Cosmo, a black-and-white cat of undetermined age, came to Tom and me before we had our children, 8-year-old Carter and the 4-year-old twins. He was an old cat when we adopted him from the vet, and nearly 10 years later he sleeps mostly, on the ottoman in the sun.

Carter keeps track of him. "Mom, Cosmo is under my bed now." "Mom, Cosmo is on the chair." Every once in a while, Cosmo would venture outside onto the porch, settling himself beneath the wild green arc of the tomato plant, and I'd hear, "Mom, I think Cosmo is pretending he's in the jungle."

Sometimes I wondered how it would happen that Cosmo would go--in his sleep I hoped, maybe in the middle of the night--but the thought never stayed with me for very long. It trailed away like a wispy cloud, or the smoke from the forest fires: one morning the wind blows in from the Pacific, and the sky is temporarily cleared, and the heat and ash of the summer are gone, except for the lingering memory of it, now what was I thinking about?

Until I find Cosmo sleeping on the bare wood floor in a spot he's never been before, his body so still that I know he's not sleeping--he's gone. Even as I bend down to pick him up, my eyes fill with tears. He's a silly old cat, a long-haired shedder, a howler-at-the-moon. And yet, I already miss him.

He fits into my arms just like a baby, and I feel how thin he's become, how light. In life, he never would have tolerated me carrying him like this: he was a prideful cat. But I don't know how else to hold him.

Tom is home, freshly back from 16 days on the fire lines. His hair still smells like smoke, even with a shampoo. I bring Cosmo to him, unsure of what to do. Tom will bury him on the hilltop beneath the pine tree, but what do we tell the kids?

Briefly, I consider making up a story, something easy, like saying Cosmo's gone away to live at another house. Or, he's taking a long vacation. Or even, he's disappeared into thin air! With each of these, I can foresee more questions, requiring more fabrications. So I say it softly, almost a whisper, as if quieting it could make it hurt less, "Cosmo died."

Carter's eyes redden immediately, then he hugs me around my waist and buries his head in my shirt, something he hasn't done in a long while. He asks to see Cosmo one last time, and I send him off to Tom and the tree on the hill.

Bennett walks through the house saying, "Cosmo's dead! Cosmo's dead!" and then everything is dead, the stuffed monkey and Elmo and Thomas the Tank Engine. This talk will pass if I let it run its course, so I distract the two little boys by offering bribes of Popsicles on the porch.

With Carter, it's more difficult. Later, at bedtime, he returns to it. "Why did Cosmo die, Mom?

I could tell him it's because Cosmo was old, but that's not really what Carter is asking me. He wants to know about the Big Questions: why we're here, how long do we have, why do things have to change?

When I was Carter's age, my mom took me to meet my great-grandmother, who was in a far-away nursing home. In her lifetime, she'd seen the invention of the light bulb and the telephone, automobiles, airplanes and a man on the moon, my mom had explained. Just imagine it!

I remember feeling shy and nervous. I remember how soft my great-grandmother's skin was, when I kissed her cheek. I remember her hair, like a white cloud above her head. My mom told me much later that she'd asked great-gram what the secret of life was. "Adjust to change," she'd answered.

I don't think this will help Carter, now. Instead, I say, "Cosmo had been going downhill for a long time. I think he was ready."

"Going downhill?" Carter repeats, confused.

"It's an expression. It's what people say when they mean life has been getting harder."

"It should be going uphill, shouldn't it?" Carter says. "Going uphill is worse. And Heaven is uphill. Cosmo's been going uphill, hasn't he?"

I used to think that in order to be a good mother, I needed to have all the answers. That I should always know what to say, and I should be able to say it perfectly. Of course I realized within the first few hours of new motherhood that this is impossible.

"Yes. You're right. It should be going uphill. Cosmo was going uphill for a long time."

Uphill and downhill, clouds and smoke, life and death. I think about the way fire reduces a mighty Ponderosa pine to nothing more than smoke and cinder; I think about forests in the first season after a fire, how green and lush the re-growth, all because of the ash. Nothing is ever lost.

I try again, and this time I tell Carter what's in my heart. "I don't know why Cosmo died. I wish he didn't. I really miss him."