Personal Journal

The Origin of a Plethora of Great Sentences

My cat, Flower, is like that freakish mannequin in the Levis commercial - the one that chases the customer who bought the jeans of itself - at least when I have a few potato chips, she is.
She just chased me around the house as I opened a bag, poured out my portion, and checked to see if my football game dip from last week was still good (good, but poor texture). Until I gave her one, she followed me around and stared nefariously as I ate.
I'll give her two bits of credit in this vice of hers. She has a taste for a wide variety: guacamole-flavored, barbecue, standard, cheetos, dorritos, etc. No plain tortilla chips, though. So she generally is begging for something she'll actually eat (unlike all the other beggar cats we have, who will beg for anything, but eat nothing if offered).
The other is that she eats every crumb (or her vice would not be entertained). Hmm, except tonight; perhaps she knows she's being spoken of. Even big clunker-sized chips bigger than her head, she'll find a way to consume. She's not a fat cat, either, one chip is all she'll eat unless it's small.

What do I relate about Jean?
As I predicted, no real improvement except the absence of headaches. Slept almost the whole time I was there (a record six hours for me this time). Unable to use a dinner utensil in her right hand for the first time, and too weak and uncordinate in the left that I fed her tonight. Another first.
She called me at home after lunch today. She sounded strong and alert. Like she was better and ready to come home, like the first two hospitalizations. So I hauled in there to spend time with her, and when I got there, she was out of it again. She was asking me a question, and asking it again later. You ask her if she's hot or cold, and she says "Yes." And she's not trying to be annoying.
She's urinated 5 times since 3 p.m. Thursday.

I suppose if it wasn't me writing this, I'd be thinking, "Holy shit, man she's very debilitated." Maybe she is, but I don't see it that way.
Do you ever wonder what the parents think about
their child when the child is unable to meet what you and I conceive of as the minimum threshold for formulating a human thought?
This is something along those lines.
This isn't somebody who is debilitated. This is my Jean, and she's very very sick. Those are the only words I can use to define it when I try to explain who I see in that bed right now.
And now I get it, in how I referred to her there.
I referred to her as "my Jean". I refer to the child as "the child". One is a "what". One is a "who" with all of the memories I have of "my Jean", inseparable from my mind, and imperceptibly projected onto my conception of her.
I saw a seriously seriously debilitated child on... Thursday when Jean was released from the hospital. I was at Sam's getting her new nasuea prescriptions. And the girl was fixed in an Indian-style sitting position, and she made one gesture repeatedly with her hands, while shaking her head back and forth.
I got blocked in by one of the women pushing the girl in one aisle. Then they passed me later as I sat waiting at the pharmacy. And that time as they made a little remark about not being in my way this time, I made a point to make a deliberate look at the child (she might have been 16, 14, it's hard to tell). I smiled and laughed at the comment.

You just see these PEOPLE... a word I don't use very often. You see these people and you have an explosion of memories that tie you to her, or him, or whomever it is that's actually inside your circle, where "whats" become "who's". Your own existence is tied into them, and they have permanently warmed a part of your spirit.

Not many people make it into that category in my life. Not many people have ever None who have are members of my blood-family.

I don't think that I've ever more successfully identified feelings of love for someone than I have here.

Did you know that we had a cat die the week before thanksgiving, and until tonight, that didn't even warrant a mention in my journal.

I don't know how I"m going to cope with the absence of this special person in my life. I've been blessedly unable to connect with feelings along those lines yet. But I can feel it starting. Some of it is a newly recognized maturity in my self. Some of it is time, or the absence of having time left.
The others that I've loved who left my life always did so with reason. I can easily justify knowing they are out there, somewhere, living fullfilling lives. Pat, in NY, or my first love. Jean isn't going to be here. And what's worse is that someday I'm going to have to look at her body on a table somewhere, her soul no longer within it.

Most people live there whole lives naively immune to death's omnipresence until a succinct moment. A tragedy, a shaken faith, a short but terrible illness. Very few, at least from what I know, have a succinct window of 1 to 3 years mapped out for them. Yes, the loss is the same for all of us.
But I've had the misfortune (as I see it) of having to prepare someone for an imminent death. And to deal with the passage. I've had a certain, grotesque patience inflicted upon me.

All this time, I have told no one that I knew Jean would die when she was diagnosed. I've told no one of my preminition. I've told two people, and I regret having done so, that Jean has between weeks and months to live.

I want to call her brother and tell him: If you ever want to see your sister alive again, I suggest you get over your fucking fear of flying really quickly.
But he's not going to come. He, more than anyone, insists unsolicited, in a faith of denial.

"A certain grotesque patience inflicted upon me."
That's probably one of the best lines I've ever written. But it came from a real experience.

I am as reticent to experience the source of the plethora of great sentences I shall be writing about this in the future.