As I'm cleaning out old files, I found an old receipt from the vets with my cat's age on it. (I've been trying to remember when I rescued her from the tiny pet store cage in which she could only sit in her litter.) As far as I can figure, she's almost 12 years old. For a fat old cat, she sure is doing well.
Because I'm anticipating moving her with me when I finally get to my daughter's, I invested in a large carpeted "house" for her litter box. If I had known that it weighs 50 pounds (the inside is melamine), I might not have ordered it. On the other hand, maybe I would have, since it also works beautifully as another sunny window perch for her.
My mom, who is older than my cat in cat-years, is not doing so well. She seems to only be able to stay awake for a couple of hours at a time. She often doesn't eat unless one of us feeds her. The hospice nurse is stopping in today, but I doubt if there's anything she can tell us that we don't already know.
The only time I seem to get outside for any sun shine is when I go out to tend my kitty corner garden. For lack of any other place to put it that wasn't overgrown with weeds, I tucked it into the space between the driveway and the woods. It's not perfect, but what is.
Not even my grandson is perfect, although he's close. He can't be bothered to put on matching socks in the morning, but, as my daughter relates on her blog:
Our big brained boy wanted to know yesterday how the first person ever born was, well, born -- because if he/she were the first, how could they be if every person born was only born after the mother before them was born (this child is only turning 6 next weekend, btw).
So there I was, having to launch into a succinct, but thorough explanation of evolution from slimy muck to Man.
Actually, as much as the weeds around here need whacking, they're not getting it. They are pretty much out of control. Weeds: plants considered undesirable, unattractive, or troublesome, especially one growing where it is not wanted,
It's not just the weeds around here that are out of my control. I am still living under the tyranny of my mother's growing dementia and dependence combined with my brother's demoralizing rules and realities.
Not much freedom for me here, on this Independence Day.
Maybe I should go out and buy my own little weed whacker, vent my frustrations on that army of undesirables that are intruding over every path from the door to the world. Whack! Whack! Take that, you creepy things.
I did murder a whole bunch of Japanese Beetles today as they attempted an orgy on my tomato plant. Whack! Whack!
One can only hold in anger and frustration for so long. Yes, I think I need to go out and whack those weeds, clear a path, clear my head. I know that those weed whackers are pretty loud, loud enough to muffle the yelling I need to get out of my system.
Someday I will be able to celebrate a real personal Independence Day. Until then, I need to go out and get a weed whacker.
On Independence Day back in 2002 I blogged that there should be a "Interdependence Day," and a commenter sent me to this page, where there is a Global Declaration of Interdependence, as follows:.
Preamble:
In acknowledgment of the many existing documents and efforts that promote peace, sustainability, global interconnectedness, reverence for life and unity, We, The World hereby offers the following Declaration of Interdependence as our guiding set of principles for moving forward into this new millennium. It is inspired by the Earth Charter, the essential values of which have been culled from the many peoples of the Earth.
Declaration/Pledge
We, the people of planet Earth,
In recognition of the interconnectedness of all life
And the importance of the balance of nature,
Hereby acknowledge our interdependence
And affirm our dedication
To life-serving environmental stewardship,
The fulfillment of universal human needs worldwide,
Economic and social well-being,
And a culture of peace and nonviolence,
To insure a sustainable and harmonious world
For present and future generations.
And tonight, as I watched part of New York City's fireworks, I couldn't help wondering how all of that money spent on fireworks all over this country could have instead been used for much more important and humanitarian purposes.
But rulers know how to pacify the people using bread and circuses, how to make them forget what the late George Carlin so eloquently reminded us about.
That is such a lovely and uplifting piece of synchronicity.
Not surprisingly, there are no rainbows over here in the mountains -- just lots of thunder and rain and some kind of blight happening on my little "oasis in the wildnerness" garden. And I can't take a photo of it to see if anyone knows what it is because I dropped my little camera while away the other weekend, and it broke. I bought a new little one but haven't had the time to figure it all out yet or download the software.
Meanwhile, despite taking an antidepressant, my mom is having more frequent bouts of uncontrollable crying. She keeps asking for her husband, my dad, who passed away almost 25 years ago.
We are sitting at the table, and she is eating some spaghetti with a roasted sweet red pepper sauce that I make. She decided that she doesn't like tomato sauce and she doesn't like straight alfredo sauce, so I mix my pureed sweet roasted red peppers with a little alfredo, and she wolfs it down.
"Where are your children," she asks.
"They live far away," I answer. " Where are yours?"
She looks at me and says, "I don't know."
I don't know which is worse, Alzheimer's or "old age" dementia. With Alzheimer's you don't realize that you're not remembering. With dementia, you are torn apart by a sense that you can't remember even though you want to.
I look back at my original blog, which I began in November of 2001. At that point, I was already taking care of my mom, living across the hall from her in a senior citizen apartment building. Even back then, when she wasn't so bad yet, I was struggling to have some sort of life apart from caregiving. With each month that went by, I lost more and more of my own life.
I never thought that it would all go on for so long.
Yesterday's Myrln posthumous post was a poem with a "life as a garden" metaphor. Reading it made me think about how many of the legacies he left are what continue to grow from the seeds of his thoughts, his words.
While the "garden" has always been a life metaphor for me as well, I tend to use it in a different way. And that fact is also a perfect metaphor for how we related as spouses: we started in the same place, with the same need, but we went out from there in very different directions.
They gave me a garden
the size of a grave,
so I filled it with raucous
reminders of sense:
marigold nests,
nasturtium fountains,
explosions of parsley, and
layers of lavender --
forests of tomato plants
asserting lush ascendance
over scent-full beds of
rosemary, basil, and sage.
And waving madly above them all,
stalks of perplexing
Jerusalem artichoke,
an unkillable weed
that blossoms and burrows
and grows up to nine feet tall,
defying the grim arrogance
of gravity.
elf
may 02
My literal gardens are transient. When I move away, they decay away and are forgotten. Such is the nature of many of my legacies.
Once in a while, though, I need to believe in something permanent -- hence, the two lilac trees I planted back from the edge of the woods around this house, where my brother most likely will not mow or snow blow them down when I move away from here. Someday, new owners will look out the window at the acres of rotting windfall and scraggly brush and old shaggy trees and see two blooming lilac bushes -- a sepia landscape touched with unexpected color.
Myrln is gone, but his spirit remains with us in the power of his words, thanks to our daughter, who salvaged his collection of writings.
Myrln's birthdate is this Thursday. He would have been 71.
Poem for My Birthday
Through years
-- with seeds my own, some received before, some given later --
I planted myself:
a feeling there, a thought,
a sense of what might be, was, seemed to be,
a tear, a laugh, angry shouts and happy,
whispers, a reaching, holding, letting go, loving,
isolationliness,
some hiding, fear, joy, longing,
scatterings
of pain, risk, uncertainy, determination,
bit by bit
seeding through the years.
And making my garden of word and heart:
some parts stillgrown,
others modest,
and a few full flourished,
all being the what why where
whole of me.
Sometimes, if my mother naps in the afternoon, I try to get outside a walk a bit. Only I can't go out of earshot, because if she wakes up and can't find me, she'll spiral down into one of her dementia episodes.
So, like a prisoner let out into the prison yard, I walk in circles around the open area outside the front of the house. I go out in between snowstorms, when most of the snow has melted. I leave my footprints in the mud of now, rather than in the sands of time.
I find that I prefer to walk "widdershins," which is, in the rituals of myth and magic, counter clockwise. And which, if done while chanting an incantation, is supposed to generate productive energy.
What should I chant, I think, as I pace around my imprisoned yard. "Freedom!" If only.
Meanwhile, it's March and there's still a good deal of snow on the ground. Inside, the seeds I planted have already sprouted. I thought it would take a month. Now I have to transplant them all into pots and figure out where to put them. The windowsill is not an option. The cold radiating in would wipe out the whole crop. Sometimes my timing really sucks.
I've been trying to find the time to plant the seeds I want to grow for my planter garden this spring. (No more dig-in-the-earth garden, where pests of all sizes devoured what I had last year.)
The sunny day seemed auspicious for planting, so I got out my supplies and got to it.
I planted seeds for flowers that might not be too tasty to the critters who munched and lunched here all last summer. Mostly, I planted ornamental hot pepper plants -- colorful fruit and foliage, and inedible by, or unappetizingly firey to, any living creature. But they sure do look pretty in pots.
Perhaps the full lunar eclipse tonight will also mean that it is an auspicious time for planting seeds. I guess I will find out in a few weeks time.
Meanwhile, I hope this also is an auspicious time to open up my CPU and insert more RAM. I printed out instructions, and am ready to tackle another project I've been waiting to find time to do.
My mother has had a few days of either sleeping for 16 hours straight or being up for 16 hours straight. Her 92nd birthday was on Monday. On Tuesday, we had a local Polish Catholic priest over for lunch. They knew each other well back at the old parish in Yonkers. She doesn't remember him. But he remembers her and tried to talk to her about the old days. She sat and listened, and the only thing she seemed to be able to say was "How long have you been here?"
She is growing smaller and lighter, a drying pod waiting to fall.
