A Watch to Keep

    One week shy of the two year anniversary of Tracy’s death, we had to put down his much loved Malamute, a gentle giant named Baldr. We had been taking him to the vet for two weeks for what looked like a sore on his tail, then a bladder infection, but we could tell by the look in Baldr’s eyes there was something more. The something more turned out to be cancer in his lymph nodes, a perforated intestine and infection throughout his abdomen. The doctor gave him a pain shot so we could bring him home that night for goodbyes, ours and others.

    The next day he was clearly suffering and the 1 p.m. vet appointment could not come fast enough. But while we were waiting, I coped as I always do, by writing a poem. When the feelings are deep, I have to write rhymed verse. It is the only way the words will come out of my brain. The only form that does justice to the pain. After our son’s death, his big dog became a huge source of comfort for us, a living link to Tracy that we could still see and touch. He rests now in our daughter’s pasture, right next to Odin, Tracy’s other much loved dog, a Husky mix, who died two years before Tracy did.

 

A Watch to Keep

We have a watch to keep today

with you, our dying friend,

 who shared our lives for these 8 years.

 We'll stay close by until the end.

 Until you fall asleep,

 we have a watch to keep.

Your memories live within my phone

from puppyhood to fully grown.

 The days when Odin led the pack,

 and Tracy held you in his lap.

 Both of them are resting deep

 and now, we have your watch to keep.

We will not let you suffer, friend,

your life is clearly at its end.

 The comfort in the company of

 the gentle giant Tracy loved,

 is very hard to put to sleep.

 Still, we have a watch to keep.

For Tracy, most of all, would want

 you safe, and loved, and free of pain.

 Perhaps, somehow, with you again,

 if only that you're both at peace.

 Till then, we have a watch to keep.

 We have a watch to keep.

 

For Baldr 2015-2024

                                               

                                               

3/15/2024

An Aiiii! for an Eye

      As incongruous as it sounds, I have not been able to write lately because I've been putting together a book. For most people making a book would involve writing, but I am doing with previously written materials what I also do with leftovers--combining them in new, preferably palatable, ways to use them up. Having launched another of the Lamb book into the Amazon, Life Lines of the Lamb, and putting another, Legacy of the Lamb, into a Word document, I finally have time to write about my cataract surgery. 

    I already knew I did not like anything touching my eye. I could never have managed contacts. After getting drops for eye exams, I noticed I could feel my body oozing out of the exam chair where it had partially embedded itself to get as far away from the drops as possible. When I was 19, I got a paint chip in my eye when scraping a wall for painting and was willing to leave it there the rest of my life rather than have it removed. My fiance had to back me into a corner and hold my arms down while a coworker scraped the chip off my eye with the corner of a soft dollar bill. What I didn't know before today is that there is actually a name for that fear--ommetaphobia. The information said it could spring from a bad experience. The only eye-dea that comes to mind, is when my older brother accidentally shot a rubber tipped arrow into my eye while attempting to hit the balloon I was stupid enough to hold for him at what I considered a safe distance from my body. 

    I wish I had known I had ommetaphobia when I went to my cataract appointment. It sounds more clinical than wussy. But I was willing to subject myself to eye surgery in order to be able to drive after dark. Northwest Montana in summer has long hours of daylight, but the bill for that comes due in the winter through long hours of darkness. My driving day ended at dinnertime. Oncoming headlights looked like sparklers, but not in a good way. More like aiii! than aah. My doctor assured me that meds would have me nice and relaxed for the procedure. That proved to be a lie almost on the level of a state of the union speech. Driving to the surgery center in a white out blizzard turned out to be the relaxing part of the experience. For one thing I spent two hours in the back anticipating the surgery because a general anesthesia patient required extra time. I knew I was nervous because I could not recall any scripture or even songs to comfort or distract myself. The measly med, l.5 mg Versed, didn't relax one eyelash. I flinched when they put in the frame to hold my eye open. The procedure itself was painless, my eyeball was totally numb, the panicky part was seeing lights coming at my eye and not being able to look away. The doctor had the nurses on each side of me hold my hands. I do not know if that was to comfort me or if he thought I might try to scratch his eyeballs out. There was no music playing, so I supplied sound effects, an embarrassing whimper. The drive back to our house in the blizzard distracted me temporarily, but I had flashbacks of those frightening lights for two hours after getting home.

    At my appointment during the inter eye interval I call blurvana, Dr. Barth assured me the next surgery would be better. It was not off to a good start when they told me to report for surgery at 7 a.m. I am not a morning person and knew I would not sleep if cataract surgery was my wake up call. But then they changed the time to much more manageable 12:30. As the last patient of the day, the only person who could delay me, was me. Dr. Barth also arranged for a nurse anesthetist to administer a higher dosage of meds. I could still see the lights coming at my eye, but they were blurry. No flashbacks this time. Eye survived. My newly implanted lenses allow me to see, with perfect clarity, the age spots, crepe and other imperfections of my skin. My new prescription glasses provide better distinction for distance than I had when my last pair was brand new. And I'm starting to glimpse the possibility of driving after dark. Oncoming headlights are more globby than glaring. So, after all that, am I glad I had cataract surgery? Aye, eye.

  

Our First Date

    My first official date with Reed was to a college Valentine banquet in 1976. The one time we got together before that was when we were both in the college TV room and Reed said, "My church is having a taco night for college age, wanna come?" At that point I'd go anywhere for free food. Anyway, a Valentine banquet is an awkward first date. The speaker was addressing couples in love. The message was about not sacrificing the 99 percent of the things you like about your boyfriend/girlfriend for the 1 percent you don't. I only knew about one percent of Reed, and I wasn't sure how I felt about even that. As it turned out, Reed was the first of four guys that invited me to that banquet. For an unpopular girl who never dated in high school (not that I wanted to, dating in my high school was synonymous with getting drunk), getting asked out by four guys was a Vatican worthy miracle. So I couldn't help but wonder through the awkward evening in my borrowed dress, if I should have taken one of the other offers.

    Our first date was awkward and our courtship involved lots of breaking up--my fault, I was interested in someone else. But he had gone home and Reed was still around. And there is something irresistible about someone who keeps loving you, even when you push them away. Eventually I realized I loved him back. We got engaged June 25, 1976, despite a proposal about as romantic as his taco night invitation. 

   "I wanna marry you."  Reed

   "I wanna marry you, too."  Me

   "Will you?"  Reed  

    Long pause.      Gulp.      "Yes."  ?  Me

Not only was Reed not on bended knee, he didn't even get up off the couch.

    One year to the day from that romantic milestone, we got married. That fractured fairy tale occasion is in my previous blog, Our Ominous Wedding. Yet here we are 48 years from that first date. Happy Valentine's Day, my first and lifetime love. That one percent is still pretty annoying, but you're a keeper. See, I was listening at the banquet after all.

 

  

Love Poured Out

   As much as I love studying the book of John, as I have done so many times now in BSF, I always dread getting to chapter 12, the beginning of the beautiful, but grim, death march to the cross. This week's lesson is on chapter 13, and I needed a way to express what I was feeling. Of course, for me, that is a poem.

 

 Love Poured Out

 

You were about to leave the world

in a horrible, humiliating way,

while those who loved you best

were arguing who was greatest.

 

I would not have washed their feet,

I would have held them face down

in the wash basin. I would have 

sought comfort, not given it. 

 

I don't understand you at all,

but I wish I was like you. 

Gentle, and focused on the glory

instead of the agony. 

Focused on the eleven

who loved you, not the one

who betrayed you,

though you loved him, too.

I wish, like Mary, I had a tangible way

to comfort you then, in your time of need.

But all I have are these poured out words,

the late and faint fragrance of my love. 

The Trailbreaker

     We were going to remove the Christmas decorations from Tracy's grave a couple weeks ago, but I just could not face that in the dreariness of days of inversion. Since freezing rain is predicted for our area soon, we decided to try it today, in spite of the recent snowstorms. Removing reminders of the best part of winter from the reminder of the worst part of our lives, is a grim enough task without slogging through snowdrifts to accomplish it. But the lesson the Lord had for us through that duty was as tangible as the wreath and light we brought home.

 

The Trailbreaker

 

Due to our recent winter storms,

the path to Tracy's grave today

was drifted feet deep in snow.

Reed held my hand as we 

struggled to walk through it

together, side by side.

 

But then he realized

the walk would be easier for me

if he let go of my hand

and walked ahead of me,

breaking a trail

for me to follow.

You, Lord, are the Trailblazer.

Your life lit the path

from birth to the grave.

Your death blazed the trail

from the grave to God,

for millions to follow.

And you, Trace, are the Trailbreaker--

the first of our family of five

 to walk the path to heaven.

Though letting go of your hand

has been the hardest thing

I have ever done,

 

the path to the grave

for our family, for me,

will be easier knowing

that you are just ahead

waiting, hand outstretched,

for us to follow.

Blurvana

   One of the definitions of Nirvana is a transcendent state in which there is neither suffering, desire, nor sense of self. In Buddhism, this state of nothingness is a blessed relief from the karma/reincarnation cycle. I, however, am not Buddhist. And though I want to be free from suffering, I think loss of desire would make life meaningless and loss of self would be dementia. Not my idea of heaven. Fortunately, this blog is not about Nirvana, it is about Blurvana. That is the state in which I am now living. Since I made up the term, I get to define it.

   Blurvana--the interocular interval between cataract surgeries in which the implanted lens can no longer focus through the glasses upon which the untreated eye is still dependent. I would like to transcend this state as quickly as possible. Since I chose lenses that will allow me to see up close without correction, I wake up with the ability to see with amazing clarity my messy hair, age spots, and every speck of dirt in the shower. But, since part of the first week post surgery protocol is not bending over, I don't have to feel guilty about not cleaning it. I'll have to come up with another excuse when the week is over. Following that first focused look at my fading looks, the rest of the day is a blur. 

   My left eye needs correction for both close up and distance. My right eye needs correction for distance, but not at the same strength as my current glasses. To misquote scripture, the right eye cannot say to the left eye, I don't need you. And the left eye cannot say to the glasses, I have no need of you. Though Blurvana does not qualify as suffering, I am not free of it. And I am certainly not free of desire. I desire to see ASAP. But my sense of self does not include wanting to see me. I want to see things like the book I am trying to read, the TV, perhaps even oncoming traffic. For now I must view in the same way they do cataract surgery--one eye at a time. Then I can transcend Blurvana.

Sorry, Sugar

    While I am biting my fingers (see how well I'm tying my posts together lately), my church friend promoting a "health" program on Facebook recently posted that what we call flu season is actually "sugar" season. The reasoning goes like this:

 

    Sugar lowers immunity. (The Montana Democratic party should fact check that). 

    + People consume more sugar over the holidays. (Not necessarily.)

    + Flu season occurs in the winter. 

    = Sugar is causing people to get the flu.

I was so tempted to post--Good thing my body doesn't know about that. I eat sugar in some form everyday and only get sick twice a year, rarely during flu season. My body has followed this pattern for more than 30 years, I get a cold when seasons change from summer to fall and spring to summer. From my fact checking it sounds like a little glucose is good for your immune system, too much is bad. How about that? Just like everything else we consume and do, too much of anything is bad for you. Also the effect of a glucose spike on the immune system is temporary and mostly affects those with weak immune systems. Besides, these "facts" were part of her sales pitch to sign up 5 more people for the diet program she advocates.

    By repeatedly telling myself Do Not Engage!, I managed to suppress my anti-illogic system from forcing me to respond. But I will engage now:

1) Correlation is not cause--just because 2 things happen about the same time, it doesn't mean one caused the other. This is one of the most prevalent and annoying logical fallacies of our current culture. Suntans fade in the winter, but that doesn't mean loss of tan causes the flu. Influenza is worse in the winter because people spend more time indoors with others. In Montana, subzero weather seems to decrease the spread because it kills the germs on shopping carts and other public use items. (But I have not had the Montana Democratic party investigate that.)

 

2) I just read that in Flathead County, peak flu season is late January through mid-February, after the sweet holiday treats are gone, and many people still have a faint flicker of faithfulness to their New Year's resolutions to diet and exercise. 

3) If sugar is why people get disease, millions died needlessly in medieval Europe because sugar wasn't available there until the 11th century.

 

4) God made man robust enough to survive in wildly varying climates, on diverse diets, throughout all ages. Do you really think an omniscient, eternal God did not anticipate sugar?

 

5) Everyone has their pet bugaboo, but human existence has far too many variables to decide this health factor causes that. People who eat sugar do not eat only sugar, are not equally exposed to disease, vary in age and strength of immune systems, differ in activity levels, as well as many other things. My brother Roddy drinks 6-7 cans of Pepsi per day, yet all of his health numbers: blood sugar, blood pressure, cholesterol, etc. are perfect. Between working hard as a janitor and the involuntary movements from his cerebral palsy, Rod burns everything he eats. Dr. Atkin's, whose diet is heavy on fats, theorized that it doesn't matter if you eat butter, bacon etc. as long as you burn all the calories in what you eat. Roddy seems to be proof of that. (But so far the Democrats are too busy following Tim Sheehy to check that out.)

 

    Besides not wanting to mar my testimony by disputing with her on Facebook, I knew that she would probably counter with the same technique used by many health scare tactitions, give a list of symptoms so broad every human alive has experienced them--diarrhea/constipation/tiredness/insomnia/headache, etc. and state those symptoms prove you have gluten intolerance/high/low blood sugar/dairy allergies or, in this case--"sugar" poisoning. So now that I have written another salvo of sanity out of my system, all I can say to her diet is, "Sorry, Sugar."