One Year Ago - One Year Later - Still Loving My Daddy

July 6, 2011 was a Wednesday and everybody connected with TheQueen knows that Wednesday means Story Hour/. The previous week had been full of family and sadness as Daddy's life slowly ebbed. I had been by his side almost every day but at last I had come home for a spell - however brief - to check in on my work world. Driving in to work, I had just reached the big highway when my heart was gripped with a tearing pain - a sensation like some skin or membrane was being pulled off of me. I stopped the car and gasped for breath. It only lasted a moment but it was powerfully strong and it took me another few minutes to feel normal again.  I told myself it was just anxiety coupled with imagination, even though I actually know I am every bit as fey as Mama. I just put the experience and any concllusion I might have had about it in the box of Things To Think About Later ... at Tara.

But once I got to the library one of my staff told me to call my sister right away. I did and sister told me, in a sober voice, that "Daddy had an incident this morning." 

"At 20 to 10, right?" I answered.

"Yes and we have an appointment with hospice at 2:30"

He was still alive, but only barely. They had removed the Oxygen Pump Of Torture to feed him a little applesauce and instead he began to suffocate. Vital signs plummeted. The full force of the medical establishment leapt into action and he had rallied but I knew. Sister knew. Daddy probably knew too.

I went ahead and held the Story Hour, then went home to pack. BD was confused and frustrated because he, of course, hadn't felt that tearing sensation - and though in more sober moments he trusts my antennae, in a crisis, he must fall back on the Haile Mathematical Mind. We are what we are and I am an iNtuitive, Feeling Perceiver. He is a Sensory, Thinking Judge. Different Gifts.  

There was a terrific rain storm as I hit the city limits. (What I wouldn't give for a terrific rain storm today ... Daddy? Can't you talk to the weather guy?) My memory of that day was of all grey colors - the grey sky, the sandy grey look of the hospital, the dusky light in the atrium. Sister and I chatted with the hospice nurse. "You're positive you want to do this?" she asked. We both answered "We love him! Would you make your daddy live like that just so you could keep him near?"

"They'll come for him" the nurse told us. 

I thought she meant some different part of the hospital staff. "The doctors?"

"No. 'They' will come. He won't go alone. I've seen hundreds of these passings and sometimes I've even seen 'Them'." she told me in a dead serious voice. 

And they did. About an hour after he had sunk into a medically induced state of non-anxiety he suddenly sat up and began talking to someone at the foot of his bed. Then he lay back, sank into sleep, and then slipped away for the last time. 

It was his and Mama's 65th wedding anniversary. Imagine that. I miss him almost every day, though the dragging downer feeling has lifted some. I know, having had to bid both a beloved father-in-law and a most precious mother-in-law goodbye, that the ache will lessen as the warmth of the memories grows. Oh - yes - sometimes the missing hurts - but it's always that good sort of hurt that makes you glad - like when it was time for a baby tooth to come out and you'd nudge it till it tore a little. You knew it was time for something new - time to step into the next stage of life - or, as in the case of death, time for the first stage of what comes next. I am sure it will be wonderful since everything I've had so far has been so wonderful. 

In fact, one of the wonderful things that comes next is the next generation of children stepping into the world of grown-ups: To grow up, to graduate, to marry. Today we will celebrate at a wedding of young cousins who are starting out on their own Next Stage. How special that it will happen on the anniversary of a marriage that lasted for 65 years. I wish them the same - or better! I suppose every day is some sort of anniversary of someone's momentous first step into the unknown. In fact - today will be a step into the unknown for us all. May it be a marvelous adventure - for the bride and groom, for the greater family, for each and every one of us. 

Socks' Story

On a spring day in 2001, ThePrince(Consort) and I were driving off the flats when, just at the top of the bank of Farmer's Hall Creek we noticed a yellow flash streak across the road in front of our car. "It's a puppy!" one of us shouted out as my prince slammed to a halt. He backed up a bit and there, at the old road into Rose Hill was a pile of brush. From behind it, suddenly popped up one, two, three, four, five! Five little mongrel puppy heads.

If you ever hear that I have gone to jail it will be because I actually caught someone dropping of a litter of puppies in the woods, because "after all, they come from wild animals, they can survive in the woods." After I had broken both this evildoer's knee caps I would have walked off calling out "see how well you survive in the woods!" as I brushed my hands in satisfaction. There is very little that can get me steaming, but people who are too lazy, selfish, maudlin and thoughtless to make even the worst of the possible "right" choices and put down a litter of unwanted puppies are at the top of the list.

Okay - off my soapbox - because really this is a tribute to Socks, who came to us out of the woods 11 years ago and last Friday, left us to go back into the woods. It was a very hot day and though she hadn't taken a walk in weeks, this time she decided to follow ThePrince(Consort) over to White Oak Swamp. Whenever she does go on that walk, she peels off and goes to some secret place she loves over there - someplace off the path and known only to her. She always rejoins us, often twice or thrice during a stroll, but certainly she's always there at the tar road, ready to head back to Jacob's Gut for a cool dip and sip. This time, she did not. BD said he saw her twice on this stroll and her breathing was labored - but she soon slipped away to her special place and though we've searched for her numerous times, she has not been found. We don't expect to see her again.

Socks was a mixture of every kind of dog grown in Upper Essex - She had little tiny paws with huge tufts of fur between the toes. She had the golden fur of a Labrador retriever but the thick ruff of a collie. Her triangular ears stuck out to the sides for years, though as she aged they pointed straight up. We would call her "Yoda" and "Airplane Ears" but always with the gentle tone that makes a dog feel loved. Her main activity was sleeping on the bed, her one virtue was that she wiped out the moles in our front yard. She had acute hearing and a stubbornness that precluded ever changing her mind.

Of course, when she came to us she was just a scrawny little yellow puppy, homely to almost ugliness, and totally unwanted. Of the 5 puppies we scooped up that day, BD found homes for 4 of them. He returned with this one little puppy and a pleading look of puppy depravation on his face. "We can keep her. We have hundreds of acres. We can certainly make room for one more. Between the two of us we have 4 arms, we can pet them all......"  TheQueen was not convinced. She already had 3 dogs. Nobody needs four!! But the menfolk in her life prevailed.

BD had to leave town for a week and he swore that if I kept her that one week, he would find a home for her when he returned. Of course - nobody can leave a woman home with just a puppy for a whole week and not trigger her possessive maternal instincts. I began to notice things were disappearing and one day my glasses vanished. I posted watch on that little yellow puppy and when she picked up one of my socks and dragged it beneath the dresser in the den, I followed. There was the whole cache of hidden treasures, all of them carrying my scent. This little dog was creating a den full of her beloved's objects. My heart melted.

Socks loved to be wet. She loved to sink herself in the dog swimming pool, right where the lane crosses the little stream we call Jacob's Gut. A few years ago she caught one of the severe tick-born diseases and though she recovered to some extent, from then on she began to retreat. She loved to get under the yurt and burrow into the soft dirt. Every morning she'd come up to the house to get a biscuit and visit for about an hour. Then she'd slink back under the yurt, to reappear at dinner time. She would follow Jack up to the house and watch Dog TV in the winter (the fire in the stove) or lie on the floor in the den if we were watching a DVD. When we went to bed, she went back out to her little nest of soft sandy soil.

In some ways, she became less of a pet and more of a neighbor who just dropped in now and then. But she always got to do things her way. And so Socks, who became our 4th dog, and then our 3rd dog, who, when Ike died moved up to become our 2nd dog, was here to welcome baby puppy Jack and become our 3rd dog again. Then, last spring, when Priss left us, she became our 2nd dog, and now .... she is gone.

Fare the well, Miss Socks, Yoda, Airplane Ears, Yellow Thing. Go back into the spirit of the woods and know you were loved.