Wednesday with Poppy

being a shortened version of this post from July

---

with Carol in July

with me, June campout in Big Sur

17 July 2019

I do and I don’t want to forget this day. The past several months, Poppy has been clingy, maybe feeling uncomfortable because of her kidney disease. Last week I was wishing she could pee normally. But as they say, “Be careful what you wish for,” because yesterday she let loose with a puddle on the hardwood floor.

Before walking her, I surveyed the back yard. There on the path was a normal-looking #2. I never thought I’d be so happy to see one of these; her elimination had been out of whack since the vet put her on a low-protein diet. I found her lead and a pet refuse bag, and invited her out. She bounded over with almost her former intensity, and exploded out the gate once I opened it. She soon ran out of gas, but we walked fully 20 minutes.

Carol would be out most of the day; I worked from home so Poppy wouldn’t be alone. The past few days I prepared her meals from leftovers. Poppy was refusing the weird stuff from the vet, and didn’t even want her old kibble. On this morning I put a little water and rice on the stove, and some salmon, under her close supervision. After it simmered a few minutes, I stirred in a fiber capsule, let it cool for a bit, and walked it to her crate. “Sit!” I commanded. She promptly obeyed. Placing her bowl on the floor, I said, “OK,” and she fell to.

In a couple of minutes she found me and gave me her “More?” look. I scooped a handful of her formerly-favorite kibble into her bowl. She ate most of that, and then stopped. “Well,” I thought, “She must be feeling better.”

A while later, it was time to go to the bank. “Want to go for a ride?” I called.

She jumped off the couch and looked at me expectantly. I gathered my things and she followed me to the garage. The van is too high for her to get into by herself, so I lifted her onto my seat. She jumped to the passenger side. I lowered her window, belted myself in, and off we went. About half-way through town, she began looking toward my window. “Want to come over?” I asked.

At the next traffic signal, I scooted back a few inches, and she took a tentative step. I lifted her onto my lap, and as the light turned green, she put her paws onto the door. A few blocks later, she wanted to go back; I gave her a one-handed boost to the passenger seat.

I left both front windows open a few inches. “I’ll be back in a flash,” I told her, and went into the bank.

I returned to find her in the driver’s seat. “Excuse me,” I said as I opened the door. She returned to the passenger seat and we went for her last ride back to the house. I gave her a half-tablet of the antiemetic, to help her feel more comfortable in her final hours.

I fed her for the last time. Well, almost the last: she came to me in the kitchen with her “Carrot?” look. I handed her one, which she cheerfully chomped. (She did that Monday, too, but immediately vomited the whole thing. This time everything stayed down.)

Carol came home to take Poppy to the vet. I just wanted to be somewhere else, so I gathered a few things and went to the office. Poppy followed me outside. Maybe she suspected something was up, because when I leave I always say, “Be a good girl”; this time I knelt down and stroked her fur. “I’m sorry, Poppy,” I said. “I’m so sorry.” I’m sure she could tell I was really broken up about something.

At work it was “Employee Appreciation Week” and there was an ice cream social. But I didn’t want ice cream and didn’t feel social, so I skipped it. I did something vaguely productive and went home. As I entered the house there was no jingle of Poppy’s tags on her collar, no little footsteps.

Mom is dying.

She’s been declining for the past 4 years or more, but in the past month or so she’s really taken a nosedive. Last year she lost 28 pounds; by this October, she’d lost another 20. Since then, she lost the next 15. The big C (diagnosed in November) has been part of this, as has vascular dementia, but she’s also lived over nine decades; statistically she wouldn’t be long for this world, even without those ailments.

How am I dealing with all this? Well, I came out for a few days last month, after learning of the diagnosis. And I’m here again today. Yesterday I sat next to her as she dozed on the couch. I tried to get her to drink something, but she wasn’t much interested. Not interested at all in food.

We talked about her memorial service, and I asked her if she had any thoughts about what she wanted read or sung. A favorite psalm perhaps? I quoted the first half-dozen verses of Psalm 139; she shook her head No.

After a while, when I thought she’d forgotten the question, she turned her head toward me and whispered, “Last song, ‘God Be With You’.” I wrote that down.

I brought the fall 2018 issue of the Hedgehog Review with me; its theme is “The Evening of Life.” One article mentions the way we deal with aging in our impoverished (but materially rich) society. It struck me that it’s similar to how we deal with obesity: we pretend that if only you would do this or that, you could age “successfully…” by which we mean you could postpone old age, or cover it up, or compensate for it. But of course it catches up to every one of us, unless we die first.

All this reflects how I deal with big issues: I read, I think. Sometimes, when I remember, I pray. I think about the good times, but more than anything what I do is avoid it. I have a pending code review; even though I’m officially not at work, I nag people to have a look. I return email from someone who’s looking at a defect report I filed. I think about what to work on next.

And I prepare for an interview at a prospective new employer. Forty-two years of history says I’ll never switch employers voluntarily, but if it’s ever going to happen it’ll have to be soon.

This hasn’t been very coherent. But there’s a reason this is called a “blog.”

Tears at Easter

I cried a lot yesterday—tears of both joy and grief. I'm not sure why, exactly, but maybe it was just one of those days when the Spirit of God broke through the shell I usually and unthinkingly wear.

Christ the Lord is risen today
    Al-le-lu-ia!
Sons of men and angels say
    Al-le-lu-ia!
Raise your joys and triumphs high!
    Al-le-lu-ia!
Sing, ye heavens, and earth reply,
    Al-le-lu-ia!

For some reason that carol (or is it a hymn?) shook me up. How many hundreds of times have I sung it? Or maybe it wasn't this song, but another one near the start of yesterday's 11:00 service at PCC that got to me.

In one of his Lake Wobegon monologues, Garrison Keillor mentioned a certain "Uncle Mike" who, when asked to pray at Thanksgiving, started by thanking God for forgiveness of sins through Jesus Christ, and then, in talking about how that forgiveness was purchased—viz., through Christ's dying for us on the cross—broke down and started weeping, and there was this awkward interval where hungry people were waiting for him to finish so they could dig in.

Perhaps Uncle Mike wasn't the best choice to pray for everybody, but Mike was more conscious of that spiritual reality than others at the table. They were eager to enjoy God's material and sensual blessings—which are good things—but Mike was focused on God's greatest gift.

Anyway, yesterday would not have been a good day for me to pray in front of a crowd; I was trying not to cry too much during the opening song or songs.

Then came this line in the sermon

I was visiting my parents, who both have Alzheimer's. They're living in a care facility, and I was there holding my father's hand, thinking "What am I doing here? Why did I drive 4 hours…"

Dad can't talk any more, and I remember thinking that I'd give anything just to hear my father talk to me again.

And I said, quietly, "So would I, Gary; so would I." I'm tearing up even now as I recall the moment. (Pastor Gary went on to say that his Heavenly Father came to him at that point and encouraged him about the world to come, but I was for a moment stuck on missing Dad.)

Back in the '80s, Carol and I went to a Crabb/Allender seminar about counseling, where we heard Crabb talk about the ache we have while here on earth. Contrary to the "name it and claim it" talk of the so-called "prosperity gospel," Crabb echoed the message of pain found in Romans 8:

²²We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. ²³Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

Romans 8:22f [NIV 1984]

Ain't that the truth! Yes, the Apostle Paul also told us to "Be joyful always" and "Rejoice in the Lord always", but there's this other part, which is also true.

Baptisms

And several folks got baptized yesterday. As the first one came out of the water, my face wasn't quite as wet as his was. I was remembering my friend Ali, who was baptized two years ago. He had come from a country racked by sectarian violence. He told me that he would be called an infidel back home, because he wasn't ready to kill someone in the name of God.

He heard that Jesus is kind, and visited our church, where he heard more about Jesus and decided to follow him. The church office put Ali in touch with me and another man, and we met him a few times and talked about his questions (he had many) and Ali asked how he could become baptized.

Ali was baptized in Pastor Frank's office. He told me about it a week or two after the fact. I told him, "We are brothers!" As indeed we are. Forever.

I also remembered my own baptism, in Half Moon Bay, maybe 37 years ago. I waded into the water, and Pastor Ron asked me, "What's your name?" I answered, and he said, "Collin, based-on-your-profession-of-faith-in-the-Lord-Jesus-Christ, I baptize you in-the-name-of-the-Father-and-the-Son-and-the-Holy-Spirit" as he dunked me into the water. He pulled me out a half-second later and the next person waded toward him.

I was shivering all over, but my heart was warmed by the love of God and the fellowship of my brothers and sisters. That too was a day of great joy. As is today.

This is the day the Lord has made
Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

Psalm 118:24 (approximately)

Reflections

Dad was admitted to hospital on Monday August 31, and my sister Donna flew to Honolulu Wednesday to be with him. He was confused but improving, and everyone was talking about his recovery/rehab. Still, as the week wore on, I felt a strong desire to be with him. As I wrote earlier, I responded immediately to the blood center's reminder email, and that gave me a sense of connection with Dad. Yet I also wanted to see him in person.

It was September 3rd and I considered the possibilities. We had a plan to meet my daughter and son-in-law and grandson and niece in Felton Monday the 7th (Labor Day), so I wanted to leave after that. The lovely Carol had reservations to fly to Asia on the 17th, so I wanted to return before that. I'd briefly considered flying to Honolulu Monday morning and canceling our plans with the young folks, but since everyone in Honolulu was optimistic, I left those plans intact and planned to fly out Friday 9/11 (an auspicious date).

We enjoyed our time with the young folks on Monday, but our house phone rang that night, close to midnight. Nothing good happens at that hour, and this was when I heard Dad was in a crisis. An hour later he stopped breathing.

I was distressed about this, and wanted to see my mom and sisters immediately. I briefly considered taking the first flight I could get, which would have been about 6 hours later. Instead I opted for a flight out Wednesday morning.

Tuesday morning I went to the office and set up an email auto-reply. I also preemptively told my colleagues that I was leaving due to a death in the family. Several friends (and colleagues) stopped by to convey their condolences. Two gave me the same excellent advice: DO NOT indulge the "what if?"s.

Should I rent a car? I wasn't sure so I texted my sisters.

As I packed, I thought, well, if I had left Monday morning I might have seen him alive one more time. I thought, if I had "facetime"d him Monday afternoon, as my cousin-by-marriage had, I would have talked to him alive one more time. Then I remembered my friends' excellent advice and renounced those thoughts. No one is ever told what would have happened…

Thursday afternoon we had an appointment at the mortuary to look at Dad's body before cremation. I wasn't sure I liked the cremation idea, but when I saw his body (it had been in the 'fridge and condensation was forming at several places) I changed my mind. The past few weeks he had lost quite a bit of weight. I wanted to remember him as he was during my previous visits.

We all wept. We agreed that things could have been much worse: it might have been months in a hospital bed in the house, a life he would not have liked. We knew all this, but still it was hard to accept that he was really gone. A world without my father in it is an idea that repels the mind.

Donna said it was good for us to see him here; without it we might imagine he was just at the hospital or somewhere else. I agreed. It's a necessary shock to force the mind to accept an idea that repels it.

Mom asked if someone could pray, and I said, "Not me; I can't even see." My sister Inga spoke to God for us.

We had a memorial service Saturday: the urn holding his ashes sat on a table in front, with a 20"x30" pic of him nearby. Several people shared their memories of him. I heard things I hadn't known before—things that made me desire even more to be like him.

Monday morning we buried his ashes. In a small ceremony at the cemetery we watched the urn go into the underground concrete "vault" and we filed by, dropping flowers into the hole in the earth. Workers from the cemetery closed the vault and shoveled soil to fill the hole, then replaced the sod.

It was important, for me at least, to witness this. As our pastor says sometimes, our bodies know things different from what our heads know. By dropping a flower into the vault (into the hole at least) and mentally saying good-bye to Dad, my body was forced to acknowledge that Dad is really no longer with us on this earth. Without this ritual, my mind would still have known that he's gone, but my body would not be sure.

Sometimes we go to funerals to comfort the bereaved, and I appreciate everyone who came to Dad's memorial to comfort us. But at least from my perspective, the important thing I got was that I acknowledged with both my mind and my body that my dad is no longer with us.

That way, the mind and the body and the reality in the world can all agree—this promotes mental and spiritual health. And I need all of that I can get.

I try my best to be just like I am…

I heard Bob Dylan's Maggie's Farm on NPR recently, and these lines especially struck me:

Well, I try my best
To be just like I am
But everybody wants you
To be just like them

http://www.bobdylan.com/us/songs/maggies-farm
downloaded 06-Sep-2015

A worthy endeavor, that. But it's difficult. As Thomas Merton wrote:

We cannot be ourselves unless we know ourselves. But self-knowledge is impossible when thoughtless and automatic activity keeps our souls in confusion. In order to know ourselves … we have to cut down our activity to the point where we can think calmly and reasonably about our actions.

Merton, No Man Is an Island (1955) 7.8 (p. 126)

Thoughtless and automatic activity: that'll keep us from knowing who we are, what we actually admire, what we want to become.

Tolstoy's Ivan Ilych was bedridden as he neared death; I think this enforced reduction in activity was part of how he discovered the vanity in his life:

It occurred to him that what had appeared perfectly impossible before, namely that he had not spent his life as he should have done, might after all be true. It occurred to him that his scarcely perceptible attempts to struggle against what was considered good by the most highly placed people, those scarcely noticeable impulses which he had immediately suppressed, might have been the real thing, and all the rest false.

The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy, XI (p. 55)
trans. Louise and Aylmar Maude
http://opie.wvnet.edu/~jelkins/lawyerslit/stories/death-of-ivan-ilych.pdf
(downloaded September 2015)

Ivan Ilych's life was certainly not as busy and distracted as the life of a middle-class Millennial, but he kept busy enough with his work and social engagements. It was only when those distractions were curtailed, and when he contemplated his suffering, that he realized that the only real thing in his life may have been the feeble impulses to resist the values of high-status people—impulses which he'd immediately suppressed anyway.

If I do not know who I am, it is because I think I am the sort of person everyone around me wants to be. Perhaps I have never asked myself whether I really wanted to become what everybody else seems to want to become. Perhaps if I only realized that I do not admire what everyone seems to admire, I would really begin to live after all.

Merton, op. cit. 77.8 (pp. 125f)

Ivan Ilych didn't know who he was, really; he didn't know what he actually admired. His folly was also Merton's at times, and I dare say ours as well.

Does it matter, really, if we know ourselves? In the introduction to No Man Is an Island, Merton writes that it's quite important—that it's part of salvation, part of what everyone seeks:

What every man looks for in life is his own salvation and the salvation of the men he lives with. By salvation I mean first of all the full discovery of who he himself really is. Then I mean something of the fulfillment of his own God-given powers, in the love of others and of God.

Merton, op. cit. p. xv

He has more to say about salvation, but he lists self-discovery first. I've been thinking lately about "salvation" so I found Merton's comments particularly interesting.

When he says "salvation," what is he talking about? What are we being saved from? We need to be saved from a life Merton describes here:

Why do we have to spend our lives striving to be something that we would never want to be, if we only knew what we wanted? Why do we waste our time doing things which, if we only stopped to think about them, are just the opposite of what we were made for?

op. cit. 7.8 (p. 126)

There is an even more basic thing we need: we need to know that we are loved by God. We need to know that we're not perfect, and we need to know that it's okay, because nobody is. We need to know that life doesn't consist in possessions or status or even physical health.

And so we must disconnect from thoughtless and automatic activity once in a while. We need to take time for what's important, to tend to our souls. To have unscheduled time. As Buechner wrote in Secrets in the Dark, there are times when it is quiet and you don't really have to do anything, when

[t]he time is ripe for looking back over the day, the week, the year, and trying to figure out where we have come from and where we are going to, for sifting through the things we have done and the things we have left undone for a clue to who we are and who, for better or worse, we are becoming. (59)

Rather than doing the usual thing, once in a while we need to look back, to consider the clues about who we are and who we are becoming.

I'm doing that now, particularly as I try to adjust to the idea of a world where my earthly father no longer lives.

Thoughts toward the end

Dad is 92, so statistically speaking he’s probably not long for this world. His cancer is metastatic and he’s in the hospital, which only reinforces the prognosis.

We’ve spoken about his approaching end, but as I’ve told many grieving friends and colleagues in the past, one can never actually be ready for it—no matter how long we’ve seen it coming.

What is happening inside me? Well, I have to tell you I’m rather a mess. Dad’s fondest wish is that his descendants all outlive him. Indeed, the alternative would be awful. I know all this, but I’m not actually ready to go through it.

So how am I processing all this? Not very well. And yet part of what’s happening is that I feel compelled to be a better man. When I got Thursday morning’s notice, “You’re eligible to donate life-giving blood!” the urge to run over to the blood center was powerful.

You see, Dad had a habit of donating blood. When I was still living at home, he would sometimes announce, “Going to give blood” before heading to the blood bank. Part of that was prudence: you build up credit, and if you need some units of blood in the future, you don’t have to buy them. I don’t know how many gallons he gave, but it was way beyond what he might ever credibly need. So the savings aspect wasn’t his only motivation. Giving blood, I learned, is something a man does.

And so, with Dad so many steps closer to the grave, I wanted to do something life-affirming—something Dad would do, or rather, something Dad did.

As Phillip stuck the needle into my arm that afternoon, I mentioned Dad’s habit. “Part of why I do this is I wanted to be like him. Still do!” I said, barely retaining my composure.

“That’s what a parent wants,” he returned. Indeed.

Something else is happening to me in these days: when I see young people, my paternal feelings arise a little more strongly than before. Perhaps that Socioemotional selectivity theory is kicking in: 18 months ago I felt like I’d live forever, but today I know better—that I’m unlikely to double my years. I probably don’t have even four decades left.

I can hear some of you laughing: “Four decades? I haven’t even been alive that long!” But I remember my grandmother telling me just the other day, when I six or seven years old, that this world goes by fast. I’m here to tell you that she was right. The other day I reported for work at my first “real” job as a development engineer at hp. That was about four decades ago.

A colleague spoke about a lack of enjoyment in life—particularly his work life. I thought about his words and wrote him a few paragraphs with my thoughts. Another young guy stood up to the boss in a meeting. He wasn’t defiant, but he declined to promise an earlier delivery date for one of his tasks. I wrote him some paragraphs about a similar experience I’d had in my earlier years, and encouraged him to keep up his self-awareness. Bowing to the pressure will only get you in trouble, I told him.

I’m not sure I would have done that two years ago; two years ago I’m not even sure I would have noticed what these guys were saying, or how it was an invitation for me to speak [or write] into their lives.

With young women, my paternal feelings come out even more strongly, perhaps because I have daughters. A young friend is starting a career in elementary education, and as I thought of her energy and her love blessing those kids, it made me feel so happy. I told her so, too.

And that brought to mind the passion and experience that the lovely Carol brings to her lessons, and to young mothers at a church group—I thought about how she’s blessing those students and those young mothers, and that made me happy, too. (I also told her.)

It is good to think about death sometimes, as this article notes. I’m not sure I want to greet each morning with, “It is a good day to die,” but I need to remember that I will die some day, probably before four decades are out. And also to think about people in my life who deserve good words from me—comfort or encouragement—and remember to be liberal with those gifts. If not today, then when? As the Bible says, Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to act. And not because something Bad will happen if I don’t, but because doing it will bring good into the world, in and through my life. And because that's what a man does.