A year after

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My brother Henry died a year ago today.

That point in time is a discontinuity for me. There was my life before, when there seemed to be some kind of stability in the world, at least on a smaller scale. And then there is my life after that, when I found myself in a new position, the last living member of the Paris family.

Henry and I weren’t close in a lot of ways, but there was always a sense of belonging. The nuclear family was long gone, of course. Our father died in 2000, and our mother in 2013. But those are the kinds of deaths that any mature person has to expect. My father’s death made me into a different kind of person, one for whom the words, “My father is dead” had an actual, gut-level meaning. I joined a kind of club then, the club of people who have lost a parent. When I talked to other people who had lost a parent, there was a kind of unspoken understanding between us. My brother and I both looked to our mother then, not as a person to lean on, but as a person who needed someone to lean on. We could both count on the other to be there when necessary.

And then, when our mother died, there was a sense of finality. Now it was just me and my brother … forever? Well, that was in the back of my mind. I knew at some time both of us would die, but I aways thought it would be far in the distant future, and, for some reason, I always assumed I would die first, even though Henry was older by almost three years. I guess it was because I thought Henry was strong, competent and reliable. He would be there because he knew he should be there.

Then there came the call just before Thanksgiving, when he told me that his doctor had found suspicious spots on his liver. It wasn’t long before he found out that it was pancreatic cancer, and that the prognosis was dim at best. Not really dim — black.

I went into a period of, not denial, but intellectual distance. Henry and I were both pretty smart people, and we were both scientists. I went into disinterested scientist mode. Not uninterested, but standing off a little and looking at the situation unemotionally. I took in every little bit of new information and fitted it into my model of how things would go. I knew there was a very high probability of what would happen eventually, but I chose not to conclude anything until all the facts were in.

Maybe most people do what I did but call it something different. Probably denial.

At the end, even when I saw Henry lying in bed, barely conscious, wasting away, I didn’t accept that his death was a foregone conclusion. It was not until his son called and said he had died a day after my last visit to him that the reality hit me.

Only it never did really hit me. For me, it’s a perfect example of cognitive dissonance. A part of me is aware of and comprehends that Henry is dead, and there is another part of me that simply hasn’t acknowledged that. I can still feel his presence in my life. I’m sure that’s a characteristic of the human brain.

I have spent a lot of time over this last year trying to figure out just what the reality is, at least for me. Among other things, the reality is a new awareness of death, the end of things. I never really believed Henry would die. But he did. And I guess that means I will, too.

But I’m not sure that’s what really bothers me. I’m not just sad because Henry is dead, although he had a lot left to live for, and I’m not just depressed because I know I’ll die sometime. I think it’s more about the last link with my family being broken. I spent a lot of years feeling like part of my emotional foundation was my family. Now that’s gone.

We all spend our formative years growing up — that’s a tautology, of course. But in our formative years, we are the younger generation, and our parents are the older generation. Things will be different for us because … well, because we’re young. If you have children, you have to admit that there is another generation coming along behind you, but if you have no children, that realization might not quite occur.

Late last fall, before Henry got so sick he couldn’t walk, his two sons and his new daughter-in-law came to Chattanooga to visit. We decided to take a walk around the block. We all started off together, but the youngsters gradually pulled ahead of me and Henry, as the two of us talked and looked around.

That image, of three 30-somethings walking ahead and the two old guys walking and falling slowly further and further behind, seemed to me a perfect metaphor for life. That’s when I began to see myself and Henry as the last generation, fading away while the next generation takes its place. Only for me, there is no next generation.

I wish I could feel like there is something useful that could come out of the way I feel now, but, at least for the time, I can’t see it.

Unfortunate animal events

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Do bad things come in threes?

No, of course not, not as a rule, but in this case, they did.

First, Mollie had her foot infection. We took her to the vet on Tuesday. On Thursday she started feeling worse, despite the antibiotic shot the vet gave her. She jumped down off the bed in our guest bedroom (the one that has never seen a guest), and apparently it really hurt her feet. Late in the afternoon she disappeared. I found her hiding under the bedspread. That’s her next to the teddy bear.

We figure she must really be feeling bad to hide out like that.

Next, Sylvester has disappeared. The last time we saw him was on Tuesday around 1 pm. He usually visits a neighbor who feeds an outdoor cat, but he always come back home to eat and lounge around for a while, maybe even spend the night. Being missing for this long is unusual behavior for him, and Leah expects the worst.

And then Thursday afternoon I saw this dog.

She had obviously given birth fairly recently. Someone had dumped her with her puppies on the road we take into town, an all too common occurrence around here. I was on my way to the grocery store, so I bought some extra dog food and a food bowl. and stopped to feed her on my way back home. She was shy and defensive, and wouldn’t come close. I went back home for some water and another bowl. When I got back, a couple of people stopped. One of them said the dog had been there at least two days, and that two girls had taken her pups some time earlier. I suppose they left the mama because they couldn’t catch her.

One man said he would take her if she could be caught. but the dog was too afraid and distrustful. I think under the right circumstances someone could rescue her. This particular man was not the right circumstances.

Unfortunately, the circumstances were not right for me even after the man left. If the dog had been a little hungrier, and I had had a little more time, she might have come to me. I sat down near but facing away from the food I had put out. The dog approached me but in the end, turned and walked away. I had no choice but to leave her with more food and go home, at least for the time being.

Unfortunately for her, as I write this Thursday night, it’s raining, and there is no cover for her anywhere nearby.

I will probably try to get to her again on Friday, but I’m not sure what good it will do. One of the rescue groups I have dealt with here refuses to take pit bulls, so she would probably end up at the pound. The man who said he could take her gave me his number, so maybe I can work something out with him.

Mollie’s feet

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A few days ago Leah noticed that Mollie seemed to be holding up her right front foot a lot, so she decided we needed to take her to the vet on Monday. The vet found that her toes were infected again (Mollie’s toes, not the vet’s). We didn’t even think about it, but almost a year ago to the day we took her in and the vet found that her toes were infected.

The examination included having her assistant hold Mollie firmly, and then squeezing Mollie’s little toes hard to make pus come out. Mollie communicated to everyone that she did not enjoy that procedure, although her feet probably felt better afterwards.

After Mollie got an antibiotic shot, we were on our way home, with instructions not to let Mollie go outside for the duration, which might be as long as a couple of months, since she had symptoms through June last year.

Mollie had not wanted to get into her carrier when we took her to the vet, but after we got back home, that’s where she wanted to be.

She went in and out a couple of times, passing by the door and staring wistfully at the door lever.

Fortunately Mollie has not mastered the doorknob principle. Sylvester knew that trick at our old house, but apparently has not passed on that knowledge to our other cats.

She stayed in the carrier for a while.

She went into our bathroom later in the evening, probably because of the heated floor, but sometime during the morning jumped on our bed and settled down next to Leah. I think she was feeling better.

A trip out West

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Zeke and I drove out to Denver and Albuquerque a couple of weeks ago to visit friends. It was kind of a semi-spur-of-the-moment trip. We ended up leaving at around 5 pm on a Tuesday, planning to arrive in Denver on Wednesday. It meant driving late into the night to try to get to the halfway point, which is nearly 700 miles. We pulled over into a rest area in Kansas, which I recognized from previous trips, and spent the night in the back of the truck.

I have a camper shell, and I made a bed with a foam mattress, so it wasn’t as bad as that might sound. Zeke also had a foam mattress. I slept in a sleeping bag, which was plenty warm, and I tossed a sleeping bag over Zeke, so he was warm, too. We got up pretty early the next morning and headed west on I-70. As we drove, I started seeing signs saying that I-70 was closed at Burlington, Co., not far across the state line. I looked at a map and decided to try for Colby, where I could get a hotel that allowed dogs.

The weather got worse as we drove. This is what we were driving into.

It wasn’t snowing, but the wind was blowing. I saw two tractor-trailer trucks on their sides, blown over by the wind. I still didn’t realize exactly how strong the wind was until we got to the hotel in Colby, and I could barely stand up whenI got out of the truck. The wind took one of my gloves out the open door, and it flew away into the distance.

My phone’s weather radar app showed what looked like a hurricane just east of Denver. I have never seen anything like that outside of an actual hurricane, and I have never experienced a steady, high wind like that. Denver was getting blasted by the wind and a good bit of snow. A lot of people got stranded on I-25, especially south of Denver.

Anyway, the hotel was pretty swanky. Here’s the pool.

That’s dirt, not ice.

The hotel was actually OK. The only problem, aside from the fact that an idiot had tried and failed to hook up the TV to the cable outlet, was that Zeke was constantly whining at the door to go outside. Going outside was not a pleasant experience. The next morning I checked the Colorado transportation web site, which said I-70 was still closed. Checkout time approached and passed, and the interstate was still closed. I walked Zeke across the parking lot and down the street a short way. I found my errant glove beside the road. I drove around a while to kill some time. The wind was still blowing hard. How hard was the wind blowing? Hard enough to blow the stripes off the pavement.

I-70 reopened around mid-afternoon. The highway was almost completely clear of snow, with only a few icy spots. There was almost no snow to be seen, on the road or off. I guess it all blew away.

Zeke and I arrived at the house of my friends Errol and Cookie, who I have known for many years, just in time to meet their daughter Debra, who I have also known for many years, and go out to dinner. Her husband and son drove separately and met us at the restaurant. We left Zeke with Errol and Cookie’s two dogs, who had access to the fenced back yard through a doggie door. We had just sat down to eat when I got a call from a Denver number. I almost didn’t answer it because everyone I know in Denver was sitting at the table with me. But I answered, and it was a good thing I did. An extremely nice young woman said that she had found a pretty white and brown dog running across a busy street near my friends’ house. Zeke had climbed a low section of the fence and escaped. He escaped again the next day, but we caught him before he could make for the highway.

My friend’s brother Tom, who I have also known for many years, lives in Edgewood, NM, just east of Albuquerque. He had eye surgery scheduled for the next week, so my friends were going to drive down to help out. It was a good opportunity to see Tom, who I had not seen for several years.

Tom lives in the house he built within sight of I-70. It consists of a house facing a studio across a sunken patio. This is a view from the house towards the studio.

If you look carefully you can see a bust of Richard Feynman, the famous physicist. Here’s a closer view of the bust, which Tom did.

As you can see, Tom is an artist, among other things. His studio is not where he does his sculpting. That he does in his living room. His studio is for making videos. Tom is very involved in the politics of Edgewood, which apparently has more than its share of small-town political funny business. He makes videos to publicize what the mayor and council are doing. It makes the city officials mad.

Tom also keeps a couple of sheep on his property, mainly for the ambience.

We ate green chile cheeseburgers a couple of times, but, unfortunately, no Mexican meals. On the other hand, Tom prepared a couple of quite nice, well-presented dinners, befitting someone who went to Europe for cooking classes.

I couldn’t stay for Tom’s eye surgery. Zeke and I left on Wednesday, heading east on I-40. We stopped that night at a rest area in Arkansas. That rest area was also familiar to me, as I have spent the night there in the back of another truck on a number of occasions.

I saw a lot of windmills on the way out to Denver, and even more on the way back east. There are scores visible from the highway west of Amarillo, and more on the east side. The land is flat there, and, as we found on the way out, the flat plains experience a lot of wind. They are impressive during the day, but eerie at night. At night I could barely see the towers against a cloudy sky. The spinning blades made them look like tall stick men waving their arms at the passing traffic.

We got back home around 9 pm on Thursday. I thought I was in pretty good shape, but when I went to bed that night, I was asleep the moment my head hit the pillow, and I didn’t move for seven hours.

The cedar tree, plus the sky

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I cut some more of the big cedar that I mentioned in a post back in January. Some of it has rotted so much that it falls apart when I pick it up, but a surprisingly large amount of the tree is good firewood. This is a section of the trunk near the base.

I counted around 50 rings. As you can see, it had split into two trunks at this point. There is some decay and a few holes just above the left trunk segment. Those holes lead to living quarters. It turns out that the cedar was a huge carpenter ant apartment complex.

The black in the chambers is actually ants. I had to use an insecticide on the firewood I cut from this tree to avoid bringing the ants into the house.

It hasn’t been all trees lately. We had a lot of rain, then some clear weather, and now some more cloudy skies and drizzle. This was the late afternoon eastern sky a few days ago, right after the rain and just before the clearing.