Florida

Well, mom died, and we are in Florida. So far so good in the sense that tensions that will probably arise when sisters are in proximity have been avoided by keeping sisters out of proximity. Let's see how long I can keep that up.

Graveside wrestling. There's the reality TV people want to see.

Mom died okay, lying there with her daughter beside her. Esther said that mom's breathing was labored but regular. And then there was a breath followed by quite a long pause before the next breath. Esther said she urged Mom to *breathe*. But she didn't.

Nine-eight and one-half years is a long time, some of it remarkable But that's something E. needs to write about, herself being one of the more remarkable aspects.

Letters from the Grave

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Drove Big Pat over to the hospital this morning so he could get one of his carotids rooted out.

He left his truck, his dog, his billfold, his keys, his medical power-of-attorney and an envelope of farewell letters in case things went wrong.

(They didn't. We dropped by intensive care around six, and he was looking positively beatific. There was some mention of morphine.)

About those worst-case missives he was most emphatic: Don't open that envelope. I have taken the preparation of these seriously, so take this prohibition seriously.

I'll be giving them back to him tomorrow or the day after. E. keeps a journal in which she writes most nights. I've never been tempted to sneak a look. If she were to die before me, I'm not sure I'd want to read it then. Any criticisms would wound, no matter what the overall ratio of pains to joys. The absence of criticism would make me wonder where the real journals were haha.

I do not disparage the idea of final letters, since many relationships are on hold because of distance or some slight misunderstanding never resolved because lives don't always run on parallel tracks. In most case, a summing up might be healing. But in the case of someone with whom you live day to day -- I mean E., of course -- I rather think you should assume your letter will go astray before being read, and there'll be no time for last words either, so that you better create memories more vivid than final sentiments.

A kiss. A joke. An apology. Life will make these sincere even if in the moment you think not, even if you are only putting them down on account, like a kind of emotional layaway.

I Need to Bury the Cat

I'm not going to put it off any longer. The earth is soft, and the sky is blue.

I read this poem a long time ago. I looked and I found it. Dickey does not write of domestic animals, but I am still glad I found it, not believing in heaven for anyone but glad to play at believing.

The Heaven of Animals

Here they are.  The soft eyes open.
If they have lived in a wood
It is a wood.
If they have lived on plains it is grass rolling
Under their feet forever.

Having no souls, they have come,
Anyway, beyond their knowing.
Their instincts wholly bloom
And they rise.
The soft eyes open.

To match them, the landscape flowers,
Outdoing, desperately
Outdoing what is required:
The richest wood,
The deepest field.

For some of these, it could not be the place
It is, without blood.
These hunt, as they have done,
But with claws and teeth grown perfect,

More deadly than they can believe.
They stalk more silently,
And crouch on the limbs of trees,
And their descent
Upon the bright backs of their prey

May take years
In a sovereign floating of joy.
And those that are hunted
Know this as their life,
Their reward:  to walk

Under such trees in full knowledge
Of what is in glory above them,
And to feel no fear,
But acceptance, compliance.
Fulfilling themselves without pain

At the cycle's center,
They tremble, they walk
Under the tree,
They fall, they are torn,
They rise, they walk again.

  -- James Dickey

Sometime Between 5 a.m. and 7 a.m. This Morning

Our cat Oliver died in bed with me, pressed against my side as I slept fitfully. After all the syringes full of food, medicine, laxative, minerals that I gave him late last night -- after the successful squeezing of his bladder -- I put him in his cat basket, which has a heating pad under the blanket on which he lay.

Around three I heard him cry out. He had crawled out of the basket and was stretched out on the cold slate floor of the bedroom. I put him on an absorbent pad -- think a big Depends sheet -- and then placed my sweatshirt over him.

I got back in bed. I lay there for a minute or two. I got out of bed and put two of the absorbent sheets across the sheet next to me and picked Oliver up and laid him there and lay down next to him and began to cuddle him.

He was making soft cries of protest, against pain I suppose, though perhaps only against the touch of death, the tightening of its grip. He was limp as a rag doll. When I had gone to bed around midnight, I had imagined that sometime during the night he would come struggling up his ramp, having improved enough from the treatment he had just undergone at the vet to manage that modest incline.

That he was worse rather than better suggested failed treatment, a hopeful diagnosis gone wrong. I can squeeze his bladder, I thought, and squeeze baby food and chicken broth into him, but for how long? At what point does one accept the inevitable? It was a hard question. I saw no easy answer.

About five, I got out of bed and put him next to his water bowl, but he would not drink. I took him to the bathroom and used a clean syringe -- we have a dozen or so; we stocked up; we encouraged ourselves by behaving as it we were in for the long haul -- and fed him water, which he seemed to relish.

Then, I took him back to bed. I couldn't sleep and thought I might get up in the dark and have coffee and wait for the first of the four newspapers we get every morning. But then I did sleep, and I dreamed. There were several different dreams, and at the periphery of each was Oliver, not well again but improved, limping about, interested in food, trying to jump up with that awkward gallant determination he showed as he slowly lost control of his back legs.

I awoke around seven and looked at him, still pressed against my side, and saw almost at once that he was dead. Which I did not expect.

I took him upstairs and sat on the sofa where he loved to sit and cradled him in my arms for a good long time. Then I called my wife in Florida. She was picking up barbecue for her mother's lunch. I asked her how long before she would be home and would have waited telling her the news until then, but then she asked how Oliver had passed the night. And I told her he was dead and how and when.

And then we wept -- wept as I told the tale, filling it with gasps and gaps -- and I felt all the better for it. In the barbecue restaurant in Florida, several people asked my wife why she was crying, and every time I heard her reply, "My cat died."