Daily Adventures

"... To live in this world

you must be able
to do three thing: 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, "In Blackwater Woods"

It's a gorgeous poem. I bought a book it's in to simply have it and then another copy for my Kindle as the imagery at the beginning is so evocative...

On Monday, I went to visit a friend of mine who is in the very last stages of ovarian cancer. She's in hospice, now, and weak enough she mostly stays in bed. It was a visit that she and I have been planning for nearly a month, with one not-quite happening just before Thanksgiving. One of my low-level dreads has been that she'd die before we could come face-to-face again, and I live so close to her.

( More about Thanksgiving, how I got my crown fixed again, and how well the visit eventually went... )

This morning, at 7 am, George breathed his last breath, peacefully.

John was in the room with him, reading the newspaper, and George went so quietly, John didn't notice a thing.

( The last few days in detail. )

I've never done this before.

Never bought a plane ticket the same day that I'd flown the flight, never prayed for the whole flight for someone not to die so that we'd at least get there to say our good-byes.

We made it. George's whole family made it into one room, children, spouses, and grandchildren all. We've said our good-byes.

All that remains is the waiting.

( For my usual detailed processing of all this. )

Went to the memorial for a friend of ours, that John's worked with quite a bit in the last couple of years, and whom I knew and liked and talked with now and again at church. He was positive, capable, smart and solid.

Leonard Utz was once a buyer for Neiman Marcus and he loved a three-piece wool suit I'd bought from J Peterman long, long ago. He commented on it every time I wore it, and when Alzheimer's got him, he stayed at home more often, didn't come to church, and the church had a card writing thing. So I wrote him a card saying that I still remembered his comments.

He actually remembered the suit and got a good laugh from the card, which his wife told me about when I worked with her at the rummage sale.

So I wore it today to his memorial service. In 97 degree weather. It wasn't to be fashionable, really. It was just... in memory.

His son and his wife both remarked on it. And his wife loved the symbolism of it, but asked me if I was dying by the end of the service, which I took as a hint and an out. So I changed into a cooler dress before the reception, which was relaxed and good, and made his wife happy, too. Tears were shed as should be, memories shared as they should be, we got to meet more of his family, and I got to meet their two Scotty dogs. That was nice.

I was glad I went, and have all the more good memories of a very good man.

I have mixed feelings today. I'm getting used to the routine. I'm finally phase shifted so that I get to sleep at about 10 in the evening and up at 6 something and then we're out to breakfast and off to work.
( Cut for length and possibility of hitting friends's lists. )

I used to have a series of assassination dreams.  Dreams where I'd go out and kill those that needed killing.  They'd show up the most when I was working really, really hard and doing a lot of work.  Now I wonder, kinda, what they might have meant to me, or what it was I was trying to subconsciously balance back then?  I'm taking a dreams and art class as my adult Sunday education class, and it's just bemusing to think about.   There was no fear or distress in those dreams just an even more sharpened sense of the types of efficiency I have always had in sections of my life.

I had a dream this morning with Jet's younger brother in it.  He was just a two-year-old, curled up in my arm, after the four of us went swimming in a crystal clear, hot spring warmed pool in the depths of a blue-black crystal cave.  He was doing great at swimming, chasing his older brother around, and was as sweet as Jet.  His swim diaper was actually better at protecting his butt from the hardness of the rocks when we were sitting and resting a bit.   A very calm dream.  Only sad after I woke up.

Which was when Jet jumped on me and said, "Mom!  Mom!  Wake up.  Breakfast is ready."   Then he lay on me and rocked and rolled until I grunted, "I'm awake.  I'm awake..." and then he fled down the hallway yelling, "Dad!  Dad!  Mom's up!"

( Read more... )

John M. Ford is gone. I've always delighted in his work, savoring the phrases and going slowly through the complex geographies of most of his plots. Some, like How Much for Just The Planetwere fun. Some, like The Final Reflection made me really think about what it takes to make a real society, especially "evil empires". Some like Fugue State were a study in how prose images can harmonize. Some, like his Arthurian poem, just gave me endless delight as I got more and more into all the details of the legend. I got to meet him once.

Making Light has the details of his death. Quick after decades of fighting health problems.

As Teresa wrote, "There's a hole in the universe."

---

Against Entropy

The worm drives helically through the wood
And does not know the dust left in the bore
Once made the table integral and good;
And suddenly the crystal hits the floor.
Electrons find their paths in subtle ways,
A massless eddy in a trail of smoke;
The names of lovers, light of other days—
Perhaps you will not miss them. That’s the joke.
The universe winds down. That’s how it’s made.
But memory is everything to lose;
Although some of the colors have to fade,
Do not believe you’ll get the chance to choose.
Regret, by definition, comes too late;
Say what you mean. Bear witness. Iterate.

—John M. Ford

Will you STOP people dying for JUST A BIT? Four people I knew or interacted with or am related to in just the last week is just a bit TOO MUCH FOR THIS GIRL.

The weather has finally broken. From three or four weeks of high 90s and 100+ temps, last night it finally broke and a huge thunderstorm blew in the area, dumped buckets of rain on us and then cooled everything off. Whew.

It did it while we were at the Rec. Center. We swam for two HOURS, pretty hard, too, while it rained. Jet had a lot of fun and got into the Lazy River, himself and swam around and around it several times before landing on the wall or one of us.

On the way out to Salad, as that's his favorite place in the world to eat after swimming, the world was Wet.

And on the slick concrete in front of the building, under a slew of bird nests built on the underside of the roof of the Rec. Center, were tiny, tiny frogs. Just a few of them. I found one, brown, tiny, hopping in the water right in front of the front door to the center. It was no bigger than the tip of Jet's tiny thumb, about the size of the fingernail on my pinky finger. I said, "Jet! Look!"

He turned, sturdy little guy that he was and crouched down to look at the tiny frog. He reached down and gently picked it up, cupping his hands around it loosely.

I regret what I next said, "Why don't you show Daddy?"

Jet looked up for his dad, and started towards him. The tiny frog leaped through a hole in Jet's loosely cupped hands, landed on the concrete just as Jet's sandaled foot came down on top of him. I thought I heard a tiny squeak-crunch.

"Oh, no! You stepped on him, Jet."

Jet moved his foot and I heard his intake of breath as he crouched down again and he gently touched the upsidedown, squished tiny frog. "Oh... I squished him." He nearly cried. I could hear his voice shaking.

We stood there for a while, as John stood waiting for us. "Dad! Daddy!" called Jet, "Come here!" And John came and examined the little squashed frog, "He's dead all right."

"Yeah. He's dead. I'm so sorry I stepped on him," said Jet. But as we walked, Jet thought a bit, "There's a hospital. A frog hospital, with a hospital frog, you know? He'll come get him. I was afraid that the birds were going to eat him, which is why I picked him up, so the hospital frog is going to have to be careful to not get eaten... but he'll make the tiny frog better..."

Which seemed to give Jet some comfort. He was pretty sorry so there was no point in rubbing it in.

There's times like these when I wish I wasn't a perfectionist, and had to go through every moment of what I'd done wrong and "should" have done better... but I did my best to not apply that to Jet or too much to John, and it was just a small tragedy of mistakes.

There were other squished frogs on the pavement, people coming out of the Center hadn't even looked down, I guess, but it was sad that we'd actually seen this one and it had still died.