One, Two, Three, Four, Five

In chronological order and not necessarily in order of importance . . . .

The Lizard was old and failing when we subjected her to what must have been a traumatic move - a new place with a few long drives stuffed into a cat carrier in our trunk.  She lasted about a month in the new place before she refused to eat or drink and we had to have her euthanized.  I wrote at length about the experience of watching an animal receive a lethal injection of drugs and die in my arms.  Because she was a constant presence in our house her death caused the most continuous, immediate trauma, with due respect to the people in the list. I would feel that I was being disrespectful even saying this but I hear it from a lot of other people, the hold animals can have on us.

My mother was, for the most part, fine.  Getting a little drifty but content and happy when she had a few strokes and died peacefully.  I was not able to get home before she moved elsewhere and did not get to speak with her for the last few weeks of her life.  I have some regret that I didn't bust ass home when she took a turn for the worst but it wasn't clear to anyone that she was going to die so quickly - a frequent family joke was that given her constant fear of The Nursing Home that she would live to be 117.  This was also an unsettling loss because I did speak to her often.

Kenner was a special case because of our connection through The Fellowship.  As long as the topic of the government didn't come up he was a relentlessly cheerful man, even at the end, when cancer left him bed-ridden and in a lot of pain.  I never heard him complain about anything . . . ever . . . and I am not making that up.  He was constantly reminding me that "this, too, shall pass."  I had to argue with him when he insisted on seeing how I was doing those last few months.  The guy was in a hospice bed and he was checking up on me.  That's a powerful indication of how good a man he was - either that or how sick I am.

I was privileged for several weeks to be able to talk to him every single day although the morphine made it a hit-or-miss proposition, and the duration of the calls varied depending on how alert he was.  He had always been a very private man, rarely talking about the circumstances of his life or dipping too deeply into some of his closely held beliefs.  He told me stories of his upbringing, all of the events surrounding the death of his first wife, what he believed love was and heaven and god.  I'm sure some of this was Ken The Earthling and some of it was the morphine talking shit and maybe, just maybe, some of what he was relating was a glimpse of what was going to come next.  I like to think that he was dying a connection began to open up into The Beyond and he was beginning to sense things that didn't have temporal content.  Maybe I was getting a sneak preview into heaven.  It was one of most moving, most special things I've ever experienced.

My dad took a few alcohol-related falls after mom passed and was admitted into a skilled nursing home.  He had begun to freely indulge his alcoholism once the restraining influence of my mother was gone - eating very little, rarely leaving his apartment, isolating himself from everyone, drinking vodka constantly.  He rarely took my calls and he never returned them, either.  Our conversations lasted less than 5 minutes.  I did travel back to The Old City at my sister's request after a series of especially serious falls, no doubt caused by his drinking and weakness exacerbated by his refusal to eat.  The scene when I arrived was grim - I had to fight back the urge to gasp when I first set eyes on him.  I was there for a few days, often in his room, before he died in his sleep.  I was glad I was there.  It was not a happy time but it helped me to conceptualize or internalize the difference between life and death.  He had no interest in anything after mom died so I'm happy to imagine him in heaven, in his new body, free from worry and fear.

And I turned 60 right in the middle of this cluster.  I've waxed poetic about this crossing of a threshold, aware that most of the impact is emotional and not physical.  It's not like a switch was flicked on my birthday but I felt like something significant was going on.  A changing of the guard so to speak.

It helps me to write all of this down and sit with it for a bit.  It is a lot.

I have signed up to be a hospice volunteer.  It's time to get busy.  I've indulged myself long enough.  I know that getting past my feelings isn't as simple as that but I also know that it's a powerful first step.