“At 77, it is time to be in earnest …”

Me and Clarycat, spring 2013, photo taken by Jim

Dear Friends and Readers,

If I’m not mistaken, this was the hardest birthday I’ve had to get through since Jim died, 10 years ago — 2013, when I was 67. I could, of course, have sat all day and cried, and sometimes I was very near tears. For example, when I thanked Norma Reck for organizing the luncheon for the Theater Group at a splendid restaurant tucked away in an older beautiful house, one I’d taken Izzy to several times when she was part of an Adult Aspergers Club. I always drove her there and back; now I got to go for the first time, and it was a yummy meal. I could feel that Norma felt my intense emotion. Why didn’t I? For the same reason as I’ve never sat for hours weeping over Jim. It’s just so useless –besides which it’ll exhaust me.  And such acts won’t bring him back, and nor cannot bring Clarycat back either.  With her passing, though, another of the fundamental presences which I’ve felt for years loves me, and who has been my companion is gone.

Funny, I have less to do: there is less food to put out, the litter box is not as full; going through morning tidying up takes less time: no one to provide a snack for when I get to the enclosed porch. She would sit there waiting for it. When we’d done in the kitchen, she’d come with me to this study for the day’s activity — mostly mental — me sitting reading, writing, her looking out one of the windows mostly, or half-sleeping.  Morning was a thing we did together.

I had a bad night, bad dreams, and took a half a sleeping pill to get through.

I did it by having things to do or places to be with others around. So part of usual routine was posting to the lists, paying a bill (fraught because I have to do most of them online and thus have to have user name and password accepted &c), tidying up (as usual) and then the finding the place. I left way early.

A two hour luncheon where I listened to (and myself spoke sometimes to the people near me) all their plans (Norma’s) for the coming year. When I had left, Ian had stared at me going out — looking astonished and unhappy. I had told him “I won’t be gone long; I’ll be back before 3,” and so I was. He hopped out of the cat-bed with a wall around it, slightly too small for him, which he’s been preferring since Clary died. Meowing at me. It took a while to settle back, and then there was a zoom chat at 4-5 (again from OLLI at Mason), this one about stress.

What a topic. I thought it was supposed to be stress at holiday time, but it seemed it was to be about stress in general just as much. Perhaps I gave away a bit too much of myself, but probably not. The wonders of zoom include how structured it is, how it does distance people so though I told twice of Clary’s death, and at one point the conversation was about what we were to do when very old and if we were preparing for it, and I said, no, as I hadn’t the money for good assisted living, and had no one to turn to who understood me, so I hoped to pop off all at once so as to obviate any need for killing myself. I did say something like that. Others took us in other dire directions, even the slaughter of the Palestinians over the past 6 weeks, and fear (very real) of Trump winning as a Hitler. After all most of them don’t find holiday time especially stressful.

I had hoped that I had a third distraction: a young male friend said he would be singing in a choir, reachable by zoom at 7:30 pm. Izzy obligingly made supper a little earlier, and with cooking, talking, the dishes, I was busy until just then. I waited 7 minutes and then realized it was 9/5, not 11/29. I made this mistake this past Saturday when Izzy and I went half-way to the Folger before I realized our tickets were for 12/9, not 11/25. The Oxford trip I had us coming in a day too early, I had us not having the full 5 nights booked for the week in London that we needed. Last minute arrangements were managed though — at considerable expense. This time we just had to turn round and go home — Izzy took another train to the movies.

So I turned to the real source of quietude and ordered thought amusement that was taking me through the day: Dorothy Sayers’ Clouds of Witness, which I am truly enjoying. I read it on and off. I’ve just finished the fourth episode of the Ian Carmichael serial, Five Red Herrings — the movie much better than the book, from re-arrangement, re-emphasis on the characters, and the alluring scenery of Scotland. In both forms her forms of wittiness are so engaging.

Closing moments of Five Red Herrings — Lord Peter fishing, Bunter painting (Glyn Houston rightly got second billing) — what fun they might have taken it to drive all around that part of Scotland in 1920s luxury cars

I then watched DemocracyNow. org and learned of another massacre of civilians (just going from house to house, killing all the men, raping women first) going on in Darfur: the open genocidal slaughter of the Palestinians in Gaza has set a dreadful precedent. And I read a wonderful essay on Protest Literature in American — a volume called A Political Companion to John Steinbeck, online book — a real lucky find because since he was a true protester, he has been utterly sidelined in publishing and curricula assignments in schools throughout the US. I have to get myself to try Of Mice and Men; I suspect I won’t like the depiction of the disabled man; and I don’t like Steinbeck’s way of depicting women.

But it was Sayers who kept me cheered. Laura wrote more than once, sending me photos of her cats; maybe over 50 people wished me a happy birthday on FB and my listserv. Again it’s so easy from afar; when I told anyone in person today, they rushed past that information.

10 years and now I’ve lost my second beloved. Ian is a different sort of cat: he is attached but he shows it far more distantly. For example, he sleeps elsewhere in the house, not in the bed near me.

An old photo of Rosalind Carter — my guess is she knew what it was herself

I also learned (from Amy Goodman) of how Rosalind Carter worked hard and effectively to make real help for people with mental health problems. She was very concerned that the stigma associated with this should be wiped away. I doubt it has because people fear mental distress, depression, sadness, anxiety, panic (and yes stress too). But she has made it less acceptable to reject and ignore people needing mental help. A stubborn woman who lucked into a good marriage with a man who acquired a lot of power and respect and shared it with her. She could not know but perhaps suspected how many people have such problems who don’t begin to bear true witness to it.

I’ve always been in earnest in life — I do hope when it’s time to go, I go quickly. I see now that I did the kindness thing I could for Clarycat. I gave her as much precious life as she could enjoy and then endure.

The local vet practice sent me a card where the two vets, the one I saw twice for Clary, and the one who sat with me and kept me company and basically did the euthanasia, wrote a paragraph each. In long hand. Kind, assuring me I’d done the right thing, spared Clarycat much suffering. This is better more humane treatment than Kaiser ever provided.

Posy Simmons’ image of Mrs Scrooge and her cat on Christmas eve — I shall have to dream of Clary that night

Ellen