Dear Little Stuffed

Stuffed died Tuesday afternoon, and I have never felt such pure undiluted sadness in my life.  Mike and I have been calling it "grief-concentrate":  There is no anger or guilt or confusion or denial to dilute it, and there has not been a series of tasks and events (no meeting with funeral home directors to plan a service, no gathering or luncheon with all our loved ones after, etc.) to distract us.  It is just us in our little apartment alone now--just the two of us for the first time in our entire relationship--missing him.  Stuffed was a few feet away during Mike's and my first kiss; He is just part of our relationship and home.  I ache in a way I've never ached before.  I've never felt anything like this.  Is it because he--even at 21 years old--was still less than a foot off the ground so still seemed like a baby who needed to be looked out for and protected?  Is it because we couldn't really talk with each other so I don't know for sure how much he understood?  "Doesn't it seem creepy to you that he doesn't talk?" I'd always ask Mike, and Mike would always reply, "He talks.  Just in his own way."  But that was never what I meant, and he knew that.  I was always half-expecting him to talk.  Often, Mike would walk into a room or get home from work to hear me chattering away to Stuffed, and he'd say, "You talk to him like he's a person" or "Gee, you talk to him more than you do me."  :)  "Well, what if he understands us?" I'd always counter.  "Of course, I'm going to talk to him."  :)  Once I got to know him, I never really thought of Stuffed as a pet or as even as completely a cat.  He was the third person in the apartment--Mike would joke that I was the third person since he and Stuffed had been together long before I came onto the scene to "girl up" their shared bachelor life--and I thought of him as a soul who was living on earth in the form of a cat, and as a sweet little soul with whom I'd been entrusted.  We knew it was coming, but that made it no easier.  I had expected it to hurt when the day came, but this is infinitely worse than I had expected.  When Stuffed woke up Tuesday morning suddenly unable to stand, we knew it was time to call the vet, and the memory of my own voice saying as much to Mike still sickens me.  "We suffer so they don't have to," I read online this week, and I understand, but knowing it was time has yet to make this that much easier.  

Around 7:30 am Tuesday, Mike gently lifted him up to hold him one last time, and Stuffed actually tilted his head way back to look up at him.  Stuffed did that twice--and it was something I'd never seen him do before--and the two of them kept eye contact for about ten seconds each time.  I always called the two of them "Frick and Frack," as Mike was very much Stuffed's Person.  He loved me and stayed at my side through every illness I've had since 2007, we posed for a picture together on my wedding day, he loved me and showed it--a gentler, sweeter cat's likely never lived--but Mike was his best friend.  

Mike got Stuffed back into his round bed on top of the patchwork wing chair (which he so loved ♥) while we tried to find a mobile vet who could come that day.  They were all so overbooked because of Covid, we had no "luck" until the third vet we called said she could be there by 5 pm that day--and only because she would already be in our neighborhood for another appointment.  5 pm seemed like an eternity to us since we weren't sure if Stuffed was in pain or just paralyzed ("just"--how grotesque), but by 1 pm, she texted to say she could be there by 1:30, and there we were with less than half an hour left with Stuffed.  We kept his favorite toys around him in his bed and took the picture above while we were waiting.  He used his mouse as a pillow, we kept "Girl Cat"--the green and pink once-Catnip-filled toy I'd made for him for the first day I was going to meet him in 2007 (and whom he'd instantly taken to ↓ ♥)--beside him, 

the now-held-together-with-packaging-tape "crinkle ball" he and Mike used to play fetch with was tucked nearby, as well, and I pinned our wedding picture to Girl Cat's heart-shaped belly to add some extra love to Stuffed's little bed.  These were the things we buried him with later that day, and I like to think they had each been infused with enough joy and love from all the memories to continue to bless Stuffed forever as his floofy little body rests beside them.  

The vet instinctively stroked Stuffed's incredible black/white "divider line" from nose to forehead while she worked, which is a sweet memory for me, both that that was her instinctive reaction to this adorable aspect of his face, the same way we always petted it and straightened his fur along the line--"Fix his stripe!" I'd say to Mike if the fur was in disarray while they were playing--and that she was so gentle with him.  Stuffed passed easily--bless all involved for that ♥--with our talking to him and petting him in his cozy round bed up on the patchwork chair, and with everything I said and did all day Tuesday both before and after that moment, I remained in constant prayer to Sommer to beg her to be there for Stuffed and to greet him and hold him and comfort him and play with him and explain things to him if he needed it.  You can ignore me the rest of my life after this, but don't you dare let him be lonely or scared, Sommer, I mean it.  Help him.  Help him!  'Prayers with every heartbeat all day and night.  The vet explained before leaving that given everything we'd described of Stuffed's last couple days, she was almost positive he'd experienced a blood clot--because cats lose use of their limbs that fast from them.  I told her I'd taken a video just the day before--Monday morning--of Stuffed running from his food bowl by the patchwork cupboards all the way to the bathroom--and she said yes, she hears that a lot:  "My cat was fine two hours ago and now she's at death's door."  She said there was nothing we could have done or that she even could have done, and how especially at 21 years old and dealing with other health issues, there would have been no coming back from it for Stuffed.  We felt huge weights lift off of us from her explanation and talked another few minutes before she left.  In about twenty years of this work, she had never heard of another animal named Stuffed.  :)  Hearing that made me feel good, just as seeing her stroking Stuffed's divider-line had.  She recognized a couple unique things about him in the very short time she was around him, is all, but it touched me.  

I had already set up a cuddly towel-lined container-box for us to place Stuffed into for burial, but watching Mike carry him over to it broke me, and I was soon bent over the table sobbing, "Why are we putting him into a BOX?  A box with a LID!?"  Oh, my heart.  When that wave of pain and nausea broke, I was able to brush him one last time and arrange the mouse, crinkle ball, Girl Cat, and our wedding picture around him.  His soft little body was curled up in a ball with his tail wrapped around him, and Mike placed his paw over his eyes--the way he used to sleep--and I was okay ("okay") then:  I had tried to close his eyes, but they wouldn't stay as closed as I'd have liked, as the vet had already told me would be the case, but with his paw up, now Stuffed just looked like he was sleeping curled up in a little yin yang ball with his toys.  We touched him some more and bawled--"I want him back," I kept crying.  "I want him back."  Mike didn't want to see me cover Stuffed the final time before putting the lid onto the box and then wrapping the box itself, so he left to go pick up our rental car so we could make the drive to his mom's house to bury Stuffed there.  I had a few more minutes with Stuffed then.  

I don't write much about my work in this space but will share that I worked for seven years as a caregiver to children of all ages--newborns to young adults in their early twenties, and all of them differing in developmental levels and physical ability--so I know from that that I'm capable caring for a sick, injured, and/or dying person and body.  I won a few awards for it in my years of doing it.  I did not think I could handle Stuffed's decline and death, though.  Something about Stuffed just made it seem like it would be impossible for me when the time came:  Impossible for me to handle physically his little fur-covered body, and impossible for me to handle emotionally being around him in the moments before, during, after his death--to the extent that I'd ever let myself contemplate it at all.  And instead, now I know about myself that I didn't just manage to care for him both before and after his passing, I did it beautifully, if I may say so, and with a grace I hadn't expected, albeit with a seemingly-bottomless bucket of tears too.  That is one of Stuffed's gifts to me:  He taught me this about myself.  The depth of my love is both what makes me good at it and what makes it hurt so very much--But I can do it even for sweet Stuffed, probably down to 3 pounds when he died, just a little puffball who trusted that Mike and I would always be there for him and help him.  And we were.  I had been praying the past couple years for Stuffed to die peacefully in his sleep, and now I'm indescribably grateful that was an unanswered prayer:  I wouldn't have wanted him to have been alone as he passed, and I wouldn't have wanted to miss the opportunity to take care of him in so many ways this past month and past week, especially.  

Before covering him completely, I talked to him and snuggled my head into his fur a final time--I've never felt anything as soft as his fur and likely won't again in this lifetime--tearfully pinned a blanket around the box and a note to its top, and soon, Mike and I were on the road.  I kept Stuffed in my lap the during the two-hour drive, my turn now to hold him a last time.

I had bought Baby's Breath and Rosemary--Rosemary for remembrance--and arranged it on the box before Mike began replacing all the soil.  Just as Mike couldn't handle seeing Stuffed's body being covered a final time, I couldn't watch as he covered the box.  While he shoveled, I stood by my mother-in-law's rock wall and held myself while I cried, shaking and nauseous again at the thought that Stuffed was disappearing right behind me.  Once he said the box was covered, I was better again and able to help replace the sod and clean up the spot a little.  Stuffed is buried under a Lilac tree ♥ with pale pink roses, Foxgloves, Spirea, and ferns nearby, and with two bird feeders in the Lilac branches above him.  In even the short time we were there, my mother-in-law's yard was visited by two cats--hers and another that just sauntered through--a Baltimore Oriole couple, Sparrows, a Cardinal, Mourning Doves, and a Hummingbird.  The lovely rock wall is a few feet away.  It was sunny but also rained intermittently while we worked, so everything around us was glistening and sparkling and smelled of good soil, fresh grass, and roses.  It is a beautiful spot for such a beautiful little soul.  Oh, my heart.  My sweet Stuffed.  It bothers me sometimes that Stuffed's beautiful little body is underground in the dark, but as I told Mike in a calmer moment this week, my beloved Daffodils and roses and Lilacs and Hollyhocks and Foxgloves and glowing autumn Maple trees all start from underground in the dark too, and if that's good enough for them, it is certainly good enough for the body of gorgeous Stuffed. 

And then there was this:  I didn't fall asleep until after 3:30 in the morning that night, and we got up at 7 to make the drive home.  I started sobbing as we prepared to go, and I couldn't calm down, so we ended up sitting in the car for probably half an hour as I tried to get it together.  Leaving Mike's hometown meant leaving Stuffed there--and why would we ever leave Stuffed in another town?  'Hideous howling pain.  While we talked, I silently prayed to Sommer to let me know that Stuffed was okay.  He's so short and little, is he okay, he's so trusting, who's taking care of him, what if he gets lost, he's never been outside, is he okay, he's probably lonely, does he miss us, is he okay, does he understand, who's cuddling him?  'Wild thoughts borne of wild pain.  I know better and have stronger faith than this, but this is grief talking.  I wish I could see even a short video of what Stuffed's up to now, just to stop my heart from howling.  I finally calmed down enough that we could begin the drive to a now-Stuffed-less home, and we were on our way.  Maybe an hour later, as we drove under a cloud-filled blue sky, I saw Stuffed in it:  There was, quite clearly, a smiling cat resting in the clouds over us.  I took picture after picture as we traveled below the clouds, and when the image of the face and body started to fade a bit, a paw print appeared.  He is lying down with his face resting on his front paws. 

Do you see it?  ♥  It's almost like a photograph superimposed onto clouds. 

And a close-up of the head on top of the front paws:

Thank you, Sommer.  ♥  Now that I can't hear Stuffed talk, I somehow understand what he's saying:  We're still here for each other.  

He's another of my angels now, and I'll keep talking to him every day of my life, here and hereafter, same as I do with Sommer and Papa and Grandma and my other grandfather and Grammy and Mike's dad (who also loved Stuffed and is undoubtedly loving him all the more now) and others who have gone on ahead of me. 

We returned home Wednesday afternoon, a scene too sad to recount, Mike worked the rest of that day, and I returned to work Thursday.  Life has gone on.  I have another crying jag probably every three hours, although I've told Mike that if I let myself give in to it, I have it in me to cry--to bawl, really--every minute of every day this week.  Stuffed came to me late last Saturday night to let me hold him on my lap for what would be the last time, and there was something different about it--he was leaning against my breast in an almost child-like way, and he stayed in that position a long time.  I finally reached around him with my phone to take a few pictures--both to see his face to make sure he was okay and to get the picture.  I didn't know it would be the last time, but I wonder if Stuffed did, just like he seemed to when he arched his neck back twice to hold eye contact with Mike Tuesday morning.  

Sunday--Father's Day--was a bad day for him, and Mike and I discussed whether it was time to call the vet even then, but Monday morning, he was up and running--I even took the video--so we thought maybe it had just been old age plus the 90-something-degree days that weekend that had slowed him down, since he's so floofy and never eats much in the heat.  When I got home from work around midnight, though, after a day of text updates from Mike, I was worried and stayed out here with Stuffed until 2 in the morning, sitting in front of him on the ottoman while he slept in his little bed up on the patchwork chair, talking about everything with him, our last long "You-talk-to-him-like-he's-a-person" talk.  It was still a shock to be where we were with him just six hours later, but I see now that all three of us seemed to know it was coming and that all the pieces fit together.  I met him in June 2007 and said goodbye-for-now in June 2020.  You may remember that another vet had told me in the summer of 2018 that Stuffed probably had six more months--and what a wreck I was after hearing that, having to contemplate Stuffed's death in specifics for the first time, and how I soon found a heart-shaped piece of Stuffed's fur by his food bowl.   'A fur-heart before he died and a smiling cloud-cat after.  These things do not just happen.  ♥  

 It has not been lost on us this week that one of the unforeseen gifts of All Things Covid-Related was that due to Mike's furlough and then his work-from-home status, Stuffed got four months of having Mike home with him 24 hours a day.  ♥  We look back now and see how all the pieces fit together so that just as Stuffed's health declined and he started having real issues, he always had someone here with him--we could not even leave for a few hours for dinner and a movie since nothing's been open, you know--a luxury of time at home with him we literally could not have afforded with both of us working/in normal times.  

We know this will feel better in time--and maybe someday I'll even be able to keep mascara on my eyes more than two hours  :) --and that we'll bring another whiskered soul into our home at some point.  Although we don't yet know who our future cats are, I am already picturing them as part of Stuffed's "litter"--just separated by years in "delivery."  He's the Patriarch, as Mike put it, and I keep thinking of him as "Uncle Stuffed" to all the cats who will come after.  We will love them deeply too, I'm sure, but Stuffed is forever the One and the Best.  'Stuffed the Magnificent, who won a "Pretty Kitties" photo contest by more than 40,000 votes ten years ago.  :)   'Stuffed who could stand on his hind legs for impressive lengths of time.  'Stuffed who played fetch with the crinkle ball.  'Stuffed with the perfect cat-head-shape on his back, angel wings below that, and whose front legs featured a heart.  'Stuffed whose red heart-shaped identification tag on his collar began with the words "I am Stuffed."  :)  'Stuffed of the perfect name.  Mom found us a Thanksgiving card years ago of a black and white cat being asked if he wants more turkey, and the inside read, "No thanks, I'm Stuffed."  :)  'When a little girl in my care a few years back asked me if I had any pets and what their names were, I told her about Stuffed and she immediately responded, "Like stuffed crust?"  :)   We have so much to smile over now.  And he is not really gone, as we have seen.  He is still safe and loved and happy and very aware of us, he's just out of our sight for awhile.  

There was an awful moment after we returned home Wednesday while Mike sat beside me listening to me when he asked me if I was going to be okay.  "Yes, Dear," I answered.  "It'll just take awhile."  But this first stage of grief is so raw, it was almost unbelievable to me even as I said it.  I trust that Sommer and Mike's dad are cuddling Stuffed until we can again, though.  And I won't disrespect the memory of Stuffed's perfect little soul by lingering too long in sadness over this separation from him.  I will honor the good, beautiful, sweet gift that was Stuffed--and express my gratitude for him--by creating and sharing goodness, beauty, and sweetness in all the ways I know how.  But oh, my heart, how I miss him.  Dear little Stuffed!  

♥

♫ New Job and a Haircut, At Last ♪

Well.  :)  Almost exactly nine years after I first interviewed for it, I can finally shout from the rooftops say I got the job. Way back in June 2008--here--I had my first interview for it ahead of me, and today, after (not having enough experience for it back then, and thus) a lot of volunteering, seven years of working toward it at my now-previous position, and applying for it and being rejected at least six times since spring 2007--I've just completed my first two weeks on the job.  Last month, I shared the job announcement with one of the people who had supervised me during some volunteer work back in 2009, and she shook her head and cried out, "Val, your story shows the power of"--long pause--"PERSISTENCE!  It's a good, GOOD story!"  ♥  Indeed.  As my dad has long said, I am nothing if not stubborn.  :)  I got the job!  ♥   

A few days before I was offered the position, I found this graffiti on my walk to work.  I took it as a nod from the universe, as I tend to do, as it appeared at a time when I really needed the encouragement.  Little did I know that there was a bigger nod in my favor just a few days away.  Likewise, I caught a bus home a few weeks ago to visit my family for the first time since hearing the news and found this--

just the paper message, no fortune cookie or wrapper with it--resting on the window ledge beside the seat I'd chosen.  ♥

The day before I began the new job was not the smartest day to get a haircut--Anxiety, Thy Name Was Val!--but fortune continued to favor me, and I'm happy with the cut.  It seems to look completely different from morning-to-morning depending on how I part it and who-knows-what-else, but it suits me in all its variations.  Another "whew!"  Let's hear it for stylists who know what they're doing and can correctly interpret verbal instructions and clipped photographs!  :)  

Last night was my first night off since starting the new position that I didn't feel utterly exhausted, so it became Celebrating-Two-Weeks-on-the-Job Cake-Baking Night.  I wanted something joyful and summery, and flowers and berries were the way to go.

 I added mint leaves for a touch of green.  It is a season of fresh starts in these parts, after all. 

. . .I got the job!  I got the job!  ♥

And Then The Yellow Squash Smiled at Me

This sweet face stared up at me before being added to my salad this afternoon.  I had just finished weighing myself in the bathroom where I learned that I've now lost about fourteen pounds so far this summer, so I will take this smile as a sign of encouragement.  :)

I say to myself that I shall try to make my life like an open fireplace, so that people may be warmed and cheered by it and so go out themselves to warm and cheer. ~ George Matthew Adams

Christmas Eve!  My favorite day of the whole year.  ♥  It's our first Christmas with the mantel, and while the new-old (vintage, from eBay a couple months ago) tree turned out a bit busier-looking than the one I'd had in mind--I'd wanted just a string of little clip-on candle lights, gingerbread men, and pink hearts, simple and pink and sweet--it all came together.  I took some time a few weeks ago to re-sew my pink gingham stocking since it had never been really stocking-shaped and its size hadn't matched Mike's Yankees one.  'Better now.  'Had to boost the supposed-to-be-five-feet-tall tree up onto a tray table to make it taller than the mantel.  Then had to secure the tree to the table with a ten-pound weight so it would stop pitching forward.  And most of the time, the lowest branches are covered with grocery store bags because a certain four-legged someone keeps trying to chew them.  It's always something with our Christmas trees--the last two years saw our old one tethered to the wall with a bungee cord--but again, it came together. 

That's the still-unfinished wing chair in the foreground.  I stopped working on it this fall so my money would go toward Christmas and not toward fabric and upholstery trims for awhile, but soon, I'll start it again.  When it's done, it will be sitting where the tree is now.  ♥  When I first decorated the tree and mantel, I added the little wreath (below) between our stockings, but I took it down last night.  It seems too busy with it up.  A string of heart-shaped lights is still on my list for the mantel, but that didn't happen in time for Christmas.  And now that I look at these pictures, I see that the little "love" sign inside the wreath would likely be perfect on its own between the stockings. The little Garfield under the tree is actually Stuffed's stocking.  Garfield is holding a tiny stocking labeled "Stuff it!" and we fill it with cat treats and/or a toy.  This year, a toy.  (My mom sent him a little pouch of treats.)  ♥ 

And the faux fire is one I painted a few weeks ago.  I had been meaning to do this for awhile, and finally, on a day off, I set up bowls of acrylic paints, gold glitter nail polish left over from a Pirates game, brushes, and a big square of oilcloth cut from the roll I'd used for the cupboards, turned on About a Boy to play in the background while I painted, and began building a fire. 

I used two thumbtacks to hang it inside the mantel.  I might prefer the way the painting looked about six photos into the project--a much simpler log fire at that point--but I'm not sure.  It will do for this year. 

The angel that serves as our tree-topper was a gift from my best friend Sommer's mom eighteen years ago toward the end of my first semester of college.  The flowers that had been in its arms were getting droopy, so this Christmas, it's holding a big heart instead. This angel touches me even more now than when I first received it.  Betty had sent it to my dorm address along with a note and another little gift in a prettily-decorated shoebox.  That was around/right before Christmas 1995, about nine months after Sommer had died.  The Christmas before that, Christmas 1994, Sommer was alive and well--she would die in a car accident a few months later--and it was actually a joke between us that everyone was giving me angel-related gifts that year.  That Christmas, I received a cassette tape of "music of the angels" from my aunt Laurie, an angel poster from my parents, angel ornaments, angel figurines, etc. and Sommer and I laughed between ourselves about it because angels actually scared me--or at least, they kind of freaked me out a bit.  They always look like they're standing (or floating) stock-still, they usually appear expressionless and neither male nor female,  something about their wings. . . .They just creeped me out.  No one else knew that, I guess, so it was angel-after-angel that Christmas, but it was strange to receive sooooooo many and from soooooo many different people all during one holiday.  Over Christmas vacation from high school that year, surrounded in my bedroom by all these angel gifts, I made myself a mix tape.  For reasons I didn't even understand, I labeled one side of the tape "Songs to Comfort Me" and made an instrumental piece from my new "music of the angels" gift the first song on it.  Nine weeks later, Sommer died--and that tape was the only music I listened to those first couple months, and the angels all suddenly made sense, like they were part of a small army that had been sent ahead of time to help lift me up.  (In a way, of course, that only made all these angels even stranger and more mysterious to me, but a good-strange and a comforting-mysterious now, at least.)  Betty didn't know any of that when she made me my "Sommer angel" later that year, though, which made it all the more meaningful.  ♥ 

 Mike's Spider-Man holds the tiny sign my friend Madai sent years ago.  Love is all around. 

'Now off to bake sugar cookies for today, peanut butter fudge for tonight, cinnamon rolls for tomorrow, and to re-do my to-do list one last time pre-holiday.  And to call my parents.  ♥  I love imagining what everyone's up to today, and images of you guys and my other loved ones keep coming to mind.  Merry Christmas to you all.  ♥

In My Heart of Hearts

In July of 2007, I was living with my parents and spending many hours walking. I had quit my job in June and was still a few months away from moving here and being with Mike and all that awaited me in this happier phase of my life. That summer was one I remember as the healthiest I've ever had: I had turned thirty a couple months before and would lose thirty-some pounds by year's end. I had so much time just to think, just to sort, just to go for my long walks around town, just to be. It was a sweet summer and still one of my favorite and most memorable ones. How often as an adult do we get that kind of extended free time and freedom? My bills were paid, I felt truly alive, I enjoyed my days, I had things to look forward to. . . .Life just felt good that summer. I felt good that summer.

One evening after returning to my parents' house from one of my walks--to the thrift shop and back was eight miles, and that was the biggest chunk of most of my treks that summer--I changed into a t-shirt and my beloved "dog bone" pajama pants and sat down at the computer, intending to email Mike before climbing into bed with a book. We wrote back and forth a few times, but I began to feel sick and just strange--sudden backache, my chest felt strange, I just felt strange. I remember mentioning to Mike that I wasn't feeling that great, but I assumed I had just somehow pulled a muscle or something--although how I would have done that during what had been an uneventful day, I had no idea--and before I could write again to sign off or explain, the pain in my chest got so bad I found myself in the bathroom deciding to try a hot shower. Maybe the heat will help. I must have really strained something in my chest. The pain got worse by the second, and the feeling of the water hitting my chest was excruciating. I turned off the water and stood bent over in my parents' blue bathroom for a few moments, trying to think of something else that might help. Maybe if I rub it? Maybe I pulled a muscle and rubbing it will help? Even the lightest touch of even one finger against my chest made me feel that much worse, though. I couldn't believe what I was feeling, and although this is a rather crass way of describing the pain, it was what came to mind at the time, as well: It felt like something was trying to claw its way out of my body from inside my chest.

I was soon doubled-over in my parents' bathroom, still wet from the shower but struggling back into a t-shirt and the pajama pants--skipping bra and underwear and just trying to get covered up because I realized I could very easily pass out from this pain and I didn't want to be found in my altogether. Just bending my legs into the pants and lifting the t-shirt over my head was agony like I had never even imagined. I would try to raise myself back to a fully upright position, and the very act of trying to straighten out my body made my chest feel like something was being pulled taut and about to snap inside of it.   OkaynomorestandingupVal! It was being squeezed tighter and tighter, and by then I couldn't breathe enough to call out to my parents or to make any sound at all--and I finally realized that I must be having a heart attack. And that if it was this bad and I wasn't able to call out for help, that I was likely going to die.

Before my "real" thoughts began, I thought that it was funny that I'd have a heart attack after I'd lost so much weight and adopted such a healthy lifestyle, and I was also glad that I would be found wearing clothes, even if it would be an "Attitude is everything" t-shirt and dog bone pajama pants. And I wished that there were a way to let everyone know what these final few minutes had been like for me. I wished there were a way to tell everyone, "Hey, don't worry about that. It hurt really bad for a few minutes, but that doesn't really matter." Because it didn't. I knew I was dying, and I just thought, "Well, some people get to pass easily, and some people have to experience some pain when they die. I got a heart attack." What I really wished, though, as I braced myself against my parents' sink that night, waiting, was that everyone I loved knew that I loved them. I thought of my parents and my brothers and poor Mike, still sitting there at his computer waiting for that "Sorry-I-left-you-hanging-like-that-I-decided-to-take-a-shower-to-see-if-that-would-help" email that would never come, and I hoped they all knew--really knew--that I loved them. I thought of Old Friend and hoped that when he heard the news that he would remember that I had truly loved him and that we had last parted on good terms. I thought of my niece and nephew and hoped they would grow up remembering somehow that I had loved them. I thought about my friend Sommer and how everyone would be shocked that she and I had both died so young--Som at eighteen and I at thirty--and how stunning it was to me that I was likely going to see her and my grandparents again in just a few seconds?! minutes?! I thought of everyone I loved and had ever loved and even the people I hadn't loved all that much, and I just wished them LOVE. It was all I could think about as the pain twisted inside my chest and now deep inside my back and shoulders too:  I love you, I love you all, I wish you love, it's all about love, I love you, love each other, it's all about love. There were no grudges or hurt feelings, and there was no anger or sadness or regrets or fear. I just wished everyone love. I knew that that was the key to everything and that everything was truly fine.   Just love each other. Love, love, love.

I don't remember what happened between those thoughts and my finding myself crawling from the bathroom into my parents' bedroom where my mom was watching TV, but I was now in front of her on hands and knees saying, "We need to go to the emergency room." She and my dad helped me into the car. . .Dad driving and Mom asking every few seconds, "Vally? Are you okay? Is it any better? Does it feel worse?" I stretched out on my back in their backseat watching the lights flash by in the dark out the windows around and above me. And somehow as I was shuttled to the hospital, I began to feel better. Whatever had been wound so excruciatingly tight in my chest seconds before seemed to be unraveling and becoming lighter. By the time I was answering the ER clerk's medical history questions, I felt fine. Tired but fine. The doctor assigned to me asked a bunch of questions and did whatever tests he did, and someone came in to take blood. An episode of "Jon & Kate Plus 8" was playing on my room's TV. I couldn't reach high enough to turn it off, so I got to hear them fighting [over the best way to store pine cones in the garage?!]. Eventually, the doctor and a nurse explained that I hadn't had a heart attack but instead just heartburn. Heartburn!? A near-near-death experience brought on by my first-ever taste of spicy brown mustard!? Mom and Dad were soon parting the curtains and saying they'd been told they could take me home now. Back into the July night air in my t-shirt and dog bone pants. Soon home and immediately getting in touch with Mike to explain why hours had passed since my last email. Taking the above picture of the Daffy Duck Band-Aid and pajamas that marked my ER visit. Sleeping with my bedroom door open that night so my parents could keep an eye on me. And knowing that something had shifted inside me that night that had nothing to do with stomach acid or muscle fibers.

The heartburn, if that's what it was, has never occurred again. My mom remembers seeing me crawl out of the bathroom toward her and doubts the diagnosis. Whatever it was that July, it brought peace with its pain. At a seminar in my field seven years ago, one of the speakers invited a volunteer to come join her at the microphone and tell us what she believed. That was the only instruction: "Would you please tell us what you believe?" I was awed by the volunteer's bravery as she listed item after item as though she'd known these things about herself forever and had expected to be asked about them. Older now, I myself could list some things off the top of my own head too, but I still don't know how many of them I would want to share with an audience. Something I can share without hesitating, though, is what I learned about love in July 2007: Love is The Most-Powerful. It is What Survives. It is Worth the Effort. It is What Matters Most. It Shows Up in Ways Big and Small. It is What You Can Take With You. It is--if not the entire answer--A Huge Part of the Answer. It is What You Need to Give. It is What You Need to Receive. It is So Much Bigger Than You Think It Is. Love, love, love. This is what I believe, even if it took spicy brown mustard to help me figure it out. 

Unconquerable

Today is the 16th anniversary of my best friend's death. Last year March 1st passed by almost unnoticed by me, making me think that maybe future March 1sts would be easier than they used to be, but this year the date is hurting my heart the way it used to, and I find myself reliving the play-by-play of the "original" March 1st. Likewise, the one-year mark, back in 1996, actually wasn't too bad--I wrote Sommer a letter in my journal and really felt okay--but the second anniversary found me feeling abandoned by her and again brokenhearted by the loss. Such is grief.

That second anniversary, March 1st of 1997, I was home from college for the weekend. I remember complaining off and on all day to my mom that I hadn't felt much of a connection to Sommer lately and that that was making this day even harder. I had recently transferred to a new college, after having completed my freshman year elsewhere, and I had yet to make any friends at school. It didn't seem like too much to ask, I'm sure I pointed out to Mom, for Sommer to let me know that she was still around me. I had been so lonely that fall and winter, watching seemingly every other student on campus hanging out with their own best friend. So maybe today, two years after her death, there could be a sign of some kind: A whiff of her perfume, a favorite song of ours on the radio, a sense of her hand on my shoulder--Anything.

Sommer had come through for me before since passing over, after all. One afternoon in my high school Spanish class in those first few soul-shattering weeks after she had died--and mere minutes after my teacher had thoughtfully asked how I was doing and if things were getting any easier and I had replied, trying not to cry in front of him, that no, sorry, I thought things were actually getting harder and worse--I wearily flipped open a book of Spanish literature I had been assigned in preparation for my end-of-year AP exams only to find myself looking down at a Pablo Neruda poem titled "The Dead Woman":

If suddenly you do not exist,
if suddenly you no longer live,
I shall go on living.
I do not dare,
I do not dare to write it,
if you die.
I shall go on living.
For where a man has no voice,
there, my voice.
Where blacks are beaten,
I cannot be dead.
When my brothers go to prison
I shall go with them.
When victory,
not my victory,
but the great victory comes,
even though I am mute I must speak;
I shall see it come even
though I am blind.
No, forgive me.

If you are not living,
if you, beloved, my love,
if you have died,
all the leaves will fall in my breast,
it will rain on my soul night and day,
the snow will burn my heart,
I shall walk with frost and fire and death and snow,
my feet will want to walk to where you are sleeping, but

I shall go on living,
because above all things
you wanted me unconquerable,

and, my love, because you know that I am not only a man
but all mankind.
 

Upon reading it, I got up from my desk and carried the book back to my teacher, pointing at the poem with shaky hands. "Can you believe this?" I tried to whisper, since it was silent reading time. "Look at this! Have you seen this before?!" He quickly scanned the poem and nodded at me, understanding what I was and wasn't saying. By the end of the class period, I had memorized the poem and its beautiful lines had become my mantras. "If you are not living, if you my beloved, my love, if you have died. . .But I shall go on living. . .You wanted me unconquerable."
 

But two years later, March 1st of 1997 was passing without a sign from Sommer, and long after my parents and younger brother had gone to bed that night, I finally gave up on it and decided to turn in too.  I stayed in bed for awhile but could tell I wasn't going to fall asleep any time soon, so I grabbed a blanket and tiptoed back downstairs to watch TV in the living room. I wasn't much of a TV-watcher then--I haven't been since I was a kid--and I didn't have a TV in my dorm room back at college either, so I had no idea what was on, and I didn't care. The first channel I stopped at was showing a film I hadn't seen or even heard of before, and I soon found that it wasn't by accident that it was on: The movie was Truly, Madly, Deeply.  In it, Nina is grieving the recent death of her boyfriend, Jamie, and Jamie returns to her both to show her that he's still there for her and to help her move on with her life. This is it! My sign! I wanted to scream upstairs to my mom, but the rest of the house was asleep. I settled back onto the couch cuddled up in my blanket, stunned.

And then I was yet more stunned to hear Spanish being spoken in the movie, and to hear Nina saying to Jamie, "I know this poem." As I sat and watched, with a chill moving through me, Jamie nodded back at her, and continued reciting the poem's verses in Spanish while Nina translated them back to him in English.  I knew this poem too:

"If you are not living,
If you, my beloved, my love,if you have died. . .
But I shall go on living."

My spine tingled. This is Sommer. Sommer is here. Sommer is here! This time, I didn't even want to call upstairs to Mom. This was my time with my friend. As loyal as ever, she had not forgotten me, she had not abandoned me, and she had not forgotten how to make me feel better. After the movie ended, I remained on the couch in the dark silent living room, just thinking. Had I come back downstairs to watch TV even five minutes later, I'd have missed it. Before heading back upstairs to go to bed later, I would tear that day's TV schedule page from the newspaper to save as a reminder to myself: Death does not end relationships. All those I've loved and lost are still with me. Love is eternal. And I shall go on living. ♥

(The Spanish begins around the 3:25-mark.)