoughts and beliefs that you may hold; not to challenge you, but to encourage you to place the camera in a different part of your own little world, permitting the lens to focus and capture something else, something that, on closer inspection, we might just be lucky enough to see, and if blessed with even more luck, that we could begin to comprehend what we could see with our own eyes.

Part of the balancing act in this story was to bring Coco to life, to you, the reader, whilst at the same time giving you my personal take on what happened to me in the months following her death. I use that word deliberately, but I am also open to the belief that spirit, that which resides deep inside of us is the truest and most honest essence of what makes us who we are. Our spirit cannot be extinguished, killed or destroyed. Why do you think certain alcoholic beverages are called spirits? It is because when we consume them, and the effects take hold, that we act differently, as if we are possessed by something not of this world – a spirit. It can be diminished at times – we go through challenges in life that can either make us or break us.

Coco’s untimely death is tempered by knowledge and reluctant acceptance that I know she lived a lot longer than other cats and indeed other humans – she lived long enough to become a mother, long enough to see her kittens grow into full, adult cats. She also lived long enough to have a profound, long lasting effect on me.

Writing a book is never easy, but I love what I do, and over the course of these pages, I hope you will feel the love I had for this project. I will be honest and state that I have felt the whole gamut of emotions whilst writing this book. Paradoxically, the book that will be released after this one, another non-fiction work entitled The Mastery of Martial Arts, is where I talk about putting my emotions aside so I could do what I needed to do, as a competitor, teacher and when it come to it – to fight for my life in the street. Emotions are only bad if we allow them to overwhelm and paralyse us. In the 1995 sci-fi film, Star Trek: First Contact, the android Data, who like Pinocchio had longed to be human, was ordered by Captain Picard to deactivate his ‘emotion chip’ when his crew was about to be attacked by a virtually unbeatable foe. This was in a response to Data feeling anxiety and fear at what was about to befall the crew. When he literally flicked a switch to turn off his emotional state so he could focus on the mission with logic, cool headedness and absolute purpose, this prompted his Captain to say ‘Data, I really envy you sometimes.’

Another film that was released that same year, the Al Pacino / Robert de Niro crime thriller Heat, Pacino’s world-weary cop remarks how his emotions are a good thing. They keep me sharp, on the edge, just where I need to be.

So whilst emotions aren’t a bad thing, we need to keep them in check, both for ourselves and those around us.

When Coco died in 2011, I admittedly numbed myself by writing other stories, works of complete fiction about demons and devils, immortals and sorceresses, that served to take me away from the pain of her loss. I even parked my long-waited non-fiction book about martial arts for several years, because in one photo I have of her, I am wearing a kung fu top. Isn’t it the oddest of things that a creature who is far smaller than us and cannot communicate with us in the same way a human would do so, affected me so much? When you set this book down, and if you have a cat or a beloved pet, go to them, have a look at them. Don’t speak or offer them food. Just be present and see what they do. The response is often magical. They may move towards you for affection, or to see if you will give them food. If your pet is a dog, he will want to know if you are taking him for a walk. They do all this without words, and yet, they are communicating directly with you.

Whatever challenges we face in life, we cannot bury our heads in the sand like the proverbial ostrich does. We will not find answers if we do so. Perhaps our noses will fill with grains of sand (it never fails to surprise me the places you will find grains of sand after you’ve been to the beach) and we might even come across a worm. So the ostrich could be looking for an answer to hunger, but for us, we had better keep our heads level and looking forward. That said, it’s okay to look up at the stars in the sky once in a while. I for one never miss a Moon sighting.

However, I am minded at this point to quote from one of my favourite books, The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro where Stevens the butler, who is ruminating about the pain of a lost love says, I don’t know if life should go on, but it must.

Indeed it must. I have come to accept that pain is perhaps the greatest of teachers. As a martial arts instructor for more years than I care to remember, I had conditioned my body to acknowledge the presence of pain but not to succumb to it. For some of you, catching your knee against a solid desk or an elbow against a door would have you hobbling to your bed for several hours or days. Humans do not like pain. It is the opposite of pleasure. I am not masochistic, but I actually took some pleasure from inflicting pain on my body through hard martial arts conditioning, only because I knew I could take my body and mind places that my opponents would only dare to do.

The pain within, the pain that links heart and mind is something else entirely, it varies from situation to situation and it is this that caused me the greatest pain in the year of 2011. But had I not embraced it, something more important than my own fragile ego would not have emerged. In my first book about martial arts, published in 2011, I made an explicit reference to it. I wrote in the dedication to Coco, whose spirit endures. Her spirit does indeed endure. I would like to feel that she was there along with me as I punched out one word after another in this book.

I also think it was her way of letting me heal, but also in the intervening years to work on and improve not only my writing craft, but myself as a person. I am happier, physically and mentally fitter, more rounded and centred than I have ever been.

So before we delve in too deeply amongst the pages of this book, I think it is important to state what I am not, rather than what I am. I am not a medium, spiritualist, or a communicator with the dead. I am, however, someone just like you – currently on this Earth, in this form, having my own unique experience. There are people who can claim to talk to the dead, be they humans or pets. I do not make that claim in this book, I can only speak with honesty about the unique connection I had with Coco.

I’d like to think that this 2018 release is far better than anything I could have written about her in 2011 or a few years afterwards, but as ever, I will leave that in the capable hands of you, the reader, who will give the appropriate level of credit to the book that it deserves.

John Hennessy - July 2018

Foreword by the Author

"Happiness cannot be travelled to, owned, earned, or worn.

It is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude."

Denis Waitley

As I get older, questions that have plagued people of a certain age start to gnaw away at me too. Some of these questions I will have already asked of myself, long before reaching the not so remarkable age of forty-five.

Why am I here?

Why am I still here, when everyone I love is dying around me? Why does the loss of a pet seem to hit me harder than the loss of a human?

How can I still live when I have lost so many others?

Should I fear death? How would I live my life today if I knew the precise date I was going to die? What changes would I make, what actions would I take?

As today is the day that begins the rest of my life, how do I intend to live it?

What is my purpose in life?

More than that, what is my true purpose in life?

None of these questions are easy to answer. Perhaps they are impossible to answer. Or maybe, you can partially answer one or some of them. Not fully, not completely. But you might just get a small sense of satisfaction by doing so.

It is stated that we are the average of the five people closest to us. But just look at our lives for a moment. Many of us would struggle to even count five people that are truly closest to us or who have a positive impact on our lives.

We are here to love one another, aren’t we? The ones who control the world (and it is not the here today gone tomorrow leaders the media presents us with) want us to live in fear, they want us to be fearful, accusative and mistrustful of each other. The ones who truly love us merely want us to get that they love us as soon as our understanding allows, and to share and love without conditions being applied. Don’t be fooled into thinking that anything less than that is love, because it is not.

It all starts out so well. Most of us grow up, I hope, in a loving family environment. We may have brothers, sisters, or perhaps we are an only child, and our parent or parents love us. Then, as we continue to grow up, we start to enter the world and we go to school. We meet other people who are not related to us by blood, but they become important nonetheless. We call them our friends. Some of them will remain friends with us for all of our lives, whilst others will be like an energy force that burned brightly in our lives for a moment before leaving our life in one way or another.

Growing up in our household, we enjoyed the simple things. These are the kind of things we remember, and it permeates into adulthood. Our loved one may buy us a car for a birthday present, but it is the little talks at night or the walks in the park on the first day of spring that we remember.

At our modest home, we had a gas fire that heated the home; the living room to be exact. We would huddle around it, my Nan, my mother, my two sisters and one brother. We would keep warm via a succession of mugs of tea that my mother or my Nan would bring us.

To some of you reading this, it may sound simplistic, an almost nomadic way of life. It was simple, but far from simplistic. This was my unit and I was close to it. There’s a reason why children cry when they go to school for the first time, and an equally strong reason as to why parents cry when they have to leave their children at the school gates.

It denotes that something has changed; for better or worse, one would have to see, but certainly, something has changed and things will never quite be the same.

So why do we cry, whether we are the parent or the child? Why do we not say ‘No! I am not going to this place! I want to stay with you!’

Yes. Where it was safe, a place and a time where we huddled around the fire with our tea and biscuits. A safe time and a reminder of what we should be treasuring in life.

The time period I am referring to is around 1978. I had turned five years old back then and I was getting an awareness of my surroundings. I was too young perhaps to appreciate who or what I was. I was just me. I had a name, and I had siblings, and I had mugs of tea. Or sometimes I had coffee.

I also had something else, though I may not have been aware of that at the time either.

I had a connection. More than that, through these cups of tea and associations of being huddled round the fire with my family, I was experiencing that connection.

In our human thoughts, consciousness and expression of the self, we are conditioned to act a certain way around certain people for a certain amount of time. If we take a step back for a second, apart from our bodies which are pretty much the same, what is it that makes us different?

The first thing expectant parents want to know is ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’

That’s a valid question as the parents will want to prepare the home for the newborn. If the baby is a girl, expect the house to be awash with pink. If it’s a boy, it’s blue. We, as humans, have already started to imprint certain conditions, structures and beliefs on that child, and it hasn’t even been born yet.

There are practical reasons why parents do this, but I experienced something very different when I became a parent many years later – not to a human child, but to a cat. A female cat – Coco. She had a brother and we collected him too and as a happy consequence, we made a new set of connections and experiences together.

Now, people who have a different view from the non-cat or non-pet owning fraternity will say ‘What rubbish! You cannot place the life and meaning of a pet over that of a human!’ Some of my closest friends believe this and have said it to my face.

Their opinions are their own but remain their opinions only. It may be the right one, it may not, but that’s all it is. An opinion. If you think about it too much, you end up giving more weight to it, more credibility and perhaps; worst of all, you end up giving validation to their argument.

That’s one of the worst things we can do in life. You may hear early on in your own life not to hang around with this person because he or she is ‘a bad influence.’ Your wayward friend may indeed be a bad influence, or he may not. It is just an opinion, and if the ones saying it do not know the person, it too is just an opinion, and we should remember that.

There is a physical bond between a human mother and her child and there is no denying that. I don’t put it on the same level as the bond that we as humans can experience with a pet; however, I do choose