Relationships

Farewell, Miracle, Our Miracle

Aside ~ ~ lifeontheskinnybranches

Today I celebrate the extraordinary life of our sweet Miracle.

We helped her leave her weak body yesterday afternoon after an agonizing early day. We’d had the gift of 8 extra months with her thanks to fluids and meds; last June at the vet’s she was diagnosed with kidney failure and either IBD or lymphoma.

I swore three things that awful day: that I would not keep her around just for my sake if it was no longer good for her; I’d not take her to the vet’s again if I could help it. (Of all my cats, she truly hated it and it took years off of her life each time when she was healthy, no way I was going to do that with her remaining time. They gave her 3-5 months. We got 8.)

And above all, I hoped when it was time, I’d know, and we’d get someone to come to our apartment to help her pass. (Well, actually, to Miracle’s apartment. She just let us live there.)

Well, I never took her in to the vet’s again. I gave her fluids and meds at home each day. We had a great 8 months, give or take some bumps in the road and difficult, challenging times of questioning “Is it time?” (Anyone who’s gone through this knows how it is: awful at times. Wonderful at others.)

And when it was no longer gonna be good for her, she and I both knew. And miraculously, thanks to an angel vet, we were able to hold her as she slept between us (her favorite spot) as she peacefully left her very sick body. I hated letting her go, and I knew it was right. And because I love her so, I helped her leave.

Thank you, Miracle, for your magic. I will see you in the moon and feel your spirit in our home and in my heart always. You inspired a poem https://lifeontheskinnybranches.com/2018/05/15/ode-to-miracle/ and a blog post https://lifeontheskinnybranches.com/2017/07/02/miracle-of-miracles/ and so much more. (Miracle’s story is amazing – read it . I was darn lucky she deigned to love me.)

Thank you angel vet for helping me see through my promises to her. (Thank you Instavet.com.) The angel vet was so caring, respectful of our process, humane and supportive.

Thank you Mary Oliver for putting into words, this part of love.

To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.

Mary Oliver

Love Song

Aside ~ ~ lifeontheskinnybranches ~ Leave a comment

I stand here, on this rock,

Arms outstretched, ready,

Amidst tumultuous sea winds

Carrying voices from afar

I don’t feel safe I am too much I want to leave I call you out I am called out for calling you out

I am enraged I am ashamed

Don’t assign don’t degrade

I hear it all and my heart aches

I called it in to see and to hear

But there is something else

Yet to appear; it seeks an ear

It wants to be known

Will I hear it if I push away

The harsh voices that do harm

Where will they go if they aren’t heard

Crammed back into I am wrong This isn’t the place for this This isn’t the place for that

I called this into being

Can I now cherry-pick what comes my way

Or do I listen and guide

Find new ways of being with the parts that are the hardest to hear

I stand on this rock

My arms outstretched

And I listen again,

And I listen, I listen,

For all.

#evolution #healing

I share my posts here.

Game Day

Aside ~ ~ lifeontheskinnybranches ~ Leave a comment

I grew up in a household where football reigned supreme.

My family, it is said, bleeds burnt orange blood – the color of the University of Texas Longhorns.

(All but me, that is. I was the only one of my family (immediate and beyond) to NOT got to UT.)

Games ruled our lives. I am not kidding. A few points of proof:

My Dad long-referenced the day of my birth as being “a dark day, the day the Longhorns lost to Oklahoma” in some bowl or other.

My grandmother’s funeral: afterwards, all retired to my grandfather’s house, and yes, a UT game was watched.

Everyone had a plethora of UT clothing and hats, and other paraphernalia, all of which came out at game time.

Social and family events revolved around annual season tickets.

I never got “it.” I mean, I went to games growing up. I was in Texas, after all, and so football was enmeshed into our social culture. I was on the pep team, and we faithfully baked cakes and toilet-papered the houses of the football team members before every game. (But this, I would argue, was merely an excuse to try to get myself noticed by one of the cute players — it had zero to do with being a real fan of the game.)

I hated the TV being on for those hours, and the loud yelling at the screen. It felt like noise pollution to my introvert ears.

Looking back, it is no accident that I went to a college that had no football team and then to a university known for its tennis team. I wanted no more to do with football and happily moved out of Texas and away from the Longhorn stampede that I had been running from my whole life.

Fast-forward decades. I meet and marry an Irish American man. Once again, it seems to be no accident. He had no idea what American football They have a whole other game over there that they call football! I’ve ensured my escape from the drone of football on the TV and yelled expletives during games.

It is not that I do not enjoy professional sports. I do. I love an occasional baseball, basketball, even football game IN PERSON. But on TV? Nah.

Then it happened. Somehow, in getting to know my father, my husband and I were invited along to a Longhorn game. He started being curious about the sport and the team and I suppose it was an easy subject for him to broach with any member of my family.

But this interest, which at first seemed harmless and sort of sweet (and smart,) in time ballooned into a full-fledged passion.

His interest in football also turned into an interest in all American sports. And not just interest. He really loves them.

The TV now usually has some game or another (or those incessant hosts talking about games or players) on most of the time.

At first, this really disturbed me. I mean, it felt like I was right back at my childhood home again, trapped, held hostage to the sports on the TV and those who just had to watch them.

But I soon realized that my husband works from home a lot and likes to have it on in the background. He really enjoys it. Life is too short not to do those things that give one pleasure, right? And so I have learned to let it go.

I am grateful for a second TV. I am grateful for earplugs. I am grateful for earphones and music and podcasts and audiobooks. They are my friends.

And on big game days, like today, the Super Bowl, I really give in and even join him to watch. I may be looking at my email a lot, or knitting, but I sit with him, because, well, he likes me there sometimes.

And that, I can do. It is the little things, after all.

 

 

 

Carpe Diem, My Friend

Aside ~ ~ lifeontheskinnybranches ~ 2 Comments

Hello?! This is your life calling!

Stop acting like you’ve got all the time in the world

That those that you love will be there forever for you to tell

That those people you think about reconnecting with will always be around to do so

Start doing those things you think about doing, dream of doing, now

Every passing moment is one less opportunity

Like that old Nike ad says, “Just do it!”

Just do.

– Me to myself

Today I went to the funeral of a very special person.

And as I sat in the church looking up at the stained glass, I was reminded of the many, many funerals of special people I have been to in the last twelve years.

Wakes and viewings in homes, memorials in gorgeous holy spaces and modest church rectories, wonderful music and laughter, beautiful heartfelt stories of love and life, stoic, structured religious services. Quite a spectrum of final acknowledgements or celebrations of the lives of special people.

The one thing they all had in common was that I was struck each time by how quickly such services end.

Something in me gets so angry: how can a person’s life end this way? It always feels so…inadequate. So lacking.

I want to sit and reflect. Linger. Always, I am shooed out before I am ready to leave.

Even the greatest memorials – which in my book are filled with laughter, love and grief with voices raised and tears shed in full view and community – are over much too soon for my heart.

I leave baffled and bereft, with the sense that something is missing.

Then it hits me: oh yes, something is missing. The special person is missing.

Having buried two parents, a brother, a grandfather, three dear mentor father-figures, and two beloved cats over these past 12 years, I have learned and bourn witness to the truth that literally all that remains after a special person dies, in the end, is how they made people feel.

Yes, it is true, they may leave behind other kinds of legacies too.

But really, all that literally remains is how that person loved the people they came into contact with, isn’t it?

My special person whose funeral was today was not a lifelong friend.

I’d drifted away from our friendship the past ten years or so, for reasons that made sense at the time but don’t now. He did nothing wrong to instigate this drifting – he was an innocent in a part of my life that became lost in a kind of wreckage that was indirectly a result from past events. Our friendship was felled by friendly fire in a war I was waging with ghosts. Yet another tally mark on the side of things I grieve, having lost them.

Because of this, I almost did not go to the funeral. I didn’t feel entitled to.

Then I remembered the old adage about people coming into your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime, and I realized that showing up for him as someone who had loved and been loved by him for any length of time is all any of us can do. That his current special people would surely only benefit from being surrounded by any and all of those who knew how special their special person was. That I could go for him, for me, for them, and be one of many who loved this special person for a reason, a season or a lifetime.

And there were many of us there. I have no doubt when I pass I will be lucky to have a handful of people. I have lived far too self-contained a life so far. I am still influenced by a deep-seated fear of people that shapes my connections no matter what I do, it seems. (Although I have been and am working to shift this, to be able to have deeper intimacies with people that I care for and who care for me.)

But my special friend was one of those people whose funerals reveal just how many people their life has touched. All kinds of people from all walks of life were there. And all had lost someone very special to them.

My special friend was my special friend for a season of ten or so very special years. He loved me dearly at a time I did not know how to love myself. He gave me unconditional love and support, and he championed my talents and dreams, and mirrored to me someone who had the courage to truly make their dreams come true.

I have so many happy memories of those years, and he figures prominently in all of them.

These years later, I can appreciate him even more with the wisdom of age. I thought of him many times through these years. Thought of reaching out. I foolishly kept putting it off, thinking I had the luxury of time. Hah.

In many ways, the way he lived puts me to shame. He found the courage to really put his talents out there for the world to see, over and over, no matter what anyone thought. I am still struggling to find that kind of belief in what I have to offer, that kind of courage.

He loved to sing so he sang. He loved rock and roll, so he performed in his own rock and roll cabaret shows. He loved what singing was to him, so he did all in his power to help others to be able to sing as well. He was a champion for many, and a power of example to all artists.

He died a senseless, awful death, one that seems ridiculously unfair and absurd for a man such as he was: one of the kindest, most generous souls I have known.

And so today, I leave yet another funeral, baffled and bereft.

But I carry the gifts of his life forever within me: how loved he made me feel, the memories of the music we made together, the inspiration he will always be to me as someone who just put it all out there for the world to see no matter the reception.

And the kick in the pants to “do it” already, no matter what.

There’s no time to waste.

I hear you, John. I get it. Thank you, my friend. I love you.

And I am so grateful we had our season.

Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: calling