… how sharp one’s senses become after a week away from suburban stimuli. Last night, I was very aware of the crickets around my bro’s house up north, and the occasional pop of the big wooden house as it cooled during the night. Tonight, as I climbed the steps to my condo, I could hear someone’s clothes tumbling in the dryer, in the building across the driveway from mine. It’s all good. The fact that I could hear the dryer means that everyone has settled in for the night and gotten quiet.

Yep, I’m home from my trip to the rural Sierra Nevada foothills. I miss J & L & little T, their kitties and all the fun we had. Last night, we went to an arcade in Roseville and played miniature golf. That was good; hadn’t played in years.

It’ll be sad and lonesome here, of course. I miss my little fuzzy one. But the pall of unremitting grief has lifted. I have depressurized, and I’m grateful for it.

I’m tired. I slept like crapity crap last night, and got maybe three poor hours of sleep. Don’t know why. Then I drove eight hours, downing two Red Bulls along the way. So I’m going to watch TV. If I owe you an e-mail or a call, hang in there. All good things in God’s good time.

Just before midnight, the automatic sprinklers cut off and left the lawn well satisfied, but drying towards another long summer day, and dreading the thirst of the afternoon. He sat in his office on the second floor, and marveled at how much noise the world still made despite her absence. Even without her movements, her breathing, the light clink and jangle of her jewelry, there was still the clock, the fan, the refrigerator down the hall. But despite the coolness left by the sprinklers, the weak breath of traffic farther off, and the bored half moon, he couldn’t seriously call any of it life.

He was inspired to do nothing but sit there, turning a pen over and over in his hand, waiting for an understanding to arrive unbidden and irrelevant. After all, it wasn’t his fault that she was gone. And beyond that, what was the help of it? No calling her back, no following after. There are acts without antidote, words unforgivable. No way in all the weeping world for a bell to be unrung.

He got up to make himself a drink, to ease the edge, to make the damp night bearable. Cuervo Gold. Wasn’t there a song? Then sat at the desk and sifted through photos of her face. Bright and elegant, with dark eyes and an easy grace that made men look twice and women stop dead, just to watch her sit and look around. She was never in a room but at the center of it.

Tequila never solved anything but maybe the torment of consciousness, and that’s rarely worth the price or the cost. So after a shot or two warmed his reins and the fog began to gather and descend, he went out. Down the stairs and into the yard, where he held his hands palm up and lifted his face to feel the sickly sky hanging like a slow intravenous drip. The grass was dark and dreaming, overjoyed.

There were crickets under the hedge and frogs in the ditch along the road. Beyond the troubled whispers of the house, everybody had good news. If only procreation in the damp, untroubled brush. They ignored him, as did the neighbors and their dogs, all dozing in front of TV sets, which cast a blue glow on all their window shades.

There was no anger in her leaving, don’t you see? Just a soft and pallid August afternoon, and the prospect of a night unbearable in the long sequence of nights that passed between them with this culmination in mysterious pain. So she left. And he was out walking, well beyond the farthest light of home, ruining his shoes in the cold and predictable rain.

© 2005 by Kyle Kimberlin

all rights reserved

2^nd Draft, August 16, 2005

Well, my friends, the news is not good. Tasha’s had two bad days in a row. I’m not sure where to start, except that it’s anxiety, weakness, restlessness.  She starts moving and can’t stop or be still, bumps into things and keeps pressing against them. Walking along a wall, she keeps bumping up against it. She goes around in circles, weaving, wobbling, falling, all the time getting more anxious. If I try to stop her, hold her down, pet her, she’s as likely to become more frantic as more calm.  She walks better than she did a few months ago, until she meets an obstacle or gets tired and either sits or topples over.  And the trouble thing is that obstacles don’t always stop her. Sometimes she tries to keep going against walls, into corners, into spaces too small for her to pass, and she keeps at it until she’s rescued.

She’s resting now in the living room, and I’m getting up every few minutes to check on her.  Praying that she doesn’t wake up and start banging around.  Her eyes are open, but being blind, this doesn’t mean she’s not asleep … I’m not sure. I gave her a quarter of a 5mg Valium several hours ago. It helped a lot, but her frantic behavior has come and gone a couple of times since then.

She’s still taking her fluids fine and eating well. Her last labs were OK, and her last exam on Friday was good. But her mental problems – I’m just today facing that’s what this is – are getting worse daily.  I guess it’s senility. 

I’m waiting until late evening to give her some Arsenicum Album, which will help her sleep through the night, because the vet says not to wake her once she takes that. It’s not good to disrupt her sleep. I have valium in case of emergency.

I have to start looking at whether this disorientation, being lost to her surroundings and to my efforts to comfort her, are causing Tasha to suffer. When she’s calm, I think she knows it’s her old buddy Kyle that’s holding her. When she’s not, I’m not so sure. Her personality has changed so much lately, become more distant.  She doesn’t seem to recognize us very much.  In a sense, I wonder if she’s entirely still with us in this world.

My promise to Tasha was to stand with her through old age, keep her comfortable, love her no matter what. I don’t think she’s in physical pain, and none of her treatments are causing her discomfort. At this point, I wouldn’t allow surgery or any sickening drugs, nor would we resuscitate. I believe she would like a cookie and a good long hug.  But if I whistled and she heard it, she could not gather the will to come down the hall to me.  I think is more than confusion of blindness.  If her little spirit is already heading for the bridge, God help me not to hold her here too long.  

I’m not making a decision tonight, and please God not in the next few days.  Hopefully, she will see Dr. Childs – the Chinese Medicine vet – on Friday afternoon, and get a bath at her favorite place on Saturday.  But unless something happens to turn the tide, it won’t be very long.

This is unrelenting heartbreak, and when the big one comes, I can’t say how much will be left of my heart.