Hannah's song...

“Death leaves a heartache no one can heal,

Love leaves a memory no one can steal.”

– Author Unknown

It was quiet this morning, unusually quiet.

In the past few years, Hannah, our remaining geriatric cat (17 human years) somehow channeled a barnyard rooster. You know what I mean. A living alarm clock set by some unknown internal algorithm, driven by instinct.

The time was not always consistent. It might start in the three A.M. hour, mostly though, it was somewhere between four and five. While I suppose she might have thought she was singing us awake, it was a particularly irritating sound. It was her way of letting us know it was new day and time to get with the program. One could easily imagine her saying, “You understand that if you were up and got the chow going, I wouldn’t have to do this.”

Hannah Banana, that’s what Molly called her. She was the most robust of the three cats who spent their lives with us.

Leah was on board first. She came to our home as a kitten-companion for Sable, an older feline we adopted from Molly’s parents when they retired and moved out west. Leah was an unrelenting pest looking for a mother. In the end, Sable accepted the little nuisance and trained her in appropriate cat behavior.

On the advice of an old friend, the day we lost Sable, it was straight to the animal shelter to bring home a companion for Leah. Instead of one, that afternoon Leah had two tiny kittens, as future partners in crime – Sarah and Hannah. It was, as it had been with Leah and Sable, a rocky transition. Leah wasn’t sure the interlopers belonged in the house. Hannah was having none of it. She weighed in and simply refused to let Leah reject her.

Eventually, these little creatures were compatible, and their life's journey took shape. We settled in, the five of us, to what became a home of interspecies acceptance and love. 

Leah was the boss – she knew it…they knew it. All three, however, quickly learned who was the boss of the house…it wasn't me. In the early years, Molly and I both worked but everyone knew who took care of feeding and any health issues that emerged. I was an active participant as the litter box cleaner. Even that took time before you know who trusted I could handle the task.

We were a great family and for many years lived in a sweet spot of affection and mutual respect. From the beginning of her entrance into our lives, Sarah identified Molly as her human pet – period. Wherever Molly was in the house, her girlfriend was close behind. Leah, if I could be so bold to say, adopted me. In the early morning hours, on the couch and as the day slipped away, she would track me down, snuggle in, and purr her little heart out.

Then there was Hannah. It's not that she wasn't affectionate or that she didn't enjoy being with us, she just had her own rhythm. She was a living paradox. In the first instance, she was by far the biggest of the three. I teased about her being piggish – she was, you know, ‘big boned.' In fact, even for her size, she was the agilest of the three. She loved altitude. In our San Diego home, the living room and kitchen were separated by a nine-foot-high dividing wall. Most times, when not eating or sleeping, she could be found in quiet repose on top of that divider observing that the inmates were following the rules.

In spite of her size, she was surprisingly timid. When people came to visit, she would disappear under the bed. On the other hand, if a stray cat wandered into our backyard, or approached the front door, she became ‘Hannah, the warrior.' God help any creature she perceived to be a threat to her home or its inhabitants.

She didn’t like to be picked up, but would, on her own terms leap to a lap or couch to stare at the television, giving the impression she was attending to everything taking place on the screen. In the latter years, she slept with us…better said, she slept with Molly. When I got up in the night, there they would be…Molly and Hannah, either side by side or Hannah at her feet.

While very different personalities, it was not uncommon to find all of them lying together on our bed during the day. It was clear they loved each other.

In the fall of last year, we lost Sarah. She was the first of our family to leave us. It was hard…more so for Molly. In the spring, Leah slipped away from our grasp. That left stoic Hannah. In a few short months, she lost her two best friends, with whom she had spent her entire life. She did her best to accommodate, but it was clear she was depressed. Molly and I offered consolation, but it wasn’t enough.

The healthiest, by far of the three, she developed a urinary tract infection. We had been in the habit of placing disposable mats under the litter boxes for Leah. She wasn’t incontinent, but because of an arthritic and spontaneously fused lumbar spine, she didn’t always get completely in the cat box. When she was gone, the mats remained clean…for a while. Then Hannah began soiling outside the box accompanied by a small reddish stain. Thinking it was the infection, we started treating her with antibiotics. Her appetite was depressed, but she was drinking.

Last week, feeling Hannah needed companionship, we brought two rescued cats home from a shelter. Hannah would a good mother, instructing them in the ways of the Dreisinger household. As it turns out, it was not to be.

Wednesday last, we took her in for some hydration. Bloodwork from the day before suggested she was battling a more serious infection. Not a real problem, we thought, we just needed to get some fluid on board to make her more comfortable. I was to pick her up and bring her home.

On the advice of our veterinarian, we had x-rays done. When I arrived to get her, I was given the news. She had significant fluid on her lungs, and tumors in the lungs and bladder. Molly joined me at the office. We were confronted with the unexpected choice for putting our seventeen-year-old through uncomfortable procedures with no guarantees or saying goodbye.

We made the reluctant decision to say goodbye. We were, as we had been for her entire life, with her in the end. I held Hannah as she drifted away from us, Molly gently stroking her. It was a loving and tearful send-off. It wasn't just the devastatingly unanticipated loss, it was the end of an era. Our little family unit had been together for seventeen years and now three-fifths were gone.

So, we face our first day with the last vestige of our family history gone. We haven't had time to process it yet. Our hearts are broken, and yet we know Hannah, like her adopted sisters, knew they were appreciated and loved. We had labored with Sarah and Leah, but we knew when it was time. Hannah caught us off guard. She left us so suddenly. It was not supposed to happen this way.

It was quiet this morning, unusually quiet.

Oh, Hannah Banana, what I would give to hear that rooster crowing one more time…

ted

They come unannounced...

“Nothing is really lost, it’s just hidden

under the other paperwork…”

– Anonymous

You know how it is. They come to mind when least expected. It’s not that they are unwelcome, it’s just that they are unpredictable. These would be the people and experiences attached to them, that escape from our memory banks appearing in our conscious thoughts. The irony is that so many times it would be impossible to bring them deliberately to mind.

You’re driving somewhere, out for a walk, reading a book, watching a film and suddenly an event or person from your past suddenly shows up. It might be an old friend, a colleague, a relative or incident that has been swimming around in the pools of unconscious thought. Then without warning, they pop to the surface like one of those fishing bobbers suddenly released from a big one that got away.

A lot of past experiences or people come with feelings attached to them, almost as if the past moment were happening ‘in the now.’

This is one of the wondrous things with which we are gifted as human beings. It is said our greatest blessing is our intelligence and the greatest curse – our intelligence. It's all part and parcel of our humanity.

The stimulus...

I am in community theatre at the moment. My character is a doctor in a small country town. In one scene, waiting for my wife to come home from choir practice, I'm reading. I needed an old book as a prop for the scene. I have a small collection of them from my father's library. I randomly pulled one for the play. It was a 1909 copy of Henry Wordsworth Longfellow’s poems – reflective of the period and perfect for the show.

In rehearsal, the other night, flipping through the pages as if reading, I came across a small marker with handwritten notes. I caught a brief glimpse of my father's name. Getting through the scene and off stage, I read the entry. It was to my father from one of his university professors, congratulating him on a paper he had written. In a millisecond, my father's presence was overwhelming…the feel of his arms around me, his unshaven face kissing my cheek, even the smell of the shaving lather and cologne he used. It was as real as if he were standing beside me.

He was a busy man – a utility minister, meaning there wasn’t much required of him that he couldn’t do. He was an empathetic pastor, always available for counseling, an illness, or softening the blow of a family death. A thoughtful and passionate preacher, he could move a congregation at will with his solid grounding in the scripture, clothed in empathetic social conscience. He was good in the clinches of intellectual discussion with colleagues schooled in theology and philosophy. He enjoyed little more than those free-wheeling dialogues.

Through all of it, dad was a man of passion and a willingness fight for the gospel and for those left behind, unable or unwilling to withstand the gravity of the social system under which many of us have been blessed to live and thrive. Sometimes the passion overwhelmed him and led to behavior he regretted.

As I drove home after practice, still in the afterglow of his starkly real visit, the most lasting image of my father came to my mind. It was strange because it is of a photo that sits on my desk – one I covet. It is a picture of him ending the day on his knees praying to God. If his passions had overcome him, he prayed for forgiveness and the strength to carry the load for yet another day. If he had succeeded in not being overcome, he thanked God for His protection. And always and in all ways, expressed gratitude for the woman with whom he had been blessed in marriage and the children she had brought to his life.

I look at the picture every day but, I suppose, it had become so routine I don't give it much thought.

That old book pulled randomly off the shelf for a scene in a play…the quick glance…the unexpected flood of thought and mental video clips of his life...provided vestiges of the man who made possible the life I have lived.

Yeah, you know how it is…those unexpected visitations...the ones that bless…

- ted

Change, the only constant…

 “There are no beginnings or endings;

only the journey…”

– anonymous

When I was a youngster, the thought of reaching the big sleep, well…there wasn’t a thought. Death? No breath? There was no contemplation of the beginning or end – just heedless cruising along, fueled by curiosity and new experience. 

My father’s work as a minister made parishioner’s departures from their mortal coil, part, and parcel of his daily life. I, on the other hand, was oblivious. One Sunday Mrs. Morgan wasn't in church. I didn’t notice that her absence from worship services was permanent. Next!

I was not a big child, and in kindergarten, found myself pushed around by other kids. That is until Danny stepped in one day and planted one of his slightly larger hands on a classmate wanting my peanut butter and honey sandwich. The altercation that spared me occurred in the cloakroom where Miss Burns, a chronically unattractive, but a pleasant woman, had sent us for our napping blankets. Danny caught the boy, pushed him against the wall and let him know that bothering me, was bothering him. I never understood why he stepped, but introspection wouldn’t come for decades. All I knew was that Danny was the kindergarten cop who made me, and my sandwiches, safe.

One day mother told me that Danny had been hit by a car. She said he had been killed and gone to be with Jesus. He would not be coming back to school. She took me to the funeral to see him. I don’t remember a lot about that experience. It wasn’t traumatic. My friend Danny looked like he was sleeping in a small bed. In spite of my mother’s best intentions, not seeing Danny again just meant he had moved to Jesus’ house and my peanut butter and honey sandwiches might, once again, be at risk.

Through subsequent decades, I gained an understanding of what it meant for living creatures to die. We lost dogs, squirrels (briefly boxed tenants in our home), and relatives I didn’t know well.

The first realization of personal loss came with the death of Barry Merchant from a car crash in Fairmont, West Virginia. He was an older classmate that I admired. Coming home at a high rate of speed, one Friday night, his vehicle abruptly stopped at the base of an unyielding hardwood tree. He was gone and it hurt.

My paternal grandmother died in my eighteenth year. My father in my late thirties. Mother slipped away in my fifties and most painful for me – my younger sister in my sixty-fourth year…

I have discovered that as ‘time in service’ on planet earth continues, the topic of aging/loss has become much more prominent in conversation with my peers. Aches, pains, and "…did you hear about <fill in the blank>? He/she was a great person…,” emerge insidiously into personal exchanges.

I don't see this as the ‘…is what it is…' unavoidable nature of things. Instead, I see it as a clarion call. Not for what has passed nor lost, but for what is ahead. As conversations drift more and more toward the unexpected death of someone I know, they drive my thoughts toward the value proposition of what is left.

There are things that cannot be changed: the past and the future.

The past has already been recorded irrevocably. It's not that I do not mourn the loss of loved ones, it is merely that their image has become static, fixed in my memory banks. Even when I find them slipping into my consciousness, they come in broad brush strokes with softer edges….

The future has not yet occurred, and so there is little I can say. Life experience suggests that the minutes, hours and days ahead are unpredictable. While it is in our nature to plan for the future, better said, desire for certain outcomes, there is no way to predict anything about the 'going forward.' This, of course, is a protection. If we knew what was coming, there would be little to hope for, or excitement at, the unexpected.

While the future is unpredictable, meeting it is not a matter of just letting it come. Life is a dynamic experience. It is intended to be, pardon the cliché, '...embraced and lived...'

As the days go by, I still think very little about the ‘big sleep.' What has changed is the knowledge that it exists, accompanied by a deep curiosity about the transition and the last big adventure of my life.  It is my hope it will be seen as a celebration to those who know me.

In some regards, I can hardly wait. Next!

ted