Please, Just One More Night

 I was looking at my blog posts from a last year.  I wrote about somehow living in two worlds at once - partly in 2020, partly in 2021.

I'm still doing that, now that things are, once again, drawing to a close.

My life now is normal, at least for me.  Today I am dealing with the fact that another one of the goldfish is dying.  Has spent the whole day being almost but not quite dead.  I suppose I could do something like put him in the freezer to finish him off, or even just bury him, but I'll let him stay in the tank.  A year ago, I thought that the fish tank would be another thing to let go - as the fish died off, I could empty it and put it away.  But now I realize that I would miss the light and the gurgle of the water, so tomorrow I'll go and rescue a few more feeder goldfish.

Some FB exchanges with Ebaida.  Smokey is still alive, the vet still wants to try a few more things.  She is exhausted. Another few messages with another member of our erstwhile reading group (we're reading "Rebecca" together).  Adrianne was nice enough to give me a public shout-out on FB for the fibery care package I took her yesterday.   I had breakfast, cleaned the litter boxes, tidied up the kitchen, then put on the Ramin/Hadley concert and pulled some more wool locks.

Despite the fact that I went to the food truck on Friday, then ate out yesterday, I returned to the food truck today for lunch.  Because Friday, when I got Rhonda's special of the day (roast turkey, gravy, green beans, cornbread) she asked "aren't you the one who's asked about grits before?"  I nodded.  "Well, if you come back Sunday, I'll have you some grits.  Do you like them with cheese?"

And there was something about that gesture, remembering me.  The now "regular" customer who wanted grits.  Somehow I felt a little more solid, a little less invisible.  I went to get my shrimp and grits and she threw on an extra for me, grilled grapefruit with a soy honey glaze.  I do not like grapefruit.  These were delicious.

It's a beautiful day, an explosion of spring.  The azaelas are in full bloom, the air filled with the fat carpenter bees, mosquitoes.

Some of me is here.  A lot of me is in Gainesville, at Shands, February 27, 2020.  We were still living in the hotel, but spending our days in the clinic.  The week before I had stood in the clinic by Bob's bed, my hand on his arm as he lay face down while the intern drilled a hole in his hip to get a bone marrow sample.  He couldn't get any on the first try; on the second he got the dark red matter.  By the next day we got the result: the transplant had utterly failed.  They would have to try again.  Della was called to reschedule.  They debated whether or not to repeat the chemo.  We prayed the answer would be no.  Our 5 or 6 or 7 doctors consulted, also consulted with doctors at Johns Hopkins.  The answer was yes. They had to be positive that the cancer was completely dead.  He was scheduled to start on February 28.

Living in the hotel had been so terrifying.  But we didn't have windows looking into the room, he wasn't hooked up to monitors, there weren't people coming in every hour or two.  And I wasn't sleeping on a narrow couch.  He was sick and uncomfortable and would toss and turn, so I would start the night in my own bed.  Then, when he finally fell asleep, I would quietly slide in beside him, feel his warmth, the reassurance that he was still there.  And if he woke up in the night, he would feel me there, and smile.

So, today, on the 27th, we're in the clinic.  He's getting another transfusion.  We talk to Dr. Goggle, one of my favorites.  I can't quite place his accent.  He is shockingly slender and walks with a noticeable limp.  I wonder if he had childhood polio.  He has warm brown eyes and is good at explaining things.  He talks with us, looks at Bob's report, looks at Bob.  And says, "We are going to readmit you today."

I sit, stunned.  Ever since Bob had been diagnosed, I had been the star heath advocate/caregiver.  I had read every bit of information given (Bob didn't want to read or know any of it).  I had followed every diet restriction.  I kept notes.  After he was in the hospital, I could tell the nutritionist everything he had eaten.  I knew all of his vital signs and blood counts, written in my daily notebook.  I thought if I did everything exactly as I was told, did everything right, then things would work out.  I never questioned doctor's orders (ask questions, yes, a lot of them.  But did as I was told.

But not today.  Not on the 27th.  He was supposed to go back in on the 28th.  I look at Bob.  He has shut his eyes, trying not to hear what has just been said.  Dr. Goggle looks at me.  "But he doesn't start his chemo until tomorrow," I say.  "We're only a mile away.  I can have him here as early as you want."  He shook his head slightly.  I'm trying not to let the tears show.  I can hear the pleading in my voice.  "I'll do anything.  Let us have one more night.  Just one more night.  Please."

He's gentle, but he says that it's getting too dangerous now.  He needs to be back in the hospital.

The ward is just across the hall from the clinic.  Leaning on his cane on one side, and me on the other, he slowly crosses the hall, going to our assigned room.  We walk past the staff and nurses that we know so well.  They all liked Bob - he was funny and nice and as undemanding as possible.  Their faces are somehow blank.  Three weeks ago they had applauded when we left the ward, saying they were happy for him, that they would miss him, wishing him luck and a speedy recovery.  How could they say "welcome back" when they knew what it meant?  He started to enter the room, then stopped.  The nurse looked at him.  He stared ahead.  "Annie - I'm having a panic attack."  I hugged him.  "You can do this."

I'm home.  I'm typing this with Dingo out of his cage and running around.  Soon, I will record the Ramin/Hadley concert for when Ebaida feels like listening to it.  I'll comb some wool.  Maybe watch a movie later.

But my heart hurts.  Please.  Let us have just one more night.  Just one more.  Please.

A Random Day Out

 I did more than usual today, and went out more.  It all just seems strange.

Opened by listening to a streaming concert this morning - Ramin and Hadley.  It's available for 48 hours so I just let it play in the background.  Tomorrow I'll listen and maybe record it.  Funny - two years ago I hadn't heard of streaming concerts.  And the only reason that I have, and that they've been A Thing, is because of Covid.  Otherwise they'd just be doing concerts - as in, with an audience, instead of being filmed.

Returned a book to the library.  And while I was going there, I grabbed a half-dozen of Bob's books to donate.  I feel a little twisted about that.

And kept my phone ready to receive FaceBook notifications, which I never do.  But Ebaida's cat is very sick, possibly dying, too slowly (vets in Egypt apparently won't put animals down) and she is distraught, so I wanted to feel I was standing by.

Then I went on to the Museum, not to work, but to visit.  I hadn't seen Judy for two months (also to pick up some stuff that Shelby had for me).  I visited with Murphy for awhile, then Judy.  Allison came over (because Judy was baking cookies).  I told her I had heard that the green house was being cleaned out (not a glass house, but an old house, falling apart, painted green Once Upon A Time, where we stored our Halloween Howl stuff).  There were some Nazgul-style robes and gauntlets that I had made that I was rather proud of - and she said the Museum wasn't going to do the Howl anymore so I could help myself. I wandered into the dank building, bits of the ceiling on the floor, smelling of dust and mold - and to me, bringing back the moments when it was time to create magic, Rob and Jeff and Bob and I once again going overboard and somehow turning curbside and Goodwill finds into something dark and disturbing and creepy for the haunted trail. I open a bin full of Bob's dolls.  His most elaborate scene (and the one people remembered the most) - dozens of dolls and candles.  I leave them there.  Of course, Rob and Jeff have moved to Tennessee and Bob is gone, and the room is collapsing and I couldn't find the robes (any organization we had was totally gone) and it was once such a major part of our lives.

Then I went to visit Adrianne.  It was to be a brief visit.  My luck - I finally meet someone local who is enthusiastically obsessed with spinning - and she had developed some health problems, possibly cardiac, gets tired easily and finds talking painful.  But a few weeks ago we had both ordered some spinning fibers (to save on shipping) and I wanted to take hers to her, along with a bagful of other spinning goodies.  So it was about a half-hour drive from the Museum to her place, a half hour visit, and then the hour drive home.  I was getting quite hungry by then - could have scrounged some leftovers at home but decided to eat out.  Was going to go to Blaze Pizza - but guess what?  Not there anymore.  Went to Los Compadres as an alternate outdoor venue.  It was getting surrealistic - a gorgeous day, blue skies, sunny, warm but not yet hot.  There was a rather raucous party downing Margaritas, (this is about 3:30 in the afternoon) and another group more quietly downing shots, and me, sitting alone, reading Daphne DuMaurier's "Rebecca."

Then home, alone.

As the sun went down, I sat on the back deck, locking out a fleece.  This is the ridiculously tedious process of taking apart a wool fleece, lock by lock, and rolling up in nylon netting into neat little sausages for washing.  It does make for easier and better processing later when you comb or card it.  In my first 35 years of spinning, I never had the patience to lock out a fleece.  I'd do a couple of dozen (you can pull hundreds of locks off a fleece) and say the heck with it and just shove it all into mesh bags for washing.  But maybe sitting in that hospital room for three months did something to me - I locked out two fleeces in the last year, and am doing a third.

And thinking that this is my life now.  It's not a bad life.  It's just that it used to be better.

Marmalade

 I've been feeling guilty about the oranges.  There's an orange tree between the barn and the cottage, and it put out a dozen or so orange this year.  I ate one of them.  The others were still hanging there, getting pithy.

They're another trigger.  Bob was so pleased that a little tree that we planted actually survived and put out oranges.  When we took our daily walk, three loops around our property, on the last one he would stop and pick an orange.  He would hold it in his hands, smell it, smile a satisfied happy smile, peel it, hand half to me, and then eat it, segment by segment, so pleased to be eating something that he grew himself.

So, when I picked an orange during my solo walk, and ate it alone, I ended up on the ground weeping.  And I let the others just hang there, but feeling guilty about it.

So tonight I picked a half dozen, sliced them, and boiled them down in sugar syrup.  I can't exactly say I made marmalade  because I've never been successful at that (it just stays oranges in syrup).  But they're cooked down, and in jars, and I'll use them.  I like using it in dipping sauces or mixed with soy and put on salmon.  I often put a bit of orange into stir fry.  Tomorrow I'll pick the rest and do the same (best to do it in small batches).

So there's another small guilty itch, scratched.

La Llorona

 Sometimes you know where the triggers are.  A certain date, or a certain food, or a certain place, and you know the memories are going to come flooding in and you're sort of prepared to deal with it.

Other times, you just get whacked behind the knees and crumple a bit.  Like this evening - I was taking my walk, and saw the white blossoms of the low-growing nettles. And there's the flashback: we were still fairly new out here, young (-ish, meaning early 40's), healthy, in love, and outside on a beautiful evening, and, well, "things" happened, right there in nature.  Unfortunately, things happened right on top of a couple of nettle plants and I had serious itchy rashes for days.

So I'm sort of nostalgic about nettles.

But that's not what I came to write about.  I watched the Disney animated "Coco."  And had all kinds of flashbacks, because although they didn't say it, it was obviously set in a village in Oaxaca, Mexico.  I've been there three times.  The first time was on a ancient fiber arts tour.  I loved the historic city so much that I was really sad that Bob had not shared it with me, so a few years later we went back together.  We were staying in a small, rather "rustic" hotel, but it had a nice rooftop courtyard and we would sit up there in the evenings.  One evening, in the church next door, a high school band was practicing, and they began to play "La Llorona."   We danced.

Have you seen (or been) a little kid who ties a bath towel around his or her neck and then feels like a super hero?   In reality, it was a little bit like that.  We had to admit that the high school band wasn't particularly good, but then, again, neither was our dancing.

Screw reality.  Our alternate reality, the one I remember, was dancing in Bob's arms, on the rooftop in the moonlight, with that beautiful haunting melody floating up from the church.

Happy Valentine's Day

 Valentine's Day, 1973.  We were engaged by then, but still living in our respective dorms.  I'm walking through the university union, near the post office.  Pulling a 3"x5" card out of my purse (I was a nerd who still took library notes on 3x5 cards) I drew a child's picture of a house, with the note "Let us get married and be Valentines forever" and stuck it in his mailbox.

No fancy Hallmark card, with roses or puppies and hearts.  Just a 3x5.

He kept that card for 48 years.  Eventually he stopped carrying it in his wallet (it was getting a bit ragged), but every Feb. 14 he would grin and show it to me.

(And here is the point where I was going to insert a picture of said card, but I can't find it.  But I know I will - it's around here somewhere).

And had I known that he would keep that card for 48 years, I would have spelled "Valentines" correctly.

Goodbye, Tula

 I'm exhausted, emotionally.  Not sure quite where I am physically.

Let me see.  February 7.  In 2020, this is when Bob's neutrophils (white blood cell count) had finally, after about a week's delay in starting to show up, finally hit the magic number of 1000.  Which meant he could be released from the hospital and we could move to the Hope House.  We could see said house (rehab center) from our room, and we had held in our hearts that if somehow we could get out of the hospital and down there, somehow things would be all right.  Looking back, I realize they released him a bit too early.  He hit the magic number on a Friday, and if they didn't let him go that day, administratively, they would have to wait until Monday.  But if they had done that, he never would have gotten out, because by Sunday his numbers had tanked again.  But I digress.

So we got to Hope House, and things were not OK, and thus began the two and a half most terrifying weeks of my life.  The first night was all right - we were both exhausted, because a lot of work in the hospital (like his transfusions) took place at night, and it was rare for more than an hour to go by without someone coming in the room, or an alarm going off.  We had been a month without getting more than an hour or two sleep in a row.  So the first night, we slept.  But he still felt terrible, and weak, and the second night couldn't get comfortable in the twin-size bed, and somehow the mattress shifted and slid halfway to the floor.  At that time, Bob didin't have any platelets - he got transfusions of them every day, and went through them like Rice Krispies.  A fall could cause internal bleeding and death.  He, at the time, weighed about 270, I weighed in at 130.  And I somehow picked both him and the mattress up and got it all back on the bed.  Then I sat up the rest of the night, watching him.  We spent the next day at the clinic, then I packed up the room and him and moved us to a hotel near the hospital where he could have a decent sized bed.

Today's blog has nothing to do with that.  But it's where I'm at, mentally.  Trying to take care of Bob while he steadily grew weaker, without that constant but comforting array of nurses in and out of the room.

This weekend I went a little bonkers.  It hit me that it's been two years, and that while I've cleaned out closests and cabinets and drawers, and taken a dozen bags or so of stuff out of Bob's room, I had come to a halt and hadn't been in there since the holidays started.

I went a little crazy.  Thursday, Friday, and Saturday I went tearing through that room.  Three cars full of stuff going to the dump and donation.  Another large load of stuff set aside for an artist friend.  Ebaida wondered why I felt the sudden need to do this - what was the rush.  I said it was time to let it go. 

But his post isn't about Bob, or his room, or his hoarded stuff.  It's about Tula.  I can't remember if I've posted about her before, and don't feel like going back and looking.  But at the end of December I took her to the vet - she has often had trouble with her teeth, and I thought she might have an infection.  The vet agreed with me, gave her a shot with both an anti inflammatory and an antibiotic, but then said, "hmmmm."  He could feel what felt like a thickening in her jaw.  Maybe it was the infection.  A week later I took her back for a followup.  Both vets looked at her, then opened her mouth, and showed me the bone tumor in her jaw.

Nothing could be done about it.  She went on steroids, which helped some.  Her personality didn't change.  Honestly - she could be annoying.  She had a most raucous voice that she used constantly.  She was always demanding attention, or treats.  I had to lock her up while she ate because if not a paw would grab food off my plate, or off my fork.  I said to myself - or to anyone I talked to about it - that I would let her live as long as she didn't seem to be hurting, could eat so she didn't lose too much weight, or lose her tortoiseshell attitude ("tortitude").

The tortitude stayed.  She caterwauled, purred, pushed her way onto my lap, tried to grab my food, let the other cats firmly know that the special treats were just for her.  And I think I tried to firmly ignore the fact that she was also pawing at her mouth.  And didn't mind that I had to wash the blood out of the sheets after she slept with me.  Or that she ate with just one side of her mouth, carefully.  That she was starting to lose weight.

The mad cleaning of Bob's stuff was my subconscious yelling at me to LET GO.

This morning, I did.  Tula is gone.  My head, my gut, and my vet told me it was the right thing to do.  Let her go *before* she started hurting too badly, before she couldn't eat, before she suffered.  Let her go while she was still undeniably Tula.

My head, my gut, and my vet.  But not my heart.  My heart hurts.  Because if Bob was here, Tula would still be.  He'd still be holding out hope.  He would have kept her going - at some point he would have mixed baby chicken with broth and then used a syringe to feed he when she got to the point that she couldn't eat.  I can hear the strain in his voice "please please please please please eat."  (I remember the time that a baby chick died, and when I went to take it to bury it, he asked me to wait a little longer "just in case.")

But I am not Bob.  He was the eternal hopeful one - "maybe if we wait a little longer, it will be all right." I was the stoic, the realist - "this is how things are."   We complemented each other, balanced each other.  But he's not here, and I have to find my own balance, follow my own conscious.

Tula was getting worse, and was going to continue to get worse.  My subconscious was yelling at me to let her go, while she was still undeniably Tula - still raucous, demanding, pushy.  Accept that at some point, fairly soon, that she was going to suffer, to hurt, to be hungry because it hurt too much to eat.  As my vet said - let her quit while she's still ahead.  It was the right thing to do, the decent thing to do.  But I feel that I somehow betrayed Bob's trust, and that hurts so, so much.  I'm sorry, my love.  Usually, after I've had a cat put down, there is a calmness afterwards.  It's making the decision that's hard, but then you accept that the suffering is over, and there is a level of peace.  Today - I've spent the day almost doubled over in physical pain, crying, because there was no suffering to end.  The suffering is mine, not hers.

I love her.  I let her go.  Tonight I ate my dinner quietly, with no caterwauling and no swiping paw.  I hated it.

Godspeed, my furry old friend.  It was an honor to serve you.