Necklaces, Cats, and Cookies.
I would rather be a cat.
The Mocus is in my lap right now, with drops of water clinging to her head because she's been drinking out of the leaky bathtub faucet again. She has contributed nothing today beyond getting into the garbage, being a savage bitch to her sister, and yowling obnoxiously in the other room, but I am petting her anyway.
Why? Because she wants me to. I realize I'm being used. Nothing more than an accessory. If cats had a heaven, it would be a self-heating, crinkly trash heap that petted them. I am, unfortunately, the closest she can get at the moment. I don't crinkle or smell of old chicken, but apparently it's close enough. Lap warm. Fingers good.
Isn't it sweetly sickening how we indulge our pets even when they contribute nothing? That's our gift to them: we allow them to do absolutely nothing, and we reward them for it. We tell them they've done well even if they've done nothing but lounge around and smell bad.
I wish I had such luxury, but I've been busy, and even productive.
I finished the necklace last week. It looks amazing, by which I mean it looks like a huge mess but is somehow beautiful anyway, and I'll be posting pictures just as soon as I can get some taken.
I feel much better about the project. All that's left is the scrapbook. I can cope.
We went to see Mom on Thursday to borrow cookie sheets and cookie cutters, and lo and behold! There was good news!
The cancer in her gut has shrunk. She took another cancer indicator test, which is when they ask a bunch of questions, and add up your answers, and the normal score for someone without cancer is about forty or fifty. Her first results were around four thousand. This time, it came out at around four hundred. This basically means that the tumor is much less active than it was. The chemo apparently actually did something.
Now that they have managed to knock the big tumor back a little, they're targeting her pancreatic cancer with a different drug, and she's started a new course of chemo. We haven't seen what kind of side effects she'll have yet, but she's been quite hopeful, and her spirits are far, far better than they were.
We went to see her today to take her some cookies. Yummy, appetizing, completely evil molasses and spice sugar cookies. And frosted Christmas cookies. I even feel cheerful, so that wasn't forced.
But underneath, I'm still feeling a little lost, a little confused, and a lot scared.
We went to see my grandmother last Thursday and today as well, and she is all but crazy. We showed her the video from Oktoberfest, and she thought every girl on the screen was me. I quit counting after the seventh time I said "no, Nanny, I'm not in this dance" in a three-minute period. She put the cookies we gave her down, then immediately picked them up again and asked what they were and who had made them. She has no short-term memory. She repeats herself constantly, and while she's cheerful and happy, it's both disturbing and, yes, irritating.
My poor grandfather, who is only slightly younger than she is, is still almost completely sane. Mostly deaf, but sane. It must be very hard for him to deal with her . . . seeing someone you love just slip away like that must be terrible. She still remembers all the long-ago things, so he still has the woman he loves, but she is no kind of companion, she can't offer support or conversation anymore. She doesn't even remember my mother is sick, and when she does, she doesn't know with what, or she talks about the cancer as being something they can "cure down in Texas," which is where my grandfather had his cancer successfully treated ten years ago. It's just terrible to watch her flounder through the simplest conversations.
She hates what's happening to her. Last Thursday I helped her up while Sargon was out of the room, and helped her to her walker (she was always so strong), and she looked at me with surprising lucidity and said "Mandy, don't remember me like this."
I said all I could think to say, which was "All my memories of you are happy memories. I want them all." And I think that was the right thing to say. But I don't know.
We're losing her, that much is clear. And when she goes, the family goes. She was the matriarch, the glue that held everything together. Without her, the family dynamic will shift, and everything will be totally different.
I got very sad on the way back home. I don't need to be losing two people. What if that happens to me? If Sargon is still around, I'd feel awful, because I wouldn't want him to have to put up with me being crazy and old. We joke about it when we see pathetic old people who annoy us. "If I ever get that bad, just shoot me." But we don't mean it. Because I might forget my friends' names, and not be able to remember my street or phone number, I might put the coffee pot in the freezer and the blankets in the oven, I might not remember where the bathroom is, but I will never, never forget that I love him. And as long as I have him, I have something I want to stick around for. Which is why the prospect of being senile and alone is even worse. I would have nothing to keep me here, grounded. I'd just retreat into an endless haze of yesterdays, with nothing left to tie me to this place.
I don't want that to happen to me.
And while I'm at it, I don't want to die of cancer, either (fat chance of me not getting it - three out of four of my grandparents have had it, and it killed two of them dead as doornails).
I don't want to have a stroke, like my dad had. I don't want heart disease.
I don't want to die.
Big revelation, I know. But I don't. I don't. And I don't want to be alone, either. Sargon says he'll never leave me alone, but that's just macho talk. He never would, not on purpose, but he's older than me, and doesn't take care of himself like he should. His odds of outliving me are very, very slim. He'll probably die before I do. Meaning I'll probably get the incomparable privilege of watching everyone I love - really love - die.
All this is making me feel anxious, broken, afraid. It's manifesting in strange and stupid ways. Separation anxiety like I haven't had since I was very, very small. Whenever Sargon leaves, I worry obsessively that he won't come back, that something will happen. When he feels under the weather, like we both did on Saturday morning, I get really nervous and anxious and freaked out. It's my subconscious doing some weird bait-and-switch with my fear. I'm losing people I love, and now part of me is scared I'll lose him, too.
I glue myself against his back every night when we go to bed, and I hang on for dear life, but you can't keep hold of people you love. They slip away anyway. They slip away and there is no hanging on.
I can be happy, I am happy, with the memories I'm making, with spending time with people I love while I have them. But that doesn't mean that, late at night, I don't feel like we humans get the short end of the stick when it comes to awareness and mortality.
I think of my hairy black cat, who has now stalked off to flop under the Christmas tree, as if trying to hold the shifting, colored lights down with her weighty bulk. She's so black she looks like a hole cut right through everything.
I love her completely. Stupidly. I've given part of myself to that cat. And I know to appreciate what I have while I have it, but my cat doesn't. I know I'll outlive her, and that my time with her is finite. That's the raw deal. She doesn't know. You'd think it would be bad, not knowing. But maybe it's not. She can't mourn for all the ribbons that will remain unsavaged, the sunbeams unlounged, the birds un-chirped-at, the flies uneaten. She can't regret all the spiteful swipes she'll never get to take at her yellow sister. She can't be afraid.
And there's no saying another cat will come to take her place, to fill the void. There's no saying that. Not about our cats, our friends, our families, or ourselves. We truly are unique creatures. And once we're gone, that's it. Nothing but the space of us left, like the empty silhouette of a sugar star lifted from the cookie dough. Defined only by an absence in the memory of those who knew us. No cat can replace another cat, no person another person. That the world goes on is a comfort, but it is a comfort we take like we take our revenge: cold.
It would be better, I think, not to know. To remain ignorant, purring, in the lap of someone who loves us and pets our greasy fur, who loves us down to our dander and will care for us until our last fuzzy hour and then send us out with gentle hands. It would be better to lie the hell out of that sunbeam, eat the hell out of that fly, not even aware of the possibility that it could be the last.
Yes, even if it meant eating flies, I would rather be a cat.
link
The Mocus is in my lap right now, with drops of water clinging to her head because she's been drinking out of the leaky bathtub faucet again. She has contributed nothing today beyond getting into the garbage, being a savage bitch to her sister, and yowling obnoxiously in the other room, but I am petting her anyway.
Why? Because she wants me to. I realize I'm being used. Nothing more than an accessory. If cats had a heaven, it would be a self-heating, crinkly trash heap that petted them. I am, unfortunately, the closest she can get at the moment. I don't crinkle or smell of old chicken, but apparently it's close enough. Lap warm. Fingers good.
Isn't it sweetly sickening how we indulge our pets even when they contribute nothing? That's our gift to them: we allow them to do absolutely nothing, and we reward them for it. We tell them they've done well even if they've done nothing but lounge around and smell bad.
I wish I had such luxury, but I've been busy, and even productive.
I finished the necklace last week. It looks amazing, by which I mean it looks like a huge mess but is somehow beautiful anyway, and I'll be posting pictures just as soon as I can get some taken.
I feel much better about the project. All that's left is the scrapbook. I can cope.
We went to see Mom on Thursday to borrow cookie sheets and cookie cutters, and lo and behold! There was good news!
The cancer in her gut has shrunk. She took another cancer indicator test, which is when they ask a bunch of questions, and add up your answers, and the normal score for someone without cancer is about forty or fifty. Her first results were around four thousand. This time, it came out at around four hundred. This basically means that the tumor is much less active than it was. The chemo apparently actually did something.
Now that they have managed to knock the big tumor back a little, they're targeting her pancreatic cancer with a different drug, and she's started a new course of chemo. We haven't seen what kind of side effects she'll have yet, but she's been quite hopeful, and her spirits are far, far better than they were.
We went to see her today to take her some cookies. Yummy, appetizing, completely evil molasses and spice sugar cookies. And frosted Christmas cookies. I even feel cheerful, so that wasn't forced.
But underneath, I'm still feeling a little lost, a little confused, and a lot scared.
We went to see my grandmother last Thursday and today as well, and she is all but crazy. We showed her the video from Oktoberfest, and she thought every girl on the screen was me. I quit counting after the seventh time I said "no, Nanny, I'm not in this dance" in a three-minute period. She put the cookies we gave her down, then immediately picked them up again and asked what they were and who had made them. She has no short-term memory. She repeats herself constantly, and while she's cheerful and happy, it's both disturbing and, yes, irritating.
My poor grandfather, who is only slightly younger than she is, is still almost completely sane. Mostly deaf, but sane. It must be very hard for him to deal with her . . . seeing someone you love just slip away like that must be terrible. She still remembers all the long-ago things, so he still has the woman he loves, but she is no kind of companion, she can't offer support or conversation anymore. She doesn't even remember my mother is sick, and when she does, she doesn't know with what, or she talks about the cancer as being something they can "cure down in Texas," which is where my grandfather had his cancer successfully treated ten years ago. It's just terrible to watch her flounder through the simplest conversations.
She hates what's happening to her. Last Thursday I helped her up while Sargon was out of the room, and helped her to her walker (she was always so strong), and she looked at me with surprising lucidity and said "Mandy, don't remember me like this."
I said all I could think to say, which was "All my memories of you are happy memories. I want them all." And I think that was the right thing to say. But I don't know.
We're losing her, that much is clear. And when she goes, the family goes. She was the matriarch, the glue that held everything together. Without her, the family dynamic will shift, and everything will be totally different.
I got very sad on the way back home. I don't need to be losing two people. What if that happens to me? If Sargon is still around, I'd feel awful, because I wouldn't want him to have to put up with me being crazy and old. We joke about it when we see pathetic old people who annoy us. "If I ever get that bad, just shoot me." But we don't mean it. Because I might forget my friends' names, and not be able to remember my street or phone number, I might put the coffee pot in the freezer and the blankets in the oven, I might not remember where the bathroom is, but I will never, never forget that I love him. And as long as I have him, I have something I want to stick around for. Which is why the prospect of being senile and alone is even worse. I would have nothing to keep me here, grounded. I'd just retreat into an endless haze of yesterdays, with nothing left to tie me to this place.
I don't want that to happen to me.
And while I'm at it, I don't want to die of cancer, either (fat chance of me not getting it - three out of four of my grandparents have had it, and it killed two of them dead as doornails).
I don't want to have a stroke, like my dad had. I don't want heart disease.
I don't want to die.
Big revelation, I know. But I don't. I don't. And I don't want to be alone, either. Sargon says he'll never leave me alone, but that's just macho talk. He never would, not on purpose, but he's older than me, and doesn't take care of himself like he should. His odds of outliving me are very, very slim. He'll probably die before I do. Meaning I'll probably get the incomparable privilege of watching everyone I love - really love - die.
All this is making me feel anxious, broken, afraid. It's manifesting in strange and stupid ways. Separation anxiety like I haven't had since I was very, very small. Whenever Sargon leaves, I worry obsessively that he won't come back, that something will happen. When he feels under the weather, like we both did on Saturday morning, I get really nervous and anxious and freaked out. It's my subconscious doing some weird bait-and-switch with my fear. I'm losing people I love, and now part of me is scared I'll lose him, too.
I glue myself against his back every night when we go to bed, and I hang on for dear life, but you can't keep hold of people you love. They slip away anyway. They slip away and there is no hanging on.
I can be happy, I am happy, with the memories I'm making, with spending time with people I love while I have them. But that doesn't mean that, late at night, I don't feel like we humans get the short end of the stick when it comes to awareness and mortality.
I think of my hairy black cat, who has now stalked off to flop under the Christmas tree, as if trying to hold the shifting, colored lights down with her weighty bulk. She's so black she looks like a hole cut right through everything.
I love her completely. Stupidly. I've given part of myself to that cat. And I know to appreciate what I have while I have it, but my cat doesn't. I know I'll outlive her, and that my time with her is finite. That's the raw deal. She doesn't know. You'd think it would be bad, not knowing. But maybe it's not. She can't mourn for all the ribbons that will remain unsavaged, the sunbeams unlounged, the birds un-chirped-at, the flies uneaten. She can't regret all the spiteful swipes she'll never get to take at her yellow sister. She can't be afraid.
And there's no saying another cat will come to take her place, to fill the void. There's no saying that. Not about our cats, our friends, our families, or ourselves. We truly are unique creatures. And once we're gone, that's it. Nothing but the space of us left, like the empty silhouette of a sugar star lifted from the cookie dough. Defined only by an absence in the memory of those who knew us. No cat can replace another cat, no person another person. That the world goes on is a comfort, but it is a comfort we take like we take our revenge: cold.
It would be better, I think, not to know. To remain ignorant, purring, in the lap of someone who loves us and pets our greasy fur, who loves us down to our dander and will care for us until our last fuzzy hour and then send us out with gentle hands. It would be better to lie the hell out of that sunbeam, eat the hell out of that fly, not even aware of the possibility that it could be the last.
Yes, even if it meant eating flies, I would rather be a cat.
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