To Every Thing

there is a time and purpose, maybe

The other evening, I got a call I was dreading. My very good friend, Denny, was in the ER again.

I met Denny several years ago, on line. It’s called NextDoor, a social media platform built around neighborhoods. I followed it actively for a while, until I tired of people complaining about finding someone else’s dog piles on their lawns. Sure, you should pick up after your dog. But, it’s not a felony and to complain about it to a whole community is petty. Denny once responded to such a post, with a somewhat wicked and sarcastic retort. I figured out how to send a private message. “You might catch more flies with honey then vinegar”, not expecting a response. But, the response came; “fair enough”, and he went back and edited his comment to be less ascerbic. I thought “wow, here’s a person I’d like to meet” and I carried the conversation forward. Before long, we had a coffee date and the rest is history. Denny was born into the Society of Friends, the Quakers. Later in life he became somewhat of a mystic, having studied eastern religions and philosophy while he spent most of his adult life in Asia with the state department.

During a dark time, I was carrying on about the tapes running endlessly in my head, trying to figure out the pile-up that described my exit from a beloved career. Denny listened and then suggested “Why not view your experience through the lens of a spiritual journey”. I was totally taken aback, having never imagined anything like that.

I went home, looked up both “Spiritual” and “Journey” in the dictionary and then proceeded to write six thousand words on the topic, exploring every possible iteration of meaning and consequence of that suggestion. It’s fair to say it was the single most helpful suggestion anyone EVER offered to help me on my way towards coming to equinimity about events in my life over the prior decade or so. Denny and I downed easily 200 fancy coffee drinks in local cafes during our acquaintance, talked about every topic in the encyclopedia. He was a fount of knowledge and experience in Asian cultures. I was his private health care consultant in a general sort of way.

Denny lived with diabetes for many years, then had the perverse fortune of developing multiple myeloma. He lived about 7 years with that disease. In recent weeks, his physical capacity deteriorated to the point that he needed 24 hour assistance, so he moved into an assisted living facility. I intended to see him there, but was too lackadaisical to get there quickly enough. I got that call while intending to visit.

I wasn’t able to see him at the hospital. He moved quickly from the ER to an ICU, where I found his family huddled together. When the young physician (PGY3) came to talk with us, I helped translate medical jargon into conversational language. His wife and son were distraught, but thankful for my presence and assistance. Siblings gathered and soon there were enough true family that it was obvious I’d be at the back of the line for visitation; He was already supported on a ventilator, so I felt the visit wouldn’t serve him anyway while sedated, so I returned home. Later that evening I received a text; “Denny’s heart stopped”. He had an advanced directive; no CPR.

Just 2 weeks earlier, I came across a new agent approved by the FDA for multiple myeloma in individuals who had failed at least three prior treatment regimens. It sounded something like a magic bullet. His oncologist was contemplating offering it, although it required hospitalization to monitor for adverse effects. Denny was so fragile they feared he wouldn’t survive the course of therapy.

Why had I not hustled over to the Marquam House as soon as he settled in there? Knowing Denny, he knew he wouldn’t be going home again and decided not to fight any longer. It was only 10 days before he weakened to the point he couldn’t life a glass anymore. I will regret my lack of urgency to see him, spend time with him, remind him how much I treasured our friendship, as long as I remain on this earth.

Cyrus (or Misty, by prior nomenclature) is the senior member of our 4-legged family. He (she) came to live with my in-laws a number of years ago. The story is that my mother-in-law took her in from an elderly lady going into assisted living. Rumor had it that the lady also adopted her from a prior elderly lady. She came with the name. She lived with the folks for several years and then moved with them into our home, in the daylight apartment on our ground floor. Within a year, Kathleens father passed away, her mother moved across country to live with her youngest son and family, leaving the cat and dog with us. That was 7 years ago, so the cat is at least 15, if not older. A few months ago, she began sneezing repeatedly, shaking her head and losing weight. She had a couple of episodes of epistaxis, sneezing blood all over the floor and wall. Her first trip to the vet with us, perhaps ever, revealed two things; Misty is a male cat, and Misty has very bad dentition, all on one side. We were dumbfounded. How could we have failed to recognize signs of a neutered male cat? So, we tested various stories (“trans-cat”), tried to re-orient ourselves to talking about “him” rather than “her”, and chose a male name of sufficient substance to match her regal nature. Medications made for temporary improvement. We had the teeth extracted; the sneezing and head shaking persisted. Breathing became louder. Cyrus’s appetite remains but he’s having difficulty eating and he has lost a great deal of weight. We demurred when offered a CT scan, having already spent nearly $3000 on the dental work under anesthesia. A plain x-ray of the sinuses suggests a malignancy. So, Cyrus, ne Misty appears to be dying. Cyrus had a companion from the in-laws; Victor, the Havanese dog. He was similarly elderly and passed over the rainbow bridge only about 9 months prior, while we were still living downstairs awaiting completion of the remodeling of our main floor living space. Victor was a quirky, irrascible old guy, but I appreciated him nonetheless and his passing left a considerable hole in the social structure of our little family. Now it’ll be Cyrus, the last four-legged member of the Cleland household and the senior member of our current menagerie. Cyrus has taken a liking to me, climbing into my lap and sleeping for hours, trapping me into a single position until I just can’t hold out any longer. He has the most luxurient fur of any cat I have known. There is no denying him his place of choice; I am his servant and have resigned myself to attending to all his needs; inside, outside, kitty treats, lap time, massaging whenever he demands it. I think he knows his time is short and he’s wringing every last drop of pleasure out of the days remaining. When he’s gone, it will truly leave a hole in the fabric of our lives.

It’s possible to go many years without losing a loved-one. When it happens, the ground shifts beneath our feet. That individual’s presence moves from one place in our conscience to another. The narrative stops and it’s replaced by remembrance; prior conversations float in and out of our conscious memory. With the critters, it’s not so much conversations, but habitual interactions that take on meaning much deeper than random observations. I am absolutely convinced that we share a language of sorts, as they make their needs known as well as their pleasure and their attachment to us. I think they are far more sophisticated than the animal behavioralists attribute to their behaviors.

Kathleen and I are well into the 3rd generation of critters in our combined family. We talk about them as if they were our children. Our boy Alex knew them all. In his very quiet way, he is very fond of the animals who share our home. The passing of a generation, be it human, canine or feline, gives me pause to think about my own tenure on this earth. I’ll be lucky to enjoy another 20 years here. Many more years are behind than in front of me. I wonder about whether my impact on the world around me is largely over. I no longer work as a professional, but I do participate as a volunteer in three separate spheres. The activities are less dramatic than my surgical past, but the impact is still potentially significant, even if my contribution is largely anonymous. I really can’t get close to the concept of retirement as a time to recreate, see the world, learn new hobbies and sports, etc. I am finding a good deal of pleasure paying more attention to all the living things that share my land. The idea of being a good steward to them appeals to me. I plant trees that won’t be mature until I’m already gone. Hopefully I’ll taste their fruit at least once. After 4 years, the timber bamboo I planted is beginning to show it’s potential. I imagine the things I might build out of those culms. I’m thinking about water; saving some of the 30,000 gallons of rainwater that fall on my roof to keep trees alive through our ever hotter and longer dry season. How much will I need? How can I make the system durable, but not so expensive as to be a budget buster. I don’t want all the temporate rainforest species around me to die on my watch. We still have plenty of rainfall, just not distributed so as to preserve the ecosystem around us. Perhaps it’s a fools mission, since weather and other forces of nature are really beyond my control in every sense of the word. Still, each of those trees is an individual, many of them decades older than me. It seems that they deserve to live.

The people in my life, the animals, the plants, shrubs, trees around me are what is real to me. All manner of news, mostly negative, flows through the virtual portals into my awareness. Simply by choosing alternative activities to staring at a screen, I can completely change my sense of reality. Most individuals would say I have a responsibility of staying informed, of participating in our democratic system, of making my voice heard. Sadly, all of that only brings me down. Focusing on people within reach of me, my home base and the woods around me is a different reality, one I can reach out and touch, one that doesn’t have a political philosophy, doesn’t take sides on existential issues, simply wants to live in peace until it’s time is over. I think my spiritual journey can play out right here where I live, without having to travel anywhere at all.