Category: Uncategorized Page 8 of 152

And feeling worse about feeling good…

Yesterday morning, Jim drove me to the vet hospital to pick up Thunder’s ashes.  They brought out a form for me to sign – because there’s always a form – and handed me a gift bag of sorts. Seriously. Thunder’s ashes were in a plastic bag, in a cloth bag, in a decorative tin – along with a condolence card and a cement cast of his paw print.  I wasn’t expecting that last thing and seeing the print of his tiny paw got me choked up.

We went home and I put these things in a box along with some of his toys, his collar, and the paperwork from when I adopted him.

And then I went to bed for most of the day.

I’ve been doing that a lot more lately – the worst was last week after an impossible day at work.  I logged off, let the dogs out, then went to bed.  I got up a couple hours later to eat a bowl of cereal for dinner, then back to bed for the rest of the night. 

Which is not good.  Not by a long shot.  But it’s seductive to sleep your cares away. To not have to think and dwell on…well, everything. Hello, pandemic?   So I sleep and try not to dream.

When I’m awake, I’m feeling bad.  And feeling bad about feeling bad.  I recognize my life is still pretty great – shouldn’t that counter work stress and the loss of my cat?    But when I run the emotional math, things don’t balance out.    Even with all the great things, even with all the good luck I have, I’m still down and dazed.  And sleeping too much. 

But then I have a moment where things are okay.  The dogs will pile on me and it’s impossible to be sad when they do that.  Or Jim will bring me a cookie unbidden, just because.    And there’s a smile again and some happiness.

And then I catch myself.  Wait, why am I happy?  I’m still depressed and overwhelmed – I can’t have it both ways.

But, as Jim has patiently reminded me, none of this is a straight line.  There’s no sequence with grief.  And though I was relieved I had jumped past the Denial and the Anger and went right on into Depression, it didn’t mean I was on a fast track to Acceptance.

So, I’m staying close to home and trying to keep my tasks and my thoughts small.  Back to work again tomorrow, but for now there are cups of tea and a box of memories.    

I have a warm and safe home. My job is a little miserable right now, but I don’t have to battle traffic or worry that it will just go away.  I have plenty to eat and fast internet – and people that love me.   (I should have ranked “people that love me” ahead of “fast internet”, but, well…)

I’ll get through this.  And I’ll have better days – with more daylight – as time goes on.  And I’m lucky for what I have, even when faced with a loss. 

So, it’s time to settle down again and sit quietly.  And acknowledge that it’s okay to feel bad – and rest when I need to so that I can feel better.

When it’s time.

I decided, in January of 2013, to get a cat.  I bought a litter box, cat food and toys, and a carrier.  Then I picked out a name and went to find a cat to match.  It didn’t take me long to find one I liked and though he didn’t care for the car ride home, he seemed happy enough when we got there. 

I let him out of the carrier inside and gently tossed him in the litter box so he knew where it was.

And so, I had a cat.

He learned his new name quickly and was usually waiting for me at the top of the steps when I got home.  If he wasn’t there I could call out “ThunderCat, hooooooo!” and he would come running.

It was his best trick.

He didn’t meow much, but he had an amazing purr.  Sometimes he would purr so loud and so forcefully that I was afraid he would hurt himself – but he just kept going.  We tried having him sleep in my bed at night, but the purr would keep me up.

If I was sick or had a bad headache, he would hop up on the bed or couch with me and lick my head.  It was his version of a “cat scan” – and I let him do it, though I would usually douse myself with hand-sanitizer when he was done since I knew where else he’d been licking.

Thunder kept me company in my house – following me around or checking in on me.  He didn’t like to be held or cuddled  – but would tolerate both for a time.  And the belly rubs were the very definition of softness until the claws came out and the session was over. Always on his terms.

There was excitement when he would race from window to window – tracking birds and squirrels and other neighborhood animals.  And a crumpled up ball of paper was sheer delight for my cat. But mostly it was lazy days of living his best life.

When Jim and I moved into a home together, there was an adjustment period.  The two dogs quickly learned to stay out of Thunder’s way and the Jim’s older cat Sophie and Thunder had a wary truce.  The younger Max and Thunder would yell at each other and the fur flew a few times – sometimes gray and sometimes orange.  As long as neither snuck up on the other, they settled down. 

Thunder seemed to be losing weight and I chalked it up to stress or being picky about sharing a food dish.  So, I started feeding him wet food that he couldn’t resist several times a day.  He enjoyed it, but it didn’t seem to help. 

Thunder started to spend less time sitting at my desk with me and more time in the basement.  When even the wet food wasn’t as enticing, I got him to the vet.  The bloodwork and the symptoms pointed to intestinal lymphoma – a common cancer in cats – and it explained the weight loss that no amount of “seafood shreds” could cure. 

He got much weaker and took to hiding behind the furnace in the basement – the warmest and safest part of the house – and wouldn’t come out or move much.  

Knowing that he was hurting and scared – and that he wasn’t going to get better – I talked to the vet and made the difficult decision to have him put to sleep for his own sake.

I made the appointment and then Jim and I loaded him into the car in his carrier – the same one I had first brought Thunder home in – for the last time. 

We got to the vet hospital and they had us wait in a room with him.  He purred a little while Jim and I both petted him and Thunder’s expressive tail moved slowly back and forth.  The tech came in and took him to get an IV put in, then brought him back on a blanket so I could hold him.  He was so small and fragile, but still purring in my arms. 

And then it was time to say goodbye. 

The vet came back in and gave him an injection.  His purring stopped and he fell asleep in moments.  She checked his heartbeat and he was already gone.  I held him a moment, then Jim helped me take off Thunder’s collar.  I was choked up, but managed to quietly thank Thunder for being my cat before the vet took him away. 

When we were alone in the room with an empty carrier, I lost it.  Jim tried to help console me, but he was in no better shape.

Finally, we settled down and after going through a ton of tissues we were ready to go.  I picked up the too-empty carrier and headed out into the cold.

When I got home, I called my folks to let them know what happened.  And as we talked, Jim’s cat Sophie hopped up on the bed with me to keep me company.  It was deeply sad, but comforting as well.

I had asked that Thunder be cremated and I’ll get his ashes in a few days.  I wrote a haiku in his honor and over time I’ll go through his things and see what we can use and what can be donated or thrown away.

Our home now has two cats and two dogs, but the mighty purr of Thunder is gone.  He was my cat and my friend and I will miss him.

Goodbye, Thunder(cat). 

She led me into the darkened room, the light from even the unusually bright candle insufficient to chase the shadows from the corners.

The candle sat on a small writing desk along with a stack of blank pages, their edges carefully aligned, and an ornate pen at the ready.  To the side, a metal bowl and stone pestle lay.  And opposite these items, a small bottle made of dark glass  – its mouth filled with a metal funnel and its cork nearby.

She gestured for me to sit and I picked up the pen as I did so. 

“So do I…?” I began and she cut me off with a stern command  – as one used to commanding and being obeyed.

“Write.  All of them,”

“All of…?”

“All of your lies.  Every one of them,”

“I don’t…” I began, but almost unbidden the pen leaped to the page, pulling my hand with it.  Or so it seemed.

The words on the page, scratched out by my suddenly feaverish hand, told every falsehood I had ever uttered or whispered to my own secret heart. 

A sated stomach and the greedy “I’m hungry”.

Misplaced blame and the lie to reinforce it.

Plausible denial on my taxes. Slurred words behind the wheel. An accident – on purpose. 

A page filled and set aside.  Then…

“I love you (you bore me)”  “I hate you (I need you),”  “I missed you (leave me alone),” “It’s been too long (not long enough),”

The pen now a blur as the lies poured from me, transcribed to the page and then another and then a mantra appeared…

I’m fine I’m fine I’m okay I’m fine I’m okay I’m okay okay okay fine fine finefine finefinefine I’M OKAY I’M FINE.

Line after line until my hand cramped and the nib of the pen dug into the paper, tearing through the sheet to the desk below. 

“Enough, “ she said and I pried the pen from my hand and dropped it to the desk.  It rolled to the base of the candle, then stopped. I held my breath a moment as she leaned over and collected the pages, tapping them gently against the wood to re-align the edges. 

With a practiced hand, she rolled them into a thin, hollow cylinder – then handed them back to me. 

“Light them, “ she said, “And then hold them over the bowl for as long as you are able,”

I hesitated.  I felt no release or relief yet.  Was something supposed to happen or would it only be when the pages were consumed?

My hand shaking, I held the edge of the pages to the flame until they caught, then held the now burning paper over the bowl as ash began to drift down. 

I tilted my hand this way and that to keep the fire going, wary as the flames got closer and closer to my skin.. 

With a gasp, I dropped the pages and shook my fingers – drawing them to my lips to suck away the sudden pain. 

I heard a “tsk” of disappointment from her, as though I should let myself be burned, then we both watched as the fire consumed the rest of the paper and only ashes remained in the bowl.

She picked up the pestle and went to work on the clumps of ash, grinding them into the bowl until they were nearly dust.   With a practiced hand and the aid of the funnel, she transferred this powder into the bowl – and knocked the last of the cooling ash loose with a final tap.  

Funnel put aside, she corked the bottle and set it in front of me – then stood with hands clasped behind her back, her body language nearly shouting that she was done with me. 

I looked at the bottle, then at her.

“Do I carry this with me?” I asked and she gave the slightest of shrugs.

“You always have, “ she answered, “And you always will,”

With that, she turned and stepped into the shadows of the room, leaving me with the ashes of my lies. 

I paused for a moment, but only a moment, then picked the bottle and stood. 

And stepped into my own shadows.

There is an uneasy truce in the house between the two dogs and three cats – a truce broken when either Thunder or Max encroaches on the personal space of the other.

Getting to this point has been pretty stressful for Thunder(cat) and he’s lost some weight – likely too because he’s not used to sharing his dry food. 

To get his weight back up, I’ve been giving him wet food – he can’t resist the seafood shreds. 

But, there’s a problem.  If I just leave the wet food out, one of two things will happen.  Either he’ll eat his fill for the sitting and then wander off – and the other cats will finish it for him.  Or, he’ll overeat to make sure they don’t get it – and then find a nice quiet corner to vomit it right back up. 

So, a few times through the day, I’ve been taking the can of cat food to the basement to feed him a reasonable portion.  And while this works, it created a new problem.  Whenever I move anywhere in the house, if my vector looks even slightly basement-ward, Thunder assumes that I’m going to feed him.  If I don’t and I’m doing something else, he gets irritated and takes it out on the dogs.  Or will deliberately not use his litter box in some ill-conceived performance art in the basement. 

To better regulate his behavior and expectations, I’ve decided to try and train my cat.

Let that sink in a moment.

Now, when I go to feed him, I will call his name (even if he’s right next to me) and ring a bell before heading downstairs with him.  Shades of Pavlov, you see. 

Unfortunately, this also alerts the other cats and they follow us to stake out positions in some kind of “triangle of barely concealed menace”.   So, I have to wait with Thunder until he’s done to keep the peace and prevent any intra-species conflict.

Is it working?

Well, he’s gaining some weight. And seems less annoyed when I don’t fall to his every feeding whim and desire. 

I have noticed that he gets calmly interested in me and somewhat affectionate right before it’s a regular feeding time.  This increases until it’s annoying for me and I go ahead and feed him. 

Which I think means that he’s really training me instead.  At least he can’t ring the bell on his own – we’d never get a moment’s peace. 

Shortly after Jim and I closed on our new house together, we met with a realtor to put our own houses on the market. Jim had been working on repairs and cleaning and I had been working on moving and cleaning.  Lots of cleaning. 

We signed the paperwork, gots signs in our yards, and had photos of the houses taken for the website.   And while we waited for a bite, we kept working on the houses – and kept working our regular jobs and working on the new house. 

It was exhausting, even without the added stress of the pandemic.

Jim had a lot of showings early on and I had a few, then they drizzled out.  We dropped the prices and got a flurry of new showings – and I got an offer. It was a little lower than my asking price, but still close and we moved forward. 

The buyer had an inspection done, found a ton of “issues” (a few real and many more that were kinda bogus), and came back with some unreasonable demands.  I countered with something a bit more reasonable and agreed to do some of the repairs they wanted.

1. Tape over the presumed asbestos tape on the ductwork in the basement
2. Have the basement walls scraped, dryloked, and painted. (I hired a guy)
3. Install 3 railings
4. Take the doorknob off the second story door and nail it shut. (terrible idea, but whatever)

The FHA appraiser was particularly torqued about the basement walls and wouldn’t sign off until those were done.    And even with my scraping the walls during his off hours, the painter took longer than expected.  I was starting to sweat that things wouldn’t get done in time, but the repairs wrapped up yesterday and I stopped by the house to pay the painter.  That was all I could do then – the paint was still wet.

So, today.  Today I went back over and did the rest of the clean-up, moved things back against the walls in the basement and swept the floors.  I left the keys along with some notes, cleared out all my tools and supplies, and locked the door behind me. 

I checked the mail one last time to pick up the junk with my name on it, and then borrowed a rake from the neighbor to give the yard one last go.  Seemed like the thing to do.

As I finished up in the yard and looked back at the house, I had a wave of memories hit me.

The night when I first moved in and my family came up to help in the light December snow.  Getting the keys, setting up my bed, and spending that first night alone – wondering/certain that I had made a huge mistake. 

And a couple months later, after Jeff had passed, feeling a passing presence and something like a goodbye.

A first date with Jim and the revelation that he lived only a few blocks away.

Adopting a cat and bringing a little Thunder into my home.

Lots of yardwork and craft projects over the years.

That hidden spot in my backyard where I could lay out in the sun naked. 

The little repairs and homeowner triumphs.

Sitting on my porch on a Ssunday morning with a book and some tea.

Fun conversations with my neighbors. 

Lonely times working from home during the early days of the pandemic. 

Stress of de-accumulating as I moved and making hard decisions about what to keep. 

And the long hours where it seemed like I would never be done.

And then… somewhere in there the house stopped feeling like mine.  Like it was just a place and full of tasks instead of… me.    It was still weird leaving the first house that I had owned, but I didn’t look back.  And when I got home, I deleted the entry – symbolically – from my GPS.  

I’m scheduled to close on Monday, though it may be delayed a bit based on the title company.

But, at least for me, this part of my life is done.  Jim and I have moved into a castle and are making new memories here.

So, goodbye to 435 Cypress Ave.  May your new owner enjoy you as much as I did – please keep them safe and warm as you did for me and help them make memories there too.

I had a dream that I was working on my prior house – scraping 20 layers of paint off of the basement floor to get it ready to sell.  It was slow going but the paint was coming off in big chunks and I was making progress. 

The buyers showed up and wanted to see the attic and I told them that I would take them up there, but that it wasn’t part of the orginal inspection and they couldn’t hold it against me.

I opened a door in the basement that I’d never seen before but somehow knew was there and took them up one flight of stairs to the attic.  In this attic, above where the attic would normally have been, was a warehouse sized space full of boxes and old furniture. 

And a fully functional lazy-river water park.  The water looked clean, considering no one had done any maintenance on it in years, but the pool that was up there was in bad shape.  We went through the greenhouse, waved at the neighbors on the other side of the glass then went across the roof and in through another door back inside.

The door opened onto a landing and there were short steps down in several directions to tiny rooms – just big enough for a single bed and maybe a tiny dresser.  In each room, the carpet, the bedspread and the drapes all matched and were done in lurid colors – blood red, radioactive green, or – I dunno – “internal organ purple”.  At the foot of each neatly made bed was either an old and torn up stuffed animal of indeterminate species or a creepy china doll with eyes that followed you.  

The tiny rooms had more doors leading to more steps and to more landings with more tiny rooms.  Having lost the buyers, I went from room to room to room – getting more creeped out the further I went. 

The space finally opened up again into an industrial kitchen done in white and metal.  Running down through the center of the room were cots – each containing a large, and very alive, sea lion.  

Were they guests or food?  How did they get up there?  I didn’t know, but one of them tried to grab me as I went past.  I got out of the kitchen and found myself back in the maze of tiny rooms and stairs.

This time, the rooms were all the same.  Red carpet and drapes, but the bed and all the fixtures were black.  And all the beds had dolls on them.  

I picked up speed trying to find an ending and a way out – and realized that the rooms now had tiny black votive candles burning.  

I stopped for a moment.  Those candles don’t burn for that long so whoever lit them…was likely still there.

What panic I had under control up to that point exploded in my mind and all I could think about over and over as I started to run again was:

“Who lit the candles?”

“Who lit the candles?”

“WHO LIT THE CANDLES?”

I could hear my parents talking.  Somewhere in the house, but out of reach.  I shouted for them, over and over, but they couldn’t hear me.

And then I couldn’t hear them anymore.

And whoever, or whatever, lit all those tiny black candles – was closing in on me. 

And then I woke up.

• 

• 

• 

• 

COVID-19 hit The University of Akron’s enrollment hard and the administration decided that cuts to staffing were necessary.

It was deep and brutal and ugly. And while it was not my decision, I had to be the one to fire one of my colleagues. He took it better than anyone could have expected, but it was a rough day for everyone.

And right at the end of the day, another of my colleagues from another department called me in a panic from the parking lot of his building.

He had been fired. And he found out when they came into his office to force him to log off his computer. He was freaking out and no one had talked to him yet or given him any information. He was done and as far as he knew, that was it.

The nature of our jobs sometimes put us at odds over the years, but we both saw the bigger picture and while “friends” might have been pushing it at times, we were respected colleagues.

As soon as he could get out what was happening, I asked for his non-UA email address. And when he gave it to me, I emailed him right away so that he would have mine. A connection, in case the rest got lost.

We talked for a few minutes and I tried to help him process what had happened. He ended the call abruptly and I was left with an empty line.

I considered for a few minutes on what to do, the tracked down another colleague in the same building and told him what was going on – and asked that they check on him in the parking lot.

Later on I found out that the abrupt temination of the call was prompted by his supervisor looking for him to have the meeting – the one that should have taken place before his access was dropped.

I sent him an email a few days later to check on him. And I was humbled that of all the people that he worked with on campus, I was the one he reached out to when everything fell apart. It had been really important to him that he let me know how much he appreciated working with me. I wished him the best and told him to keep in touch.

And last week – months after everything happened – I emailed him again to see how he was doing.

He called me within a few minutes, grateful that I had reached out. We talked for a while about his job prospects and he told me that no one else – not anyone in his department that he had worked with for decades – had checked on him.

I was glad that I had done so – and deeply sad and disappointed that I was the only one that had.

I don’t get it. I just simply don’t understand what had happened or why it happened or how someone could just be tossed aside.

But none of that mattered. What mattered was that someone tried to connect, tried to share a little hope.

I wish him and all the rest of my colleagues well. These are strange and difficult times and all we have are each other. And maybe that will be enough.

I got a doozy of a webmaster@uakron.edu email recently. The sole text consisted of these words that I unfortunatly quote:

“Do you happen too have a retard level?”

The page they had been on referenced a “fundamentals of…” program – so, roughly translated they were likely looking for an even more remedial approach to the subject.

I’m a fast thinker and a fast typist, but this one took me a while.

In the end, I ignored the horrible and crude language and just did my damn job. I assumed they didn’t know any better and responded by asking them to clarify what they were looking for so that I could route them to the appropiate department or resources.

They never got back to me and I’m hoping that maybe they did realize that what they said was offensive – to basically every decent human being – and didn’t expect that a real human would be behind that form.

But there was one there. And he did his job, even if it broke him a little.

I am tired of the willful ignorance and the cruelty.

It started for me the night of a tornado. When I was in high school, I was a “tornado watcher” and stood outside in threatening weather to help alert the school. Never did figure out why my parents signed that permission slip – but while I had a healthy respect for them, I wasn’t really afraid of tornados. I knew that with a little awareness and a plan, a person could get to shelter and survive – and that rescue would be on the way.

When the pandemic of 2020 turned into a real thing, I started working from home. I didn’t go out except to get groceries and even in my lonely home I was prepared to shelter in place as long as it took – even if the illness seemed like a distant threat. And then one night, there was a tornado.

And I was scared. Really scared. It wasn’t the tornado itself – it was the fear that if the worst happened help might not come right away and that a hospital wouldn’t be a safe place to recover. The framework of civilization was in question and I felt very much on my own.

I got through the tornado unscathed and tried to find a new version of normal – like so many people did. And then Jim got COVID-19 and my fear for him and fear for myself went through the roof. Nothing I could do to help him – except to promise to look after his pets if he went into the hospital.

I dropped off gatorade on his porch and went back home to worry.

He recovered, thankfully. Again, I searched for normal and thought I had it – and then my job was in jeopardy. I survived with a pay cut and a benefits cost increase, but many of my colleagues were not so lucky. I feared for myself and for them – it remains the worst time to lose a job.

I feared for my rights as a new supreme court emerged. I feared for my county as a hateful retoric found new and louder voices.

And I became exausted of simply being afraid.

So, somewhere in all, I found a way to deal.

My grocery shopping trips became carefully planned surgical strikes. My work from home made me appreciate my connections with my colleagues even more and made me grateful for the job I had. My facemask became my secret identify and my pandemic beard was epic.

And the fear of losing Jim to an illness, the worry that we couldn’t be there for each other, prompted us to start looking for a house together. And with work and stuggle, we found a damn castle for us.

The supreme court? Well, it’s a lot harder to take something away from someone than it is to prevent them from having it in the first place. So, in our delightfully practical way, Jim and I sort of proposed to each other and in a few days, with a simple ceremory, we’ll be married.

I’m not 100% and I haven’t found that “new normal”. And I get overwhelmed all the time and sometimes I just lose it. And that okay – it’s normal to lose it and be overwhelmed sometimes. And it’s okay to be afraid – it’s a scary time right now.

The key, I think, is to try and make thing better. Write poems, check in on people you care about, and keep hoping.

I’m still heading to the basement if a tornado warning goes off – I’m not stupid – but while I’m down there waiting for the storm to pass, I’m taking heart in the good things in my life and the fortune that favors me.

We’ll get through this. And the fear won’t be the end of us.