Sunday, February 1, 2015

At the still point of the turning world

A friend's son was wondering about being preserved until some future time in peanut brittle, like Han Solo in carbonite. I'm not sure how well that would work in reality. I do understand the impulse to stop time, though. In many ways, I feel like time stopped in November. Callie died, winter moved in. Life became frozen, a grey sky-wrapped stasis of frozen time, frozen ground.

The only real thing for me has been my grief. I haven't been good at grief; I typically run from it. But she deserves a full measure of grief. Not a rationing out in bits and pieces. Or worse, stuffing it back inside and pretending to be fine. Like her death didn't break me apart and unravel my life.

So I grieve. Allowing myself to feel all my grief for her opened the way for all the rest of the grief I've stuffed away. A huge subterranean lake of grief. And this time, I am not pushing it back, burying it, damming it, ignoring it. I thought if I ever opened the way to my grief, it would come crashing down on me like a tsunami, but it's just bubbling up, a steady bubbling, like the source of a spring. I just hold it all in my open hands, and let it be what it is, and then let it go. I can't hold it. I can't change it. It is what it is. And so I just sit, in stillness, breathing, grieving, breathing, listening, breathing, seeing, breathing, being.

And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
~T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets


Thursday, November 6, 2014

Letting Go

My beautiful, precious 19-year-old cat has many health issues, including hyperthyroidism, kidney disease, arthritis in her jaw, teeth issues, irritable bowl, and now possibly some kind of nasopharyngeal mass or polyp.  




Because of all the other health issues, anesthesia has been ruled out as too risky. We found out about the potential mass on Monday (best guess with her symptoms), and I had a discussion with the vet about how to know when it was time. She was listing the typical indicators - eating, pain, elimination, etc. I said, yes, not eating would be a big one for me. Callie was lying in her carrier, with her head towards us, and I thought to myself, I hope she's not listening to this. Typically she curls up in the carrier to try to hide from all things vet-related.

From the time we got home Monday, she hasn't really eaten. I've coaxed her into eating a little bit of salmon, and some tuna water. She was drinking CatSure (like ensure for people) until today. She sometimes acts like she wants something, crying a bit and going to her dish, and she will sometimes eat a tiny bit of something if I hand feed her. Sometimes even hand feeding doesn't help. I have 7 dishes of things out currently, and today she has had a couple tablespoons of chicken baby food that I fed her off my finger.

Monday night, she sat on my chest while I was in bed. I said to her, "you listened to me, didn't you, and now you're going to call me on it, aren't you?" And she just blinked her eyes at me and purred.

I don't know how cats know things, but they do. I've told her many times recently that it was ok for her to go, but I don't think she believed it until Monday. I think she has been uncomfortable for awhile. I've been keeping a daily journal, and went back through looking at good and bad days. There haven't been many good days for some time.


Having to decide to help her go sucks. I had really hoped that she would just go to sleep and not wake up, drifting off quietly and peacefully. With her issues, my choices are to help her go now, or to keep her with me until she wastes herself away to nothing. That makes my decision more clear cut, but it doesn't change the outcome. There is nothing that will fix all the things for her. She is dying. It's just a question of when.


Our choice, because I do believe she's let me know her opinion, is to minimize the suffering. I want her to be able to keep some of her Callie-ness, and not have it taken away by pain or suffering. I don't want her to leave this world full of suffering, and as a shell of herself. It would be so easy to do that, though. Keeping her here now would be for me, to avoid the pain of her loss for awhile longer. She would starve herself, or I would have to try to fight to feed her by syringe. We did that once, and she hated it. I knew at that time that she wasn't ready to go. Now, I think she's done with being broken. It's really death with dignity, for a cat. Tomorrow the vet will come to our house, and my beautiful girl will slip off peacefully.

We've been through so much together - marriage and divorce, 2 graduate programs, multiple moves and car trips... I am so lucky to have had her in my life, and for so very long. I am so lucky that she found us, when she was a tiny 6-week-old kitten abandoned in a parking lot. Oddly enough, I saw and held a tiny 6-week-old kitten found abandoned along the highway when we were at the vet's on Monday. It helped me remember how very tiny Callie was, and how very feisty, too. Full circle. I hope this other tiny kitten has as good of a life with her rescuer as my once tiny kitten has had with me.

Thursday, October 30, 2014

Callie Diagnosing Again

This is the odd, intermittent sort of whistling noise she makes, usually when she's meowing, but occasionally when she's just sitting around. It was very intermittent. I've noticed it more often, but it's not all the time.


Callie, Whistling Noise from Trish Pierson on Vimeo.


She sometimes breathes like this. She was sitting here. She meows because I touched her with the camera (oops). You notice the really indrawn breath after the meow, which is not something she does usually.


Callie, Breathing Noises from Trish Pierson on Vimeo.

Monday, August 11, 2014

Callie - Diagnosing

Callie eating, with the head movement she has. This is with liquids, too. The after eating video is what she will sometimes do. Other times she will yowl for a little while. Other times, she will be fine. This is not consistent.


Eating Video from Trish Pierson on Vimeo.

After Eating Video from Trish Pierson on Vimeo.

Summer 2014

Summer in Missoula....

blanket flowers
Callie on my lap
Callie on the porch
Callie on my lap, with my hand holding her head up
crazy tomato plant inherited from the front house neighbors when they moved
garden in June
garden in August
cow cake for Denise's birthday
Callie and the sprinkler
ninebark
Pattee Canyon
Pattee Canyon
Callie
porch
table
Callie
kale, squash, cukes...
lavender
pineapple sage, squash, oregano, flowers
oregano, sage, rose bush in background
flower pots
porch
California poppies
sunflowers
tomato, chives, cukes...
tomatoes and cukes

Sunday, September 15, 2013

Things Read

"Sometimes paper is only paper," my mother says. "Words are just words. Ways to capture the real thing. Don't be afraid to remember that."

I know what she means. Writing, painting, singing - - it cannot stop everything. Cannot halt death in its tracks. But perhaps it can make the pause between death's footsteps sound and look and feel beautiful, can make the space of waiting a place where you can linger without as much fear. For we are all walking each other to our deaths, and the journey there between footsteps makes up our lives.

Reached - Ally Condie