embrace impermanence

The vet has started her on phenobarbital, which he hopes will prevent the seizures from happening. It’s difficult to get her to take all of her medicine, and maybe that explains why she’s still having seizures, although the frequency and duration seem to have decreased.

Even if the drug does work to control the seizures, they may be caused by some underlying problem that is still going on which will hasten her death. And whether or not that’s the case, she’s still an old kitty who doesn’t have a very long life expectancy.

Right now, we’re just taking things one day at a time. 12 months ago

I’ve had her for 16 years now. We’ve been through a lot together.

I’ve never witnessed a seizure before. The seizures are happening about twice a day right now, and don’t last more than a minute or maybe less, but are very disturbing to me, and I’m sure they are hard on my cat. When I called the vet on Friday, he was not very hopeful with the prognosis. :( 12 months ago

Comments seem to have disappeared this morning from my own recent activity and from that of my subscribers.

UPDATE 5/27: Now I can see the comments of my subscribers, but I can’t see my own, unless I go to this link to my comments from my Zeitgeist page. Well, at least I am grateful for that. I have had cheers on this entry, but I don’t know whether (a) anyone else is experiencing the same problem (b) if so, whether or not it bothers them.

Maybe I should report it. Or maybe I should write another comment first to see where it goes. Or maybe I should just let it go and turn my attention to something more important.

UPDATE #2 5/27/11

Just now reported this to the robots. 1 year ago

^{image from wikimedia commons}

I’ve been thinking about grief lately, partly because it’s the next chapter in my Rebuilding book, and partly because I always feel grief in November, with winter coming and the anniversary of my mother’s death. This week I’ve also been remembering JFK’s assassination – where I was when I first heard about it, waiting for the bus to go home from school, and the sense of shock and disbelief. And I’ve been remembering JFK’s funeral – how we were home for a long weekend, and there was nothing else to watch on tv, so I watched the stoic veiled Jacquie, and young Caroline and little John-John in their matching powder-blue coats, and all the other sad and somber pomp and ceremony when I got tired of playing outside.

What I didn’t remember, until I happened to look it up the other day, was how that funeral occured right before the beginning of a whole string of funerals (and one birth) in my family, and the timeline of those events:

Dec 1963 – My father’s grandmother (my great-grandmother) died.
Jan 1964 – My father’s youngest child (my youngest brother) born.
Aug 1964 – My father’s father (my grandfather) died.
Dec 1965 – My father’s grandfather (my great-grandfather) died.
Nov 1966 – My father’s wife (my mother) died.
Jul 1969 – My father’s middle child (my brother Scott) died.

My, that was a lot of loss and grief for my father to go through, and for his mother and sister, my grandmother and aunt, as well. When I look at it through adult eyes, it’s no wonder that my father and my grandmother and aunt had such a tough time embracing all that impermanence in their lives during that decade.

I don’t really want to go through the exercises in that chapter on grief, but maybe I can look on it as simply another opportunity to embrace impermanence. 2 years ago

...and I thought of it on my walk yesterday. The park where I was walking has been changed in the past year. A large swath of trees were cut down to build three picnic shelters and a large parking lot, which were completely empty yesterday but which are probably busy on summer weekends. Here are a few lines from the poem, which can be read in it’s entirety here:

with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you 2 years ago

^{image from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnie-the-Pooh_(book))}

“How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”
- A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh2 years ago

A thought went up my mind to-day
That I have had before,
But did not finish, – some way back,
I could not fix the year,

Nor where it went, nor why it came
The second time to me,
Nor definitely what it was,
Have I the art to say.

But somewhere in my soul, I know
I’ve met the thing before;
It just reminded me – ‘t was all –
And came my way no more. 3 years ago

“Birthday, death day — what day is not both?”
- John Updike, Endpoint3 years ago

photo source: Park looks for Roxy’s owners, The Augusta Metrospirit.

Roxy, a beagle who loved walking along the Augusta canal, was buried near the mouth of Reed Creek, where it flows into the canal. Roxy’s grave became a small shrine to her memory, and I first discovered it several years ago. Then the county decided to spend some tax money to build a stone patio at the entrance to the bridge across the canal, and decided that Roxy’s grave needed to be re-located. A sign was posted on a tree near the original gravesite, maybe a year ago, letting passersby know that the grave was being moved to somewhere else along the canal. Yesterday I came across the new grave. It is on the other side of the bridge, and down a flight of steps, right on the shore of a wide stretch of the Savannah River. It is still covered with small gifts left in memory of Roxy and of all beloved dogs. It seems to be a small way for all park visitors to embrace impermanence. 3 years ago

I clipped an article from Pittsburgh magazine called “Jobs of the Future.” Job #10 is a new one that I’ve never heard of: “Life-Transition Guide.” Here is their description:

As Benjamin Franklin so wisely observed, the only two constants in life are death and taxes. Accountants have already exploited the job possibilities of the latter, but dealing with death still remains largely taboo. All of that will change as death comes to be seen as the final stage of growth. To appreciate this we will seek out life-transition guides, philosophic yet practical individuals whose concern is helping people make the most of their final years. Imagine if you will a cross between a super hospice worker, psychologist, attorney, priest and teacher.

So, I could making a living helping other people embrace impermanence? Who knew? On that note, I’m going to mark this goal as “Done” for now, although I guess it won’t really be done until I’m dead. 3 years ago