Kids In The Woods

One of the things I love about kids is that they don't pretend to be shocked by things. A group of kids finds a dead bird in the woods and it's a curiosity to them. They would like to touch it and talk about it. They find death fascinating and fly into action when we (the parents) suggest that the proper and kind thing to do would be to bury the poor dead bird. Sophie shrieks "I know where the shovel is and I will save the day!" and flies off to get the shovel.

The digging is rough going and Sam investigates Sophie's progress with a stoic eye. Watching the kids is like reading a surreal Carson McCullers book about some cobwebby town filled exclusively with crippled dwarfs. Except not depressing.

Sophie gets about an inch dug up when Ben and his brother Finn decide to help out. Digging graves is pretty entertaining, as it turns out. They manage to get a dubiously shallow grave dug and put the bird in it and cover it with loose dry soil. Immediately they start playing and forget the bird. They run across the grave dislodging their handy work and must be reminded not to unearth the dead thing. I suggest they put a big rock on the spot so they'll remember where it is. A smallish rock is placed on top.

The kids have put death to rest by donning a gravediggers shoes. The moment for them is ephemeral, just another interesting but soon forgotten activity in their day. They may mention it later while taking their evening bath, or dredge it up to impress people later on, but mostly they just took it in stride.

Quite a lot of adults believe that young kids just don't get death. That they don't really understand the gravity of it. The seriousness and finality of it. Maybe not all kids do, but I believe that most of them get it pretty well the first time they see a bug die; that the bug is not going to become reanimated. I think that as we grow up we learn to not handle death well from other adults. We are not supposed to take it in stride because it is the single worst thing that can happen to being. Right? I happen to disagree but that is neither here nor there. I just love how kids can process information and experiences of living and dying with complete sangfroid.

Obviously there are all kinds of things that can happen to kids to frighten them and scar them emotionally. They aren't indestructible. They need care and love and a certain amount of protection. But as long as they have a healthy home and caring parents it's amazing how resilient they can be.

From Seed Back To Earth
Or so the story goes

I am practically holding my breath. This whole dying thing is much quieter, more private, and full of anticipation than I really knew. I suppose it must be tenfold worse when it's a person and not just a cat. Yet, I have to say, I really don't know if the death part is all that different. Sure, you will miss some people more acutely than you would a loved cat, but, the dying isn't really different. I find myself wondering about my own death. I can't tell you how many times I plotted and planned for it when I was much younger. Now that I don't really want it, it has a different taste in my thoughts.

Will it be quick? Will it take ages? Will I have to watch my loved ones watching me endlessly for the last breath? Will I be able to crawl away to die alone? I used to think that the worst must be to die alone. I don't think that any more. I can see that my cat doesn't want us to bother him too much. He has periodically dragged himself out to lay inert near us, and then stumbled back to the privacy of dark corners. Right now he is in the office which is where he will die unless I physically move him. He is not dead yet, though his breathing is slow and shallow and he can no longer hold himself up at all.

I told myself that if he was still alive today I would call the vet to make the appointment to put him to sleep. But part of me feels that it would be cowardly of me to do that. He seems quite at peace, just breathing. That's all he's doing and it almost seems like he's meditating. He's in the ultimate essence of self as he's preparing to die, because that's all he is now, a being, breathing. He doesn't even look like he's waiting.

If I die slowly without pain I will tell Philip not to call the vet for me. I will crawl into the closet where I will cease to worry about corporeal concerns and just breath. (And pee on the towels, probably.) A simple beautiful part of life. It's the first thing we do when we exit the womb and it's the last thing we do before we leave. Breathing is the essence of being. I understand why it's so important to our connection with the universe.

I'm lucky to live in Oregon where I can, under certain circumstances, be assisted in putting myself out of misery when I get to the end of my life. It makes me feel comfortable knowing that I have the option.

I don't think Ozark is much aware of us now. To move him would be to interrupt his privacy. His last quiet moments here on earth. There is no way of knowing how he feels, what his kitty brain registers but I'd be willing to bet it isn't full of regret or sorrow or other things us humans indulge in.

Life and death really are the great equalizers, aren't they? We all unfold limb by limb (if we've got them) until we reach some kind of apex in life, and then we all begin to gradually fold back inwards. Some more quickly than others. Like the life of a flower. Donald Trump will one day be exactly as a blowzy flower about to drop all it's petals and his wealth will be meaningless. Unlike Ozark he may feel regret. We all borrow bodies, whether they belong to ants, to melons, to humans, or to birds, and then we shed them.

What I find humbling is the extreme selfishness of those who are being left behind by another being. We have all these expectations and demands, we feel we have all kinds of rights when it comes to us and our loved ones. We feel outrage when anything we love dies. We are hurt. We are lonely. We miss who and what we miss. We have longing. We have needs. We want death to work out a certain way so that us, (the ones not dying), can get through it as easily as possible.

I find myself impatient of this whole dying process. Why is Ozark hanging on so long? What is he doing? I'm going to have a ton of cat piss to clean. I want to start cleaning now but aside from the great inertia I've been experiencing lately I know I won't do it until Ozark is finished. I wonder if I should go dig a grave now? Or later? Will he die at a convenient moment for us to dig a big hole and bury him? What if I have to have his dead body hang around for a day? Will I really ever be able to go through this again? Maybe we shouldn't ever get more pets. It's going to be even worse with Chick because she's so much bigger. Oh god, what if I have to watch Philip and Max go through this? What if I'm the last one standing?

I guess if that happened I would have no problem dying alone.

Then I listen to myself.

And I wonder what my rush is. What's my discomfort? Is it that I'm worried that Ozark is in pain or that I am in pain? Every time he tries to stand up I feel like I would like to die in his place if only he would not make me see how he can't walk, how helpless he is becoming as his body is shutting down. Maybe it scares me because I wonder if that's going to be me one day, trying to get my bladder to a toilet and falling down like a drunken sailor instead. I suddenly think that maybe I was wrong in thinking that the worst way to die is in an accident or by being murdered. Would that be better than to slowly shut down while everyone around you just holds their breath and waits?

Why should I be in a hurry to get this over with? Death is just another one of those facts of life that humans have become increasingly detached from. People used to die at home because there was nowhere else to die. Their families would have to dig the grave, prepare the burial clothes, and then prepare the body itself. All of which I'm going to do for my cat.

When he gets around to dying.

So I was asking myself what my real discomfort is and I suppose the answer is that it pains me to see an animal I have known for over thirteen years, and loved unreasonably, become incapacitated. I am powerless to help him.

Then I look at him just turning inward and I recognize this as a universal process. This is, what is. There are a million ways to die and I think that this is one of the most peaceful ones.

I really don't like this whole dying thing. But I want Max to understand that it's natural and not something to turn his back on. So I'm not turning my back on it either.

It's weird though, I have had the urge to take a couple of last pictures of him but I cannot let myself do it because it's already too late. It would be like photographing someone while they were on the toilet, or while they were vomiting, or crying. I just know it's not right. It's a line I can't cross. So I have gotten the last pictures of my kitty. I am trying not to constantly bother him. I am trying to be mature and let him pass in peace. I'm trying really hard not to gather him up in my arms for a last snuggle. I know he doesn't want me to do that. I know that all of that is just for me at this point. A selfish desire of the living.

I want to write about other things. I'm ready to make pasta and take pictures of it (I got my camera back). I'm ready to talk gardening. I'm ready for all kinds of levity and offense, but I can't seem to move on from this topic until Ozark does.

All for a cat. Who started as a tiny seed. Just as I did.

I want to know what other people think about death, about the process, about your own hopes? I want to know what makes you most uncomfortable about seeing a pet or another family member die? Do you feel only blinding sorrow or have you found a philosophical view of it as well? What comforts you the most when you have lost a loved one? Do you fear it? For yourself? For others?

It shapes us all. I'm looking at it now. I think that life without death is like a run on sentence and eventually the eye wants a period. The mind wants a period. It offers rest to everyone.

Jane Austen Didn't Smoke

I rented the movie "Mansfield Park" this week. Not the one that was done in the seventies, but the more recent one featuring Jonny Lee Miller as the parson-bound hero. Yeah, more on that later. First though, I just want to make a complaint against all modern film makers of historical stories in which they feature the cigarette as a symbol of women's liberation. I'm not saying there is no chance in hell any woman smoked a cigarette before the 1920's, because it would take some exhaustive research to prove that, and I may find that buried under a thousand tomes in which women in history never touched tobacco, is the one story, the one biography in which a woman in the early 1800's indulged in smoking.

But here's the deal: smoking tobacco was not a widespread indulgence in the early 1800's for anyone. Snuff was regularly indulged in and perhaps sometimes even by racy women (though this is debatable) , but you would have been mighty hard pressed to find cigarettes anywhere at that time. Now, assuming you could find it, you wouldn't, as a "modern" 1800's liberated woman even think of smoking a cigarette to show your freedom from convention. Smoking as a symbol of your free spirit and staunch independence did not find it's place amongst women until the 1920's.

In "Mansfield Park" the character Maria Crawford is supposed to be a liberated, somewhat wild, "free spirited" woman of questionable moral center but solid social standing. Uh huh. So in this version of the film she is shown playing pool and smoking a cigarette. I've seen this slipped into some other modern versions of historical stories. It's supposed to help us relate our modern sensibility to a much more complicated and archaic sensibility that I guess the directors don't think modern people are capable of understanding without these little suggestive devices.

I really hate it when film makers try to jazz up perfectly perfect classic stories with their modern humor. As in the miserable Gwyneth Paltrow version of Emma in which the quiet humor Jane Austen wrote into the original story was dumbed down in an effort to make it funny to modern audiences.

The whole beauty of period pieces, for me, lies in how unlike modern times the stories are. The enchantment is to be taken to a time when women didn't wear g-strings to the beach. I don't want to see a period film in which all the characters are exactly like modern people. Society and it's expectations have changed dramatically, what value is there in a period film if all it does is dress modern people in antiquated styles of clothing? All the fun is gone out of period films for me when directors don't understand the material they are working with, or understand it but don't think it's good enough for us liberated people of the twenty first century.

So, when I see women smoking in period films set in the 1800's, I get really annoyed. Such a lazy cheap device.

About Jonny Lee Miller... I thought his version of this character was a little milkier than necessary, yet he was good. Unfortunately I had a very difficult time keeping Angelina Jolie's face out of my brain every time he came on screen. As in: what kind of man marries Angelina Jolie?

In other news, my cat has crawled away and I can't find him. It didn't occur to me to lock his kitty door to keep him inside but I'm afraid he may have exited stage left for his final and private scene and while I would be relieved if he has finally let go of his poor poor body (he hasn't eaten in four days, yet as late as 5:45 am he was tottering around the hallway, mostly still alive) I don't want to have to search for his body in the yard, because, what if we don't find it until the dog does?.

We've been spending lots of time snuggling up to his bony little body and telling him how much we love him and last night we all sat in the bedroom watching Scooby Doo (I suffer!!) and it was such a nice family moment. Ozark on the bed with us all. I had hoped that Ozark would die while in our arms or in our little circle of warmth because I didn't want him to die alone. But perhaps most dying beings do prefer to die alone. Is it, after all, the most private moment in our lives?

Oh, back to blithering about idiotic things... can anyone actually imagine Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt still together as old people? I can't. I can't even imagine them being old separately. Will Angelina still be adding to her zoo of children when she's seventy?

The sky could not be more blue out there this morning nor the air more frigid. It's a gorgeous winter day. I think winter is the best time to be born and the best time to die. What to do on such a day? I have a feeling that it will, at least in part, be spent digging a grave. I have all these random things floating around in my head waiting for a chance to air and all I can talk about is grave digging and crawling away to die. Typical Angelina. My blog sure has been a dark place to come lately. Where's the levity gone to? I wonder what other dark events await me?

The queer thing is that even though my blog still wears it's serious colors, I feel so much lighter inside. (Except for the agony of watching my tabby die). I mean, I do feel that something has opened up in my life and let the doves out. I feel as though a new beginning has finally unfolded itself in the light of day and is no longer a tight bud of unknown possibilities waiting for spring under the dark cover of winter. I feel like the blade of a daffodil breaking through cold hard ground in midwinter. Carrying with me all the potential for bright yellow scented hope.

I can't tell anymore if my lack of desire for travel is because the idea of traveling with my child makes me so anxious and exhausted I almost want to crawl right back to bed, or if it's because it feels like all the adventure I could want is right here, under my nose. Is it anxiety or contentment? There is an expectation amongst my peers (it feels like) that any person of real character and culture desires the chance to travel far and wide. I've been to Israel, Paris, New York, (plus many other states), and Scotland.

Time to go get dressed and look for my cat.

Update: I found the cat in my bathroom cupboard- STILL ALIVE. I believe he has hunkered down there to die unseen. So I will not disturb him there but will lock the kitty door in case he gets another weird burst of life. He can barely walk but clearly he is reluctant to let go of life. This is getting a little tortuous for me. But I have promised myself that unless he appears to be in pain I will not call the vet. The vet is unlikely to be available today anyway. I'm trying not to let myself be a coward about this. I do not like death at all.

The Expected Guest

How does one go about watching another being die? Are we supposed to wear a certain face? A speakingly sad posture? Is there an acceptable voice modulation specific to using around those who are not long for the world? How do you talk to them? What do you say? Do we walk through rooms in whispers? Do we allow any light to crack through the grim shadows growing long?

I knew my cat was dying before we did these last tests, just to be sure. So when I found out today that my cat is definitely dying, I wasn’t surprised, but I was surprisingly sad. I say surprisingly because I’ve been preparing myself for this news for two weeks now. Honestly? Longer than that. I don’t know if it was obvious from Ozark’s growing body hollows or from his face, but I saw it coming. It’s not really a mystery I think. He’s been changing pretty seriously over the course of the last six months.

Is death any different for animals than it is for humans? I don’t really think it is. I think that when it comes to death we’re all pretty much on the same plane. Or, we would be, if humans didn’t constantly muck every simple process up and make it into something we can’t talk about, can’t face, can’t approach, or even admit to.

I will admit, without qualms, that if my child’s kidney was failing I would absolutely put him on an organ donor list whereas I will not do that for my cat. However, it is more natural to just let go when the body shuts down than to desperately stay the moment of truth indefinitely. Even for humans. I understand why we do it. I do. But I will tell you that if I get cancer I will try to treat it within reason, but I don’t intend to live the rest of my life doing chemo and just hanging on to hang on.

There are so many different ways to approach death. I know that for most people it’s important to fight for your life no matter what that really means. And if anyone suggests they don’t want to fight any more? Others jump into action full of fear, indignation, desperation, as though death was something unnatural. Often it is avoided temporarily at immense cost to everyone involved, and most of all to the being who is closest to the “other side”.

If I say I know for sure that I wouldn’t want a transplant for my heart if it was failing I’m willing to bet that anyone within earshot would vehemently deny that I could know what I would do once in that situation or that I would definitely decide to try for a transplant. Maybe, but I looked death in the eye when I was fifteen and it wasn’t a fear of death that kept me from killing myself. Fear had nothing to do with it at all. I wasn’t afraid to kill myself. I first didn’t do it for the sake of a friend. And later I didn’t do it because I realized that I was only seventeen and I might be able to build a good life on the one flicker of hope I had left. But if my heart was dying? My loved ones might want me to do anything to save myself, but I think I’d like to recognize when my natural time has come, and face it with grace.

I haven’t been so good with the grace lately, but hopefully my own time is far enough away that I will have time to develop more elegance of the heart.

You can’t ask a cat what he wants in his last bit of time on earth. He can’t tell you how he’s feeling, if he’s in pain, if he would like you to stop injecting him with huge quantities of water that pool around his legs before being absorbed into his body. You can’t ask if he’s too warm or too cold or just wants you to sit with him all day. You can’t ask if he would like you to just let go or try giving him the rest of the antibiotic even though the answer is still death, and soon.

People don’t like talking about death.

At the vet’s office I was handing Ozark over to get his blood taken and I started to say “Don’t worry, you’ll be alright” but stopped myself and said to the vet and his assistant “I can’t actually tell him that, can I? Because he’s not OK.” And turning to my sick cat, said instead “Well, Ozark, we’re just trying to find out how we can make you feel better.” It doesn’t seem right to lie to an animal. Even though they can’t know our language well. I don’t think animals would lie to us.

What I’m hoping is that he’ll die quietly on his own, and soon. I don’t really want to have to choose to put him to sleep. Although I kind of think that I might like someone to do that for me when life has definitely already closed it’s doors on me and I’m just waiting for my body to let go.

He hasn’t eaten since yesterday. He didn’t want food this morning and didn’t want any this afternoon. I think he’s letting go.

I think people need to talk about death more. People need to accept the inevitability of it. No one has a right to something that is a gift. All this talk of “Right To Life” bothers me sometimes just for the inherent arrogance that that implies. Life is a gift with a use-by date. We get life on condition that we will at some point die and make room for others to have their turn. Some of us have shorter turns than others.

I wish I could know what Ozark would most like right now. I’m just uncomfortable with death waiting in the house. A thankfully rare guest at our table. I’m uncomfortable because no one’s ever told me how to approach it. No one’s ever told me how to care for the dying. How to behave or prepare for it. We don’t talk about these things in our culture so that all of us are caught unprepared.

So I will watch. I will tell Ozark the truth. And we will give him love. And hopefully we will know when the moment has arrived to make decisions and be able to make those decisions with courage.

Speech Impairment

Ten ways to prevent oneself from speaking:

• Duct tape mouth shut.

• Remove tongue.

• Take a lifelong vow of silence.

• Always have so much food in mouth that speech is unintelligible.

• Commit a crime bad enough that solitary confinement is mandatory.

• Always remain asleep.

• Have self cryogenically frozen until speech is considered unnecessary.

• Install bark collar on self.

• Use a whip stitch to keep lips closed.

• Live in a silent film with no subtitles.
  

Eulogy In D Minor

I have come to see myself so differently than I used to that I forget sometimes about the magic of adornment. I forget to wear lipstick. I forget to put on jewels and bangles. I can't wear the clothes that suit me as well as my own skin because they won't fit over my skin anymore. One day several weeks ago now I received a package from Alice of Futuregirl with two wonderful bracelets she made in it. They are all at once bold and delicate, lightness in thread and yet somehow more than that. I put them where I could see them. Often. Like I do all my pretty things now. They fit as perfectly as a couture glove. Yet I felt that to put them on would somehow muddle their charge.

I'm treading carefully with words to try and tell you something that has come to me in code. Thoughts that aren't thoughts and yet stand in for them. Sometimes we have to remind ourselves to stop hiding behind our own nakedness. Common wisdom is that we hide in our make up, our clothes, our adornment, as though we are never real until we strip down to what we were wearing when we arrived in this world.

I vehemently disagree.

Adornment isn't in itself a vanity. Adornment is a celebration of what we arrived in, of what we found when we got here, and what's left when we leave. Our breasts will go south, our teeth will darken, ear hairs will sprout, balls will shrivel, all of us in our wonderful skin of every color will change. At every stop there is call for celebration. For wearing your favorite fancy golf pants, or your diamonds, your Bakelite bangles, or your finest threads. I've forgotten this. Too wrapped up in wondering how people will judge me for not being what I used to be.

That is the ultimate vanity.

I am reminded of my eulogy. I have been writing my own eulogy since I was ten years old. I don't trust anyone else to write it. If I die and leave behind me silence, someone is going to fill it with tripe and I can't bear to leave in a smoky veil of lies. So I keep on writing it. As I somehow keep surviving I have to revise and make amendments to the text constantly. There are people who would consider this a morbid past time (mother), but I don't want anyone stealing the truth of my life just to appease themselves (or me) in my death. You can't ameliorate the pain of life by saying it aint so.

If for some reason this becomes the great work I leave unfinished, it's important to me that everyone I know is aware that there are some things you must not say when I die. If you say them I will poltergeist your ass.

• You must not say I died too soon or too young. I will stick my finger in my ghosty throat and I will retch up slime all over your lies. To say this is tantamount to a sacrilege in my peculiar worship of the truth as I see it. Whenever I go, however I am relieved of this body, I can guarantee you it was the right time. People don't die at the wrong time, they don't die "too young" or "too soon". We all die exactly when we are through with this world and no one on earth can possibly know that it was too soon.

• If anyone makes vapid generalizations such as "Everyone loved her!" I will smite the whole funeral party and make all the cubed cheese curdle in your mouths. I know for a fact that this isn't true. Erin Fry hated me. Or else she was a lesbian unable to show me how much she loved me and so tortured me with her bullying instead from third grade through sixth grade. I know there are a lot of people I've pissed off. I don't doubt there are plenty of people who I haven't yet met who won't like me.

• If anyone suggests that I am in heaven with God I will not smite them because it would be rude since they obviously believe in the pearly gates (a very fragile type of belief relying largely on your ability to believe that people sprout wings), but I will feel disrespected. I don't want anyone talking about me and my "relationship" with god. I believe I will be evaporating, liquefying, and rising up through the prairie grasses, into the bellies of birds, and out again onto the caps of unwary tourists. I will be everywhere there is air, I will be your next breath, I will be the dirt you're collecting on your shoe. If you must imagine that I've become an angel in death, as I never was in life, then you should keep that close to your chest, quiet like.

I want to remembered for being human. Being imperfect. I want never to be raised on that familiar pedestal of the dead. I don't do that to others. I think it disrespects who we've all really been. How can we remember a person, honor them, and truly appreciate what they brought to our lives if we're too busy trying to say only nice things when they've left us with their dust?

I write letters to my dead all the time. I think I may have to write them down soon. I was full of them while I was picking the most perfect green beans I've ever seen. Out there in the light and the blustery fall air, the dead were all around me and I only spoke truths with them and my love of them is not less for it.

Mostly I want people to remember that no matter how thin or how fat I have been or will become, no matter what age I have the privilege to reach, I want people to remember that I celebrated this world by putting it's jewels on my person, keeping the ocean close, the mountains closer. I want people to remember that I eventually learned not to take myself so damn seriously.

If you want people to remember anything you have to remind them. So I am going to wear what few diamonds I own, I am going to drape myself in my pretty buttons, and I'm going to wear lipstick most days again. Not to be something I'm not, but rather, to be what I've always been.

The winner of the Easter basket drawing is.....

Amber!!!

I had a couple of pictures of the actual name drawing event. A little something nice to make the winner feel special. But I'm still here at work, with numbers swimming around in my head like blind guppies just before they die of unknown diseases. Or right before they die of "Ick". Anyone who's never had a goldfish may not know that that is an actual fish disease. I've seen a couple fish die of Ick and it sure looks exactly like it sounds.

I really appreciate all of you participating in my little drawing! I've never had so many comments at one time. Now I know how come Capello goes into comment withdrawal when she gets less than twenty for a post. It's also really nice to hear from some of you who normally don't comment, or at least, not often.

Anyway...Amber, you need to e-mail me your address to angelina.williamson@verizon.net so that I can get your free Easter basket out to you tomorrow morning.

I must now call my husband and child to let them know that while I'm not dead, if they don't see me by ten to assume the worst and prepare for a toilet flushing funeral. Surely they would get some kind of tax advantage from that?