3 Friends, 5 Days, 10 Years

"A friend is one who knows you and loves you just the same."   Elbert Hubbard

 

Ten years ago this week, I lost three of my dearest friends within five days of one another.  Each was in his/her early 50s.  Each had cancer. 

 

Doug and I on his 40th birthday

The first to go was my friend Doug.  He died ten years ago yesterday of  colon cancer.  He was and still is the funniest person I have ever known.  Friends since high school, we hung with the same crowd in the parking lot of a coffee shop known as Dyles.  We christened ourselves  "the Dyles gang" although we weren't  a gang, per se, just a group of teenagers with similar interests:  drinking, smoking cigarettes and pot, going to the beach, going to any party we might hear about. The friendships began for some of us as early as junior high and are still going strong.  Doug, who began his tenure in the group as a slightly built, straight man to his overweight sidekick nicknamed "Wally", eventually became the king of one-liners & witty responses.    He told anecdotes and, like Jerry Seinfeld, most were based on truth;  those we'd experienced and those he embellished.  He was so funny he should  have done stand-up.  I think it was his secret passion. My life was never so hilarious as when portrayed by this guy.  He met the love of his life in his early twenties.  They married, had children and were supposed to live happily ever after.   Ten years after his passing,  she's still alone and in love with him. 

Mazatlan ca 1984 or 85
 the way I like to remember Doug, beer in hand

 



Maui, ca 1980  Dari & her then BF

The second loss came the next day when my best friend's sister, Daria, died of breast cancer.  She and Doug knew one another and surprisingly were diagnosed with their respective cancers within weeks of one another.    Each  fought their illness for five long years.  Daria comes from a medical family and she explored every available avenue, including, finally, a bone marrow transplant from her doctor brother.  She was a free spirit.  Unlike her three siblings, she did not follow the dictates laid out by her rigid father.  She was the only one to smoke before she was 21, forgoing the $1000 he promised each child if they made it.  She moved to Maui in her early twenties, lived at the beach, taught school, bartended and had a very cool life.   She married later than most, meeting her dream man in her mid-thirties.  After many years of shuttling between Maui and Lake Tahoe, where she was a black jack dealer, she settled for a more conventional life with her handsome, boyish husband, moving to a tiny town in Wisconsin to live on his family farm and teach school. She was unconventional to the end and I picture her turning the tiny town in which she passed her final years on its ear with her beautiful brave ways.   I consider myself privileged to have spoken  with her numerous times before she was too weak to talk.  Her death left a void in that family that can never be filled.

 



Randy & Pat ca 1984
Old Towne Mexican Café
San Diego

The third loss was two days after Daria's.  My very close friend, Pat, whom I met and worked with in my mid twenties, was one of the kindest, gentlest most thoughtful people I've known. She was a great listener.  When we first met, I was getting divorced; then I was dating (all the wrong men); then I was partying too much; then I was diagnosed with epilepsy; then I was in love and so on.  Pat listened to all the stories with great understanding and humor.  She was married to her soul mate, Randy, with whom she's grown up just outside Milwaukee.  I know she lived vicariously through many of us because we were "out there" and she was not.  But I never detected anything but interest and her advice was wise beyond her years.  Pat and Randy were family to me back in those days.  Pat had a wonderful gift.  She never forgot a birthday.  I never failed to receive a beautiful card and I looked forward to those cards because I knew, wherever I was living, she'd send one.  She was beautiful inside and out.  When she and her wonderful husband, finally left San Diego to return to their families and make a home in Milwaukee, my husband and I threw a wonderful large going away party for them.  Everyone in San Diego radio and TV  came because everyone loved Pat.  She had a way of making me feel like I was brave and funny.  I was a better person seen through her eyes.

 

Three friends.  Five days.  Ten years ago.  It seems as if it were yesterday.

 



Reprise: The Love of My Life

My cat has been gone three years and three months but I miss her as if she just died. I wrote this a month after she died and want to again share my love.

One of the great loves of my life has died. It's not my husband or child or an old boyfriend or similar...it's my beautiful, adored cat, Maggie.

It may sound funny to describe a cat in such grandiose terms but, in many ways, she was.  I loved her unconditionally.  I forgave everything:  her almost daily habit of serial killing small animals; her constant hair shed; her vomiting the remnants of the small animals she'd devour; her staying out all night in summer causing my husband, sons and me no end of worry.  Maggie did not love me best.  Oh no.  She adored my husband and sons. She liked menfolk.  My eldest son was her early favorite.  They had a very companionable relationship til he left for college. She then became enamored of my husband whose exceedingly warm body was well suited to her needs.  She would practically sleep on top of him even though he did not encourage her.  I, on the other hand, wanted her next to me always but I was always her last resort.

Maggie was a dainty, tiny cat.  She looked like a kitten all her life, never weighing over 6 lbs.  She had perfect confirmation and markings.  The boys and my husband brought her home in 1999 after a visit to a local animal shelter where they also brought home a female dog named Zoe.  Maggie was about 18 mos old at the time though she looked like a kitten.  She had tremendous confidence and a sense of herself which attracted the menfolk immediately.

Early on, we decided not to limit her environment to the indoors. Our property abutted a national forest. We had regular visits from red fox, black bear, moose, wild turkey, the occasional bobcat and weasel. It was a calculated risk.   Maggie had energy, curiosity, aggressiveness and exceptional hunting ability.  For ten years, we waited for the other shoe to drop.

She had two close calls that we know of.  Early on, while driving down the driveway to school, my son and I saw Maggie, back arched and ready to fight two red foxes.  They had her cornered at the junction of our driveway & our neighbors' easement driveway.  Zoe, our dog, Maggie's companion from the animal shelter, jumped out the car window and gave chase to the foxes who were loath to leave the tiny morsel.  My son jumped out to scoop her up and Maggie was saved.

The  second close call was Labor Day 2009.  I found her curled up in a ball on the porch, bleeding, with teethmarks, lacerations and damage all over her body.  We rushed her to the vet and waited anxiously overnight  for the results.  $800 later, she was thriving with numerous stitchings and salve.  The doc ordered bed rest.We kept close watch for the next week and she rallied beautifully.  I breathed a sigh of relief and

thanked God for saving my baby.

Then, on December 10th, three weeks after moving out of the family home we shared and the only home she'd known, my son awoke to find her staggering and listless on the floor of his room after she'd fallen off his bed.  He alerted us to her distress and we observed her for a few moments before finding an emergency vet hospital  open.  It was 8AM.  She couldn't walk right.  She wouldn't look at us.  She didn't want to be touched.  She was dying before our eyes.  Again, we rushed her to the vet.  They xrayed her, they hydrated her, they took blood samples.  She had a seizure and they sedated her to quell the tremors.  They told us they'd monitor her progress.  When we walked out the door of the vet hospital, I began to sob.  I almost collapsed in the parking lot and my husband and son helped me to the car. 

We drove around a while.  I couldn't stop crying.  I didn't go to work.  We returned to the house we now share with my MIL.  My son was quiet and scared.  At 12 noon my cell phone rang.  I answered.  It was the doctor.  Maggie hadn't made it.  The vet did not know why.  I speculated poison.  The vet speculated a "toxin" or a brain tumor that might have grown too large and suddenly killed her.  The vets don't screen for toxins so we'll never know.  An autopsy was out of the question.

I took the news calmly.  I had known when I said "good bye" to her at the vets and walked out that door full of more grief than I'd felt in years.  But my husband and son were stunned.  My son bent over double, holding his head, crying as though his heart would break.  My husband just couldn't believe it.  Our Maggie was gone.  We'd watched tv in bed the night before and she'd curled & cooed & purred to us as she accepted our pets, strokes and love.   She'd done her "roly polys" which I called her rolling about on her back.  She was fine.

The worst part of any death is the hole it leaves in your heart; the void that will never be filled.  We move on, we adapt and we finally accept.  But we never forget and we never quite let go.

Songs to a Child Born to the Breed

I've been listening to a series of old tapes, favorite music recorded on audio cassettes long ago; long before I had children.   I must have been destined to be a mother; the songs that grabbed me emotionally back in the day are the songs written by the composers to their children.

 Judy Collins' "Born to the Breed" has always moved me.  It is about her then 16 year old son as he leaves home to perform in a rock n roll band, filled with the mixed parental feelings of the joy of his birth and youth to the pain of letting go.

Along the same lines is the better known and iconic "Cat's in the Cradle" by Harry Chapin.  Lost time and time lost with his son are the themes. I never hear this without a pang. It may have even shaped my parenting subconsciously.

Both  songs are about parental love and loss, albeit for different reasons. Both children, as it turns out, are born to the breed.  Both outcomes are surprising, different, yet similar.

In looking for the musical videos to include in this post, I came across this Judy Collins interview with Rosie O'Donnell.  It was a shock.

   

The poignancy of the song is so much greater now.  I did not know this information until yesterday.

As for Mr. Chapin, I remember his early death, though not the exact circumstances which I, again, learned during my research for the post.

Death is still the one absolute.  

I hope you take the time to watch and listen to these great artists whose lives shaped their music and whose music shaped our lives.

BERY5Q9S7SJM

Reflections on Memorial Day

Platitudes, 

We are full of them.

The attempt to comfort                                      

A loss too great to bear.

The attempt to justify

Actions unjustifiable,

Memories unbearable,

Pain unceasing.

Words unspoken

Which might have changed

The way things are

Hover in the air.

It's all terrible: the loss

Human sacrifice, suffering,

Sadness.  And the Masters of War 

keep their secret counsel.

The Love of My Life

One of the great loves of my life has died. It's not my husband or child or an old boyfriend or similar...it's my beautiful, adored cat, Maggie.

It may sound funny to describe a cat in such grandiose terms but, in many ways, she was.  I loved her unconditionally.  I forgave everything:  her almost daily habit of serial killing small animals; her constant hair shed; her vomiting the remnants of the small animals she'd devour; her staying out all night in summer causing my husband, sons and me no end of worry.  Maggie did not love me best.  Oh no.  She adored my husband and sons. She liked menfolk.  My eldest son was her early favorite.  They had a very companionable relationship til he left for college. She then became enamored of my husband whose exceedingly warm body was well suited to her needs.  She would practically sleep on top of him even though he did not encourage her.  I, on the other hand, wanted her next to me always but I was always her last resort.

Maggie was a dainty, tiny cat.  She looked like a kitten all her life, never weighing over 6 lbs.  She had perfect confirmation and markings.  The boys and my husband brought her home in 1999 after a visit to a local animal shelter where they also brought home a female dog named Zoe.  Maggie was about 18 mos old at the time though she looked like a kitten.  She had tremendous confidence and a sense of herself which attracted the menfolk immediately.

Early on, we decided not to limit her environment to the indoors. Our property abutted a national forest. We had regular visits from red fox, black bear, moose, wild turkey, the occasional bobcat and weasel. It was a calculated risk.   Maggie had energy, curiosity, aggressiveness and exceptional hunting ability.  For ten years, we waited for the other shoe to drop.

She had two close calls that we know of.  Early on, while driving down the driveway to school, my son and I saw Maggie, back arched and ready to fight two red foxes.  They had her cornered at the junction of our driveway & our neighbors' easement driveway.  Zoe, our dog, Maggie's companion from the animal shelter, jumped out the car window and gave chase to the foxes who were loath to leave the tiny morsel.  My son jumped out to scoop her up and Maggie was saved.

The  second close call was Labor Day 2009.  I found her curled up in a ball on the porch, bleeding, with teethmarks, lacerations and damage all over her body.  We rushed her to the vet and waited anxiously overnight  for the results.  $800 later, she was thriving with numerous stitchings and salve.  The doc ordered bed rest.We kept close watch for the next week and she rallied beautifully.  I breathed a sigh of relief and

thanked God for saving my baby.

Then, on December 10th, three weeks after moving out of the family home we shared and the only home she'd known, my son awoke to find her staggering and listless on the floor of his room after she'd fallen off his bed.  He alerted us to her distress and we observed her for a few moments before finding an emergency vet hospital  open.  It was 8AM.  She couldn't walk right.  She wouldn't look at us.  She didn't want to be touched.  She was dying before our eyes.  Again, we rushed her to the vet.  They xrayed her, they hydrated her, they took blood samples.  She had a seizure and they sedated her to quell the tremors.  They told us they'd monitor her progress.  When we walked out the door of the vet hospital, I began to sob.  I almost collapsed in the parking lot and my husband and son helped me to the car. 

We drove around a while.  I couldn't stop crying.  I didn't go to work.  We returned to the house we now share with my MIL.  My son was quiet and scared.  At 12 noon my cell phone rang.  I answered.  It was the doctor.  Maggie hadn't made it.  The vet did not know why.  I speculated poison.  The vet speculated a "toxin" or a brain tumor that might have grown too large and suddenly killed her.  The vets don't screen for toxins so we'll never know.  An autopsy was out of the question.

I took the news calmly.  I had known when I said "good bye" to her at the vets and walked out that door full of more grief than I'd felt in years.  But my husband and son were stunned.  My son bent over double, holding his head, crying as though his heart would break.  My husband just couldn't believe it.  Our Maggie was gone.  We'd watched tv in bed the night before and she'd curled & cooed & purred to us as she accepted our pets, strokes and love.   She'd done her "roly polys" which I called her rolling about on her back.  She was fine.

The worst part of any death is the hole it leaves in your heart; the void that will never be filled.  We move on, we adapt and we finally accept.  But we never forget and we never quite let go.

Truly An Empty Nest Part II Packing To Go

Our move was fast paced and intense.  We had the bright idea of doing it ourselves.  After all, we'd decided to dispose of fifty percent of our belongings:  paperwork, books, furniture, clothing, etc. to expedite the process.  We figured it would be a snap.  Boy, were we wrong!  Fifty percent of eleven years in the same place is a whole lotta crap!  The house was 3200 sq ft with a 3/4 attic and a garage which served as our basement because it was full of stuff.  We parked our cars outside.  No room.  About once a year, my husband would clear out space in the garage and go to the dump.  But we always filled it up again.

Library reading nook

So here we are, calling auctioneers to review the antiques.  It took 3 tries to find someone to take them on consignment which tells you the value of our antiques...not much.  We called Habitat for Humanity but they were on overload from other folks giving them things.  We boxed clothes for various churches and thrift stores and gave almost new furniture to friends.  And then there were the old things nobody wanted, the 20 year old couches and upholstered chairs beaten down by kids and shredded by the cat.  They really weren't even good enough for my younger sons' college friends badly in need of furniture.

Ahhh, the dump, our refuge and saviour.  Hated taking anything there but it was the place of last resort.  The dump store took our small appliances and the dump took twenty years of income tax ppwk and memorabilia. They took our books as well.  Second hand book stores want books with covers or they say they won't sell.  The school library was filled to overflowing.  I mean, what does it say when nobody even wants a full set of encyclopedia?

Living Room with furniture & books to go!

The gleaming kitchen

And the move itself?  Back breaking work for my husband and younger son.  They worked long hours.  It took three solid weeks.  We were still packing two days before closing but we got it done.  The morning we closed, my husband and I drove to the house to gaze one last time at the home we created.  It had been thoroughly cleaned, carpets shampooed, kitchen sparkling and the sun shone through the floor-to-ceiling windows in our living room.  We held one another and thanked God for the happiness we shared in this incredible place with our children and pets and friends.

 

View from the Living Room

And off we went, down the hill, away from our old life, headed for the new one.

For other photos of our home, see below and/or go here.

For Jake the Gold Puppy