MOMENTS IN OUR LIVES

 75 of 100daychallenge

NYT: Do you prefer books that reach you emotionally, or intellectually?

Diane Johnson: I’m not sure I can separate the two. Intellectual excitement is an emotion.

I am so pleased to see Diane Johnson call that out. I am hard pressed to make an emotional connection with anyone or anything if there isn't some intellectual excitement of some kind.

 I have decamped to the front porch, which is pleasantly lit, but even with the front door closed, I can well hear the inanity of Family Feud. Somewhere else there is a musical thump thump thump, but it just provides a dull rhythm track to the odious laugh tracks emanating from the house. It may be that I won't find any place of comfort tonight, given the mugginess (although comparatively speaking it is marginal). 

Well, the days of a pain-free knee seem to be over. I should probably limp back into the house for some pain killers and my reading glasses but that would require getting settled here again. Another reason to be outside is to try to corral Nina who is the last cat outside. Every once in awhile, I can hear her meandering about the yard, but other than the above described noises and some airplanes, it is relatively quiet.

The week has been weird, of course. I have spent a lot of it doing needlepoint and watching The Morning Show (AppleTV, recommended). Was this part of the grieving process or just my usual procrastination? The hot spell didn't help much in terms of encouragement from a weather standpoint. And then there is me trying to figure out where to land, or even touch down on Anita's death. I napped. I had gastrointestinal disruptions. I spaced. But I haven't really cried.

Which is not to say that I haven't missed her keenly. We texted all day long, most days, so there was an open ended conversation.

Some of you weren't sure who Anita was. My father, Wally, had a previous marriage with Carmen, and had one offspring, my half-sister Carole. Carole had two daughters, Karen and Anita. Carole married young and was 12 years older than me, so I was actually closer in age to her daughters. Over the years and miles of aisles, I have been very close to both of them.

Karen and Anita were violently estranged. The whys of that are difficult to understand and even harder to untangle. But there were money and expectations involved. The main gist is that Carole's mother's side of the family, the Ber-s, felt that Anita was a poor caregiver to her mother, supporting my sister's dependence on Oxycontin, and somehow awful to her grandmother and step-grandfather. If Karen's hatred of Anita is not yet clear, Karen stopped speaking to me entirely when I started speaking to Anita again. Anita had moved to Utah after the death of her mother and was there all by herself, with not many friends or contacts. I thought it only human to be supportive with the given of isolation. 

Anita moved to Utah because she was LDS and the thought was with the much-lauded LDS close-knit communities, she would be taken care of, one way or another, when her limited money ran out. Turns out, not so much. One of the social workers, who was trying to help Anita at the end, said that the LDS church is much different in Utah, the motherland (or is that fatherland) and that they are not known for their charity and community support. Add that to crummier social services than California and you are in for a big depressing, sad, horrific mess.

I duly let Karen know that her sister had passed, as I did when Anita almost died last summer. Karen has remained completely silent, although Karen's daughter and husband have been in some small contact. Although that side of the family has plenty of money, they won't shell out the $2000k to have Anita cremated, and I don't have it, so I guess the state will dispose of the body. The Ber-s do want some of Carole's jewelry and other artifacts, which I am inclined to pass along in the spirit of healing. But it is costing me and David money we don't really have to drive to Salt Lake City to close her apartment and gather what family artifacts we can.

And, because there is no one at the time, despite the generosity of Debee, and my cousins Christina and Shelly, to take care of Janet, she has to go along too. So, on Sunday morning, Janet and I set off in a rental SUV (how will Janet get in and out?) for Los Banos where we will rendez-vous with David and then three of us will continue to Winnemucca, Nevada on Sunday. Monday, we will head to Salt Lake City and begin to untangle what we can of Anita's life. The cats will have to spend the week in the hot house with daily visits from Shelly or Christina. 

And I am getting Anita's Devon Rex, Katie Mae, who was imported from Russia. I know I don't need another kitty, but knowing Katie was in a safe and forever home was the one thing Anita asked of me. I think I need to honor that wish, given I am not even going to cremate her and spread her ashes.

 I will write from the road if I can, but this seems a legitimate reason to slow my #100daychallenge.

OVER AND OVER STITCH

Late in the season the world digs in, the fat blossoms

hold still for just a moment longer.

Nothing looks satisfied,

but there is no real reason to move on much further:

this isn’t a bad place;

why not pretend

we wished for it?

The bushes have learned to live with their haunches.

The hydrangea is resigned

to its pale and inconclusive utterances.

Towards the end of the season

it is not bad

to have the body. To have experienced joy

as the mere lifting of hunger

is not to have known it

less. The tobacco leaves

don’t mind being removed

to the long racks—all uses are astounding

to the used.

There are moments in our lives which, threaded, give us

     heaven—

noon, for instance, or all the single victories

of gravity, or the kudzu vine,

most delicate of manias,

which has pressed its luck

this far this season.

It shines a gloating green.

Its edges darken with impatience, a kind of wind.

Nothing again will ever be this easy, lives

being snatched up like dripped stitches, the dry stalks of

     daylilies

marking a stillness we can’t keep.

— Jorie Graham, Erosion, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1982