A Fantasy About Grief and LossTHE WINTER DOLDRUMS
I woke up early today to the sound of rain hitting the deck outside of my bedroom. It was still dark so when I peeked out through the curtains I couldn’t see the rain. I was hoping for the snow predicted in the weather reports, something that has only happened twice in the 40 years I have lived in California, but whatever was out there was clothed in predawn blackness. My head is in that blackness too. It’s like being in a dream but totally awake. I am in a weird space between depression and acceptance, craving adventure. It’s called the winter doldrums. MY FLYING RECLINER Yes, I want adventure, but I want the safety and security of my cozy home too, so I created an adventure in my mind. My fantasy adventure would involve a flying recliner. It would be one of those chairs with a lever on the side. Pushing the lever in the opposite direction of recline would make it airborne. I could steer it with subtle body movements. It might even be a time machine that would make it possible to travel back in time as well as space. My flying recliner adventures would be like dreams, but more real and less confusing. I would know where I was and people would act in a reasonably predictable way. What about danger? I don’t know. I might want some danger as long as it didn’t kill me. What the heck. This is a fantasy and it can be whatever I want it to be. I imagine that I would feel safe flying through the air like I do in an airplane, looking down at the landscape below, or picking out recognizable shapes in the clouds like the time I saw Elvis waving at me on a flight to Minnesota. GOING WHERE I WANT TO GO So where would I go in my airborne recliner? Oh dear, my first thought is that I want to go to heaven. I want to drop in on Mom and Dad and my sisters Sue and Lin. I’d like to talk to the ancestors who are the focus of my family tree research, but I don’t want to be dead in order to do it. I have been thinking a lot about Mom and Dad and Lin and Sue. No wonder I am feeling lost and in need of adventure. February is the anniversary of Lin’s death. I re-read what I wrote last year at this time (Finding Joy in the Smallest Things). I was lamenting that the zest for life I had felt after her death had been replaced by a dull sense of acceptance. This is not just the winter doldrums. This is about grief and loss. I want what I can’t have; I want to see my family and talk to them, to ask the questions that have gone unanswered, to touch them and hug them. I want the impossible. The only thing I CAN actually do is imagine myself in the flying recliner, zipping through the clouds, hanging out in heaven for a while and then getting back down to earth to do my real life.
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Memory Loss: A StoryPLAYING HIDE AND SEEK WITH MY CAT
In the manner of searching for Where’s Waldo, can YOU find my Stacey Abrams action figure in this photo? Bonus points if you find Nancy Pelosi. In my previous blog, Cats and Pilfering, I lamented the loss of Stacey and Nancy and the criminal activity of my Abby cat. I pictured Abby abducting them and carrying them off to some dark place where I would never find them. Little did I know they were right under my nose, although physically more like over my head. THE LOST ARE FOUND - ALSO FOUND: MEMORY LOSS After almost giving up on finding them, I happened to look up instead of down. On the top shelf of my TV cabinet I saw a hand holding a mike connected to a prone body that looked a lot like Stacey, and then a pair of feet in tiny gray pumps I knew were Nancy’s. It was a place Abby could not reach. Was I too quick to make negative judgements about my cat? Are my eyes getting worse? How could I have missed seeing them? Even more concerning was the possibility that my memory, which I already fear is getting worse, went completely blank over the disappearance of Stacey and Nancy. There was no way Abby could have put them on that shelf, leaving me to conclude that I must have done it. Unfortunately I couldn’t remember anything of the sort. Did I space out and pick them up to move them to a place where Abby couldn’t attack them? My brain was completely blank over any memories of doing that. I felt especially bad about Abby, thinking she had taken them when it was obviously my own fault, albeit something I had done in a state of oblivion. Poor Abby, not only was she falsely accused but she was under the care of a woman who was loosing her marbles. MEMORY LOSS: THE REAL STORY I am happy to report that neither of these conclusions proved true. Abby DID abscond with Stacey and Nancy, and I DIDN’T put them on the shelf. A day after I found the two figures laying on the shelf, my housemate told me she had found them after I went to bed. Abby had knocked them off of the bottom shelf and dragged them into her cat tunnel. She was attempting to mutilate them when my housemate rescued them and put them on the shelf. I have a lot of stuff up there so they visually blended in with the photos and knick-knacks for a couple of days before I found them, and my housemate forgot to tell me what she had done. I am relieved. Abby is every bit the ultimate hunter cat I admire and love, and I am not loosing my mind, at least not to the extent I thought I was. So what have I learned from this episode? It’s not a good idea to rush to judgement about my cat, or about myself. I was very quick to think that my memory issues have reached a new level of incapacity and that brings up unwarranted fear. I don’t want to live in fear. There is nothing I can do today about the affects of aging other than commit to living my life in the healthiest way I can manage and accepting where I am in this moment. So today I am going to rearrange my shelves so that my action figures don’t get attacked by Abby; I am going to take Abby out for some supervised outdoor time with the hope that she will practice her hunting skills with something other than my keepsakes; and I am going to feed my brain with creative endeavors. Writing my blog is good for my mind and good for limiting potential memory loss too. Yay! Win, win! Criminal Activity ExposedIN THE BEGINNING IT WAS JUST CATS AND TOYS
It started with pens. When I went to get one that I thought was with my notebook it was nowhere to be found. Cats, like Abby, do this kind of thing. She enjoys shoving pens off of tables and rolling them around on the floor, but I couldn’t even find them on the floor. I kept replacing them only to have them disappear a few days later. Finally, when I was in the mood for doing some deep cleaning, instead of just casually vacuuming, I moved a heavy window seat so that I could vacuum underneath it and discovered a treasure trove of pens. Sharpies, jell pens, ball points, all gathered together under the window seat. There were at least a couple dozen. Abby had shoved them under the window seat and it was too low to the ground for her to retrieve them. It’s also not unusual for me to find random stuff she has hauled off in one of her hunting moods. Often there is a cat toy near or in her water bowl. One morning I even found her big fluffy green kick toy in the toilet. I am working on covering my art shrines with plastic because she absconds with the miniatures. Today there was what looked like a plastic stem from a mini potted plant in her water bowl. ABBY MOVES ON TO MORE SERIOUS OFFENSES - CATS AND PILFERING I put up with this because it is fairly normal behavior - for cats. However there is a new wrinkle in Abby’s routine. Two of my famous action figures are gone. These are 6” plastic models of political figures and other people in the news that I have displayed on a low shelf of my TV cabinet. Most of them were given to me by my sister Linda so they are special to me. Abby likes to knock them over. Tragically I think that Nancy Pelosi and Stacy Abrams have been pilfered, not just knocked over — pilfered, stolen, nicked. Abby is giving me no clues about where she has taken them. I’ve searched under and around the cabinet so she must have carried them off somewhere. They are not in the usual places like her water bowl. I have no idea where they could be and there are a lot of possible places. Although my house is small there are a lot of nooks and crannies. LOOKING TO THE FUTURE - PROTECTING THE WORLD FROM CATS Now I fear for some of my other action figures. Luckily Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Doctor Fauci are part of an art shrine I have up high on the fireplace mantel, but Volodymyr Zelenskyy will be arriving in March. He is the newest action figure and I don’t want anything bad to happen to him. He has more to worry about than cats. I suppose I will need to find a new, cat-proof place for my collection. I like to have them where I can enjoy them. They remind me to keep a sense of humor about the world despite all of the political battles I see every day on the news. Having them to look at as I watch TV inspires me. Although I know some people might be happy that my Nancy Pelosi and Stacey Abrams are gone, to me they are women to admire. I miss them. Now I just have to figure out where they are and find a way to keep them safe from Abby. White Cat ReturnsShe’s baaaaaack! I first saw White Cat gazing though my living room window, backlit by the rays of the morning sun (White Cat in the Window). She looked like an angel - or a ghost. Then she started showing up on a daily basis, patrolling my front yard and checking out my Abby cat through the glass front door. The other day, Abby made another escape from her supposedly cat-proof yard and she and White Cat actually met face to face. In the back of my mind I was hoping that Abby might find a friend. I watched them cautiously touch noses and then Abby took off like a rocket in the opposite direction. White cat stayed on the porch curiously checking out the slightly propped open door. I should have realized she was making her own plans. Evidently the lure of the open door was too tempting. White Cat managed to sneak into the house while I was outside trying to find Abby. I left the door ajar just in case Abby got scared and wanted to scurry inside on her own. I didn’t think White cat would be brazen enough to saunter in while my back was turned, but she did. I caught her in the act, exploring my living room. She saw me and flailed her legs in every direction, trying to get some purchase on the wood floor before she flew back outside, leaving me standing on the front porch alone, with no cats of any kind in sight and lots of questions running through my brain. Who is this creature that has both me and Abby intrigued? Will she be back or did our encounter in the living room scare her away forever? Will I ever be able to keep Abby from making a break from the back yard? I thought that Abby’s behavior was giving me an opportunity to practice letting go of the things I have no control over, but it’s turned into a trial-by-fire physiological battle between me and my cat. How could I believe I would ever come out on top in a struggle between human desire and cat instinct? I have so many mixed feelings about what to do with Abby right now. It made me happy to see her trying to make friends with White Cat on her latest escape, but I am afraid something bad will happen to her. I wish there was a way to do play dates with cats, but you never know if they’ll love each other or go into kill mode. That’s why I have rejected the idea of adopting another cat just to give Abby a playmate. I don’t want to end up with TWO cats I have no control over. There are no easy answers. Maybe Abby and White Cat can put their heads together and show me a solution. |
Leslie Masona woman in search of her post-retirement future Guess what! By subscribing, you get notices about the latest Little Old Lady with Cats posts sent to your mailbox!
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