meirwen_1988

As some of you know, we've got a number of cats that have decided we're the best outdoor dining in town. This summer there were four litters, and, for the most part, they are too standoffish to even trap/neuter/release, but one, Salt & Pepper, called Pepper, decided humans are cool. By July he was headbutting our hands as we put food in the bowls, by August he was letting use stroke him and skritch under his chin, and by September we could pick him up. Last week Rowan scheduled an appointment for either him or Frenchie (the formerly domestic black and white male who arrived in September), whichever one we could get into the carrier, to go to the Dr. to get shots so we could bring him in, and then we'd get the second. I wasn't sure we were keeping them, but they needed to not spend the winter outside.

We got home from Massachusettes on Sunday, and didn't see either of our boys. We still haven't seen Frenchie. But yesterday, when I got home from work, Pepper was in the yard. He started to leave, but then I called him, and he trotted over to the car to see me and get petted. I went inside, and then put more food on the porch. He was very hungry, but let me pet him and purred mightily. That was a first--coming to greet me. The last heart-string got plucked. I didn't think I could foster him now--he was ours.

Later that night Duchezz took the pugs out, and Jiro trapped Pepper in the back yard. Usually he runs away, but he was just laying in the grass, hissing at Jiro. She got the dog away, and Pepper got up, and limped up to the back porch where we've set up some crates with shielding and blankets, and crawled inside his preferred crate. She came in worried, and asked if I'd keep an eye open.

This morning she told me Pepper hadn't come to breakfast, and he didn't appear to be in the crate. Well, we thought, he actually likes the front porch better, so maybe he felt safer there.

This afternoon when I came home from work, Pepper was on the back porch. He was sleeping, laying on his side, his head was resting on some of the blanket that had come out of the crate. But he didn't raise his head when he heard the car.

My heart in my mouth, I thought "There's a chance he's sleeping." I called his name, and he still didn't stir. I bent down, looked at the beautiful sheen on his perfect fur, still the softest, densest I've ever touched. Under the fur his body was stiff and cool.

Our sweet boy came home to say goodbye. God, I'm going to miss him.

Yesterday, during my office hours, my office mate Roman was also holding his. Roman is first generation American (his parents both emigrating from Mexico before he was born), raised Mormon, and grew up in southern California. We were sitting there, he checking his email, me grading papers, doing that before I turned on the computer, since I know what a brain suck that can be. He turned his desk chair so it faced me and said, "Can I ask you a question?"

"This has come up before when we've gotten one of those 'sad news' emails, but, well, I just don't understand what exactly is "calling hours" and how does one behave...what does one do?"
What followed was a conversation where he learned about mourning customs and public bereavement here in the Northeast, and I learned about how things are done in the Southwest, or, as he put it, "at least, in California." And then a bit about how things are done in Catholic Mexican immigrant families (some of his childhood friends). And since I'd used Morguhn's service as an example, what is specific to a Mason's service and burial, which led to what is specific to a Mormon rite.

I think we tend to assume that we "know how it's done," if we're "American," but as we both learned--we don't. I think you just do the best you can, and hope you're getting it right.

And then Roman told me about the specific email that had led to his original question.

Ever since I've been on the faculty, one of the most kind, supportive colleagues I've had is Tim. He's one of the dramatically oversized people who elicits the "Oh, Tim, please lose some weight--we don't want to lose you" kind of thought in those he works with. But, of course, he never does. When his middle daughter, Elizabeth, was working on her nursing degree he put us in contact because she was doing a paper on fairy tales, and he knew I did a focused unit on fairy tales and asked if I could help her.

About two years before Morguhn died, he lost his wife, Susan. Susan had been ill for many years, in ways that traumatized her family, that exhausted Tim, and broke everyone's heart. She fought her demons for years, but finally she lost her battle. When Morguhn died Tim didn't come to the calling hours, but after I came back to work, he stopped and talked to me, calmly, with compassion and the kind of understanding I needed. "No one else 'gets it,' Rosemary, except those who have gone through it. I didn't, before I lost Susan. No one can say anything to make it better. But I get it." And we walked our separate ways, on to our classes.

Tim retired last month. Between his time as a public school teacher, and his time at the college, he had more than his 30 years in. He'd met someone, a wonderful guy who lives down near Ithaca, and was moving down there, and teaching online as an adjunct retired faculty for MV. He'd finished improving his house, so Elizabeth would have a warm, safe home to live in, as she was going to stay in the house they were sharing; his last chick to leave the nest was going to keep the nest he was leaving. He looked so good last month--his color good, a spring in his step to the extent his health allows.

Sunday, Elizabeth complained that she wasn't feeling too well. When she woke up Monday morning she was feeling even worse, frighteningly worse. Tim drove her to the hospital.

Three hours later she was dead.

Pulmonary embolism.

I went to the calling hours today. I knew, given when I could be there, that I would miss all the MVCC people, who would be there in the first hour. But Tim is one of those people who just wrapped himself around my heart, and I needed to go. So I went.

I knew no one. I stood there, after looking at the photographs of the girl I only knew through emails, of their family, intact. At adults I knew must be his children, but who I didn't know, and didn't know me. So I went and stood where Tim could see me, and listened as he talked to others. "About the only thing that could have been faster is if she'd been hit by a bus," he said with the wry humor that is actually a substitute for wails of grief. And then a pause. A look down. "I...don't know....I'll still processing Susan's death..." in a slightly puzzled, lost voice, still with all the music it always carries, but in a minor, diminished key. He held out his hand, and I took it. He squeezed it hard, as he kept talking to the people I didn't know. I leaned over and laid my cheek against his and kissed it. Then I stood, gave his hand another squeeze, and then left. I didn't say a word, and neither did he.

At times like these, I think you just do the best you can, and hope you're getting it right.

Tonight is one of those clear, cold nights, and as I looked up at the sky, standing in the silver light so bright I could read by it, I heard in my head "Then look for me by moonlight,/Watch for me by moonlight,/I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way."

I went inside to let the pugs out. Their kennels are in what was the bedroom. At the top of the loft is a big, multipaned window that is just the right height to let the moonlight stream through and fill the room, sometimes so bright it made it hard to sleep. He said he'd watch sometimes, while I slept, bathed in moonlight.

Nineteen years ago tonight I was carefully stitching lace to white silk, pleased there was a week to go before it was to be worn: for a change, I was going to be done before the last minute.

Tonight is full of memory. The wheel turns, as the wheel wills.

A old friend posted some pictures. From 1989.

There was a photo there I was sure Morguhn had never seen. I thought to myself, he's going to love seeing that when he gets home.

So, coping mechanisms apparently in place, though I didn't know it. Until they fail to coincide with reality. And then, well...

More bourbon. Definitely need more bourbon.

A friend posted her Pennsic XXXVIII pictures on Facebook. There were lots and lots of pictures from the battlefield. I began to scan them, looking for familiar armor, familiar heraldry.

Per fess embattled Or and vert, in chief a demi-dragon erect and in base four mullets in cross counterchanged.

It wasn't there. Anywhere. At first there was the old disappointment, that he hadn't been captured in any of the pictures. It happened sometimes--not often, but sometimes. And then...the why...why that familiar form, familar surcoat was not in any of those pictures. Would never be again.

Yet again I remembered the thing I never forget.

It is a strange thing, how memory and life mingle, intertwine, and ultimately can become indistinguishable. So much of who we are, what we do, is indivisible from the memory of what we were, what we did. It is as though we exist simultaneously in the then and the now, and those who were with us then are simply out of sight, as they were in those times when they were somewhere else--but only for an hour, a work day, a weekend. They are not gone, they are only absent. Their smile, their laughter, their gentle touch something for which we only need wait a little while, and then we will have them again, building more images of now, that will be a thing, which, in turn, creates the who we are.

At times that illusion is a blessing, creating a foundation, a peace, that allows us to put one step in front of the other, to plan, to hope, to dream.

At others, it is a cruelty, like one of the dreams in which they still live. Then we wake to a world where yet again they are gone, and we lose them. Again.

So, we had a plan, agreed upon Thursday, confirmed Friday. After an OES rehearsal this morning we were going to either El Canelo or The Balkan for lunch, go to Lowe's and/or Home Depot to acquire needed items. And then, most importantly, heading to the theatre to watch The Fast and the Furious: New Model, Original Parts.

But, well, the dogs. Were the cute.

When we took them out this morning Ping was reluctant to come back inside, rolled on his back exposing his little pink tummy to the sun...

So, we went to rehearsal. And lunch--El Canelo in Utica (I was much less happy with this one than the one in Oneida). And Lowe's and Home Depot (we even replaced the wheelbarrow Massachusettes squire destroyed in September). And we stopped at the evil liquor emporium and I acquired a truly self-indulgent bottle of Bordeaux.

And then we came home so that the little four leggeds could run around in the sunshine. Duchezz used the new wheelbarrow to collect the astonishing number of shingles that fell into the yard this winter. Everyone is back inside, the NFL Draft is on, and all is well.

It's a plan of salad for dinner, then wine and cheese later in the evening. An early night, early Mass, and then getting ready for the reception for RW Jane, Grand Representative to Oklahoma.

Two weeks and one day left in the semester have the students in a panic, but we'll be fine.

At home, there is pain, there is loss, but the sun came up this morning, the four leggeds love us, and we have wonderful friends.

One step at a time, one foot in front of the other.

I wish my mind could move off the hamster wheel that has me looking through Liam Neeson's eyes at his wife's death certificate. I think I know exactly what it says.

My heart breaks for them all.

We went. We are home safe.

It was hard. A different hard than Harvest Raids.
Actually harder than Twelfth Night. In its own way, much harder.

drd_pyrat  made me cry, for all the right reasons, when she showed me the hood she's been making. She made sure I saw it in a "controled setting," and even brought a box of tissues. Morguhn won it for me in a raffle at the same event two years ago. He was so proud of himself. So sweet. It was a wonderful event, and a treasured memory, now commemorated in a beautiful piece of artistry.

blairya , wyz_azz , teresagabriela , and baronessekat were blessedly "there," and baronsteffan , chamfron , hora_somni , and apidae all made the day lighter. I waved at chez_mathilde , who seemed always to be in a class (go fig--you'd think it was a schola or something), 2bluefish made me smile, and I had long lovely chats with good friends. And I got warm loving hugs from T and his mom visrose . Duchezz's class went well, the pugs got a trip, and the drive both ways was uneventful. We had dinner at TGI Friday's just outside of Victor, and listened to good music on the way home, including my new Sharleen Spiteri CD, a buy inspired by an episode of The Graham Norton Show (okay, her outfit is totally horrid, and the story she tells is not behavior I generally endorse, but, in context, seems somehow...defensible).  However, it was her performance of "All the Times I Cried" which really made me drop the coin. The CD is wonderful, even endorsed by Duchezz, whose musical taste rarely coincides with mine. It helped.

I am wrung dry, and shaking with suppressed pain and tears. If this was this hard, next weekend will require some level of coping skills I'm not sure I have.

Heading to bed.

Trying to get through the day.
Trying to accomplish tasks.
Trying to....

...but everyone would say I shouldn't try not to cry.

Trying to get through the day.
Trying to accomplish tasks.

Trying to get thr...