Maggots, Doom & Footies

A bit of a scare yesterday when the veterinarian's assistant talked to me on the phone and told me that Tip, my 15+ cat, could not come home on Saturday because his bloodwork didn't look good and would have to stay the weekend. Of course, I went into Doom & Gloom mode, only to get a call a little later from Dr. Young himself telling me that Tip is in great shape for his age, only a little UTI, and I could pick him up any time before 3pm. Ah. Had the assistant mistaken me for someone else? In any case, I was greatly relieved, and it was time to regroup, call off the kitty hearse, alert the grave-digger that his services wouldn't be needed. Cancel the eulogy.

I dated a grave-digger once, at the naive age of 18. He was ridiculously handsome but for all intents and purposes, illiterate. His idea of a Great Night Out was dinner at a tiny suburban restaurant where the food was squeezed out of tubes & dumped from cans but they also served up individual yeasty loaves, which, I admit, weren't half bad.

This grave-digger was also a compulsive gambler, and I spent many an afternoon at the track, placing my ill-planned bets on the grey roans because they were uncommon and beautiful. And, generally, slow. Once I won $10. So much for my gambling career.

The romance didn't last long; there was nothing to talk about, and I like to talk. Good looks only go so far. Then his brother -- no looks, and the ultimate 1975 nerd -- invited me to the drive-in to see Jaws. I laughed through most of the movie while he screamed and tried (in vain, judging from his shrieks) to escape the piscine incisors snapping at him from the screen. That was the end of that.

But getting back to my original theme: death. I have in my possession -- in the garden at the Brandon Street house where my sons live -- my father's gravestone (1918-1966). When my mother passed away, oh, eight years or so ago, we ordered a single stone to mark both their graves, and instead of letting the beautiful blue-glinted marble get recycled -- this was part of my childhood, for god's sake -- I opted to take possession of it. Remnants of not a few felines add a particular, ah, richness to the soil beneath its place beneath the Chehalis apple tree (whose apples succumb to apple maggots in lieu of an annual chemical application). My friend Peter, whose gardening skills I admire, sheaths each of his apples in what I call "footies" every spring, which block entry to those dastardly maggots. At this point, I look at my trees as only decorative, and sweep the apples into the city compost bin.

Footies:


I like the idea of an actual gravestone in the middle of an urban garden. Hell, I don't even live there anymore, but I certainly feel as if I've left my mark. And all those cats, left buried and unmarked in the back yards of houses I've lived, gone now to bone shard, to amulet and errant tooth. How much more tidy it is to abandon the euthanized pet with the vet for anonymous disposal, to become -- what? Someone else's dinner, I fear.

Well then.

It's winter, dead-center, and all good cheer has crawled under the gravestone in my garden and has passed out cold. Easter is late this year -- April 24th. I suppose I must wait until then to resurrect any semblance of a jolly good time. If I were more industrious, I'd lay in a supply of footies and make plans to decorate the apple tree with flesh-toned mesh. In the meantime, I'm open to suggestion.

I sat with my boys last night and laughed and laughed,
falling-off-the-couch laughter, black humor about
death and ashes and gravestones, a particular
vocabulary of details known only to the three of us.
About bits of foil and a single plastic fork
(not two forks, mind you, just one) and a long-deceased
cat named Phloem and the twist-ties that
bind-up lettuce and odd bolts & screws
and whatever it is in your junk drawer
that can take on a second use as decoration.
Cryptic, yes, I understand.

My father's gravestone, from 1966, was replaced
when my mother died to a slab on whose surface
both their names are etched. The original stone --
a chunk of marble glinting blue in sunlight --
lies in the garden of my Brandon Street house,
unassuming, humbly announcing my father's
all-too-brief life to the occasional nuthatch, the jay.
And yes, the long-gone Phloem is interred not far
from that spot under the Akane apple tree,
as is Phloem's mother Xylophone.

What else to say about these odd facts?
Yes, we are irreverent. And yes, goddamnit, it's funny.

Alive, Alive

I took my breakfast out to the yard this morning to read the rest of last Sunday's NYTimes (a treat which I make last all week), and, although I didn't really want to launch right away into the article titled The Joy of Old Age (No Kidding), when I noticed that Oliver Sacks was the author, I thought that it would be much more than just bearable. And it was.

A few particularly memorable lines:

Eighty! I can hardly believe it. I often feel that life is about to begin, only to realize it is almost over.

I am sorry to have wasted (and still waste) so much time; I am sorry to be as agonizingly shy at 80 as I was at 20....

I feel I should be trying to complete my life, whatever "completing a life" means.

At 80, one can take a long view and have a vivid, lived sense of history not possible at an earlier age.

I do not think of old age as an ever grimmer time that one must somehow endure and make the best of, but as a time of leisure and freedom, freed from the facetious urgencies of earlier days, free to explore whatever I wish, and to bind the thoughts and feelings of a lifetime together.

As I read, sipped my coffee and took bites of the most perfect peach that I've had in years (with just a sprinkle of brown sugar), I heard a hummingbird making its funny, scratchy song, quite close to me. It took me a bit of a search to find it in the multitude of hazelnut leaves and the dappled morning light, but I did, finally, and it was a baby, whose wee head gleamed red in the right angle of light. (When newborn, they are about the size of a standard eraser at the tip of a pencil!) Its feathers fanned out in a ruffle above its tiny talons, and every now and then it stretched out its wings and then folded them back down. I was close enough to see its vibrational heartbeat. Probably not much more than a mere three weeks from hatching, not more than five weeks from conception to perching on the branch.

When I chirped back, it cocked its head in my direction, acknowledging my presence.

And I thought: I'm reading about the last years of a human life, while witnessing the first days, really, in this small bird's life. Yin and yang, birth and death, the spectrum of being alive all before me in a single moment on a summer morning.

I wondered if somewhere, someone/thing, in a size ratio equally as dramatic as the hummingbird to me, was observing me, noticing my taking-in and letting-out of breath. Noticing my nearly insignificant size, in the scheme of things. Who can know this?

The bones of cats long-dead are buried in the garden, just beneath the bird's perch, and my father's blue marble gravestone lies at the base of the apple tree. Collards have gone to seed, sending out their frail yellow lacework of petals across the yard. Not far away, pumpkins and cucumber vines measurably grow by the day.

The bird flew away, I drank the last drops of coffee, and  finished the article.

What came to mind was this:
My cup is empty, and yet, is still so full.

Thank you, Oliver Sacks.
And thank you, baby bird, for granting me this sweet perspective.

For the full text of the Oliver Sacks article, click here.

Detail, Gravestone, Roslyn Cemetery


Sunday, we drove over Snoqualmie Pass just past noon,
ascended the west side through thinning fog. Traces of snow
on only the highest peaks. Mist hung upon Lake Keechelus:
torn white blankets tossed on the water, rag-edged.
We lunched at the Roslyn Cafe, then drove up the hill
to the Roslyn Cemetery, a collection of 25 adjacent cemeteries
spread out over 15 acres, most of them representing fraternal
lodges, dating back to the late 1800's. I was delighted
to find a very small section signed "Druid." Only ten graves,
all the names of Italian origin. Druids in Roslyn, a hundred
years ago?! In a town with a population of less than a thousand?
Alas, I've tried in vain to unearth more information on this subject
on the internet. Looks like we must take another jaunt
across Snoqualmie Pass! (Be sure to check out Citizen K.'s
fact-filled and beautifully-written entry on the Roslyn Cemetery.)