88. Death

The past two days I've kept running into death. 

In a sense, lately, death is all around me—in the continued (eternal) absence of our Milo. No more early morning walk, no more breakfast to be portioned out (kibble + a few spoonfuls of canned food), no more exuberant greeting when we arrive home from running errands, no more afternoon walk, no more tossing of the increasingly vanishing dog toy (his last two: a llama and a red panda), no more sticks thrown, no more river swims, no more evening meal (which increasingly became whatever he would eat, chiefly roast chicken, and salmon skin when we had salmon for dinner, and freeze-dried duck), no more sigh-and-thump as he settled onto his bed by ours. No more forbidden licking of my toes. No more neck scritches.

But we've got his little shrine—his ashes-containing box, his consolement cards, his pawprint pendants, his fur—to which I've added a calendar I made, for 2012, of his first year, and I rotate the pages every so often. Milo flying along a path! Milo standing tall at Sonora Pass! Milo chewing on his chew toys! Milo at SEATAC on his way to his new home! I intend to make a little book from some of the many, many photos I took of him over the years. He was my muse, my joy.

As a friend commented the other day after attending the memorial service for a good friend of hers, "And of course, the unsolved question of what happens to dead people, where are they, where do they go? They seem to suddenly just disappear." Same goes for dogs. 

Cats too. We'll be finding out, but hopefully not too soon. That said, I have lost cats—four of them—but only one of those did we "put to sleep." That cat, the empress Tisiphone, I cried buckets over. But that was thirty years ago. The pain has dulled to fond remembrance. (The other three disappeared in the neighborhood. We found the remains of one—the victim of a coyote. I know: we should keep them indoors. I won't argue my case for not doing that here...)

So, the past two days:

On Sunday, my writing group received word that our leader couldn't attend our Monday meeting because her partner was in the hospital, so we were postponing for a week. Yesterday (Monday) evening, she wrote that he had died, at 10:10 p.m. (There is something so poignant about that precise time.) This evening she wrote that we will still meet next week, that "I am in shock but still walking around." 

That's the strangeness of it, isn't it? You still walk around. Or maybe some confine themselves to bed in a deep depression. But mostly: you still have to walk around. Go to the bathroom, pour a glass of water, make your way to a chair in the sunshine and cry. Somehow, you take yourself to the store and buy groceries (I'd probably go straight to the Ben & Jerry's freezer). You keep going. You just do.

Today, I read on FB of two more deaths: my Antioch U friend Consuelo's kitty Bear Boy, and the longtime companion of the mother of another Antioch friend, Monique. It was moving to me to read their tributes to these important beings in their lives.

Then there's Country Joe McDonald, whose "Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag" was so pertinent then, and seems just as pertinent now. He died on March 7, age 84.

And today my friend Nina's computer died! She's getting a new, modern, much lighter one, and fortunately she had backed up the more important files. But still: even transitioning to a new laptop requires adjustment. Death is never easy.

But the biggest death these past few days happened just a few hours ago: my Howler friend Sherilyn's father, Ron, who suffered a stroke nine years ago, finally slipped to the other side. All these nine years, three of us—Sherilyn, Kim, and I—have met pretty much every morning (travel aside) to spend ninety minutes writing or in other creative pursuits (and pretty much all day on weekends). This evening at 6:06 she texted: "Ron has died. He passed away comfortably in his sleep about 15 minutes ago. Thank you for supporting us."

It's strange how in the chest that simple statement hit me. All these years, Sherilyn has been flying back and forth every week between Burbank, where she and her husband, Grant, live, and Santa Clara, where Ron and her mom, Cindy, live, to take care of him. There were caregivers early on, but then the pandemic hit and caregiving became a two-person gig. Though it was mainly Sherilyn on watch. Grant would come up every so often to help out. It was a small, but twenty-four-hour, operation, keeping Ron going.

And now he's gone. 

Just this last week, they signed up with hospice. Ron stopped eating several weeks ago; it was just a matter of time. And hospice seemed to spark Cindy into action, making plans. She announced, for example, that she'd be selling the house and moving back to Hawaii, where she's from. She started going through Ron's shirts. Hospice seemed to provide an opening, a new horizon.

And now he's gone. And the new horizon can swim into view.

I'm excited for Sherilyn, and for Cindy. Sad too, of course, but Ron really went away with that stroke. 

I asked Sherilyn if she'd send a picture of Ron, because I'd never seen one. I had this vague image of a man lying in bed, a big man, an Asian American man, but I didn't really know what he looked like. She sent this:

Bellagio Hotel, Las Vegas, 12/2014—a couple of years before the stroke. "We have tons but the fastest search was 'Las Vegas,'" she wrote. "He loved Vegas! Proof he's from Hawaii!"

He looked like a big happy bear of a man. I'm so sorry he spent his last almost ten years living the diminished life he did. 

I trust Sherilyn and Cindy won't mind that I featured them here. It's just so strange for the death of someone I never even knew to hit me so hard. But in a way, I've lived with the three of them for nine years now. Their story, what little I know of it, is in my own heart.