kainah has graciously offered to post a story tonight after a very long STORYTIME hiatus. Hopefully, many of the great original crowd will find us and some of the nearly 17,000 new kossacks since last June will also join in. For 'newbies,' STORYTIME was born quite by accident in the summer of 2006 and soon developed a Friday night niche at dkos. To encourage other storytellers, I then offered STORYTIME PRESENTS and STORYTIME DUETS, two companion threads on the same subject in which possum and I joined up for some delightful memory romps. Now he is running for congress! See what can happen when you hang out with a Crone on Friday nights! kainah has contributed previous STORYTIME PRESENTS on her civil rights pilgrimages and her experiences after the 1970 Kent State shootings. She has been a warm presence in many STORYTIME diaries and is a dedicated peace activist. We will both be here tonight to chat, to welcome new kossacks and to catch up with oldies but goodies! So come in, put your feet up, let your hair down and, most of all, enjoy. ~Cronesense
Last Wednesday, as I looked out the window for the hundredth time, hoping to discern the little form of a calico kitty running across my back yard, I thought, "So, this is it. This is going to be the new normal." The new normal of devastating sadness, the new normal when the day’s only good minute is when you first awake and you’ve forgotten, before something tugs at the back of your brain to remind you that something is very, very wrong.
My new normal actually began in late August. I’d been at littlesky’s West Virginia home since YearlyKos and had settled into those rhythms. No longer did I wonder where my nail file was or which drawer held my t-shirts. She’d be home around 4 with dinner soon to follow. Evenings meant reading blogs, laughing, and fretting about the state of the world. On weekends, after littlesky finished her chores, there’d be movies and merriment. More and more, I found myself thinking about my grandmother and her sister whose constant giggling used to leave me, as a young girl, baffled. I didn’t know then that "old women" still laughed like children. But now, after several weeks with littlesky, it seemed like Grandma Nellie and Great Aunt Versel had sprung back to life. And it felt good. No obligations. No one calling. No one stopping by. No demands on my time. Just days to write and evenings to laugh.
That Sunday, August 26, after the evening’s entertainment, we headed upstairs around 9:30. As usual, littlesky, carried up my tray of necessities before returning to close up the house and get her by now nicely-melted low carb chocolate ice cream. I flipped open my computer to check email, knowing the morning writing would go better if I’d first cleared out the weekend’s correspondence. According to my schedule, I had two more weeks before I finished the first draft of my book. The champagne was chilling and the white cake mix was ready for the anticipated celebration.
As I watched the email filter in, I started mentally sorting. Trash the Penney’s, the Coldwater Creek, the Sierra Traders, the Lamps Plus emails. No time for activism and with more no doubt coming tomorrow, discard appeals from Human Rights Watch, National Resources Defense Council, Peace Action, Move On, United for Peace and Justice. No time for the multiple requests from candidates for money and support. Notes and information from my compadres in the Alliance for Historic Wyoming could wait as could the offerings of my Laramie peace pals.
But towards the end, an email from my husband caught my eye. It bore an ominous subject line: Very Sad News.
Funny, but I don’t remember steeling myself for bad news. I don’t remember trying to discern what it might be. My cats? My mother-in-law? My nephew in Iraq? Had my peace friend, the 80-year-old WWII vet, passed away? I don’t remember considering any of those possibilities. I just remember clicking on the email. And there, in cold, stark, heart-wrenching letters: "There’s no way to cushion this. Mike Oxley died yesterday."
My heart stopped. Maybe it broke. I don’t remember what details came in that email. Those trickled in over the next few days. Mike found dead in his sleeping bag in Nederland, CO. Gone to do some organizing for a local conservation group. Tabling at his favorite music festival. Went to bed and never got up. Aneurysm. Had been having bad headaches but no one knew....
Mike Oxley, a stalwart of our peace group and the founder of Laramie’s Drinking Liberally, dead. Just three weeks earlier, at YearlyKos, Justin Krebs and I had talked about how wonderful Mike was. As soon as Justin learned I was from Laramie, he’d mentioned Mike by name. I told him about the wonderful Drinking Liberally picnic we’d had just before I left. And now, Mike was dead? Mike, who was only 40 years old. Mike, who had been depressed on his 40th birthday. Mike, whom I had tried to joke out of his birthday depression. Mike, who was one of the smartest, kindest, gentlest, sweetest people I’d ever known. Mike, whose 27-year-old fiancée had gone from planning a wedding to planning a funeral. Mike, who had once challenged Barbara Cubin in the Republican primary. Mike, who had helped bring Wheels of Justice to town and then promptly joined them for three months when he learned they needed a driver. Mike, who had been thrilled during that excursion to stay in the home of Staughton Lynd. Mike, who had abandoned his own life to care for his elderly father after his mother died. Mike, who had been so happy to finally meet his birth parents. Mike, who loved telling the story of his wayward Quaker ancestor who got kicked out of meeting for having an illegitimate child and then had another one. Mike, who went out of his way to visit the graves of famous anarchists and revolutionaries. Mike, whose smile could light up the world.
Mike was dead. Dead. Oh, Mike.
A couple minutes later, when littlesky came upstairs, I was engulfed in tears, unable to speak, able only to shove my computer at her so that she could read the "Very Sad News" for herself. Read it on my computer, Bree, named in honor of a dear friend’s beautiful three-year-old granddaughter who died suddenly of Long Q T Syndrome in the spring of 2005. Last Christmas, days after my kitty, Calliope, knocked water over onto my computer, rendering it a useless piece of high tech equipment controlled by the delete button, I learned of Brianna’s death. The night I realized that, budgets be damned, the computer would have to be replaced, I was mad and angry and feeling bereft when my friend’s Christmas letter arrived. In one short sentence, she put loss into perspective. She had lost her beautiful granddaughter and I was crying over a computer? At that moment, I decided to name the new computer Bree, in honor of Brianna Badger and the things that really matter.
And now Bree had brought word that Mike was dead.
The next week passed in a fog. Emails flew back and forth between friends and myself, seeking information and consolation. I considered going home but shelved that idea when it wasn’t clear I could get there in time. Instead, I wrote a memorial for my husband to read at the Laramie memorial and made plans to attend Mike’s burial near Washington, DC. I poured over Google earth maps, ensuring I could find the little country cemetery where he would be laid to rest. I watched littlesky try not to get in the way of what I needed to do as she fretted about my lack of sleep and the thought of me driving in a big city. A week after that fateful email had come, I was back in West Virginia, having seen my dear friend’s coffin be lowered into the ground, having laid a shovelful of dirt over him, having dropped a "Drinking Liberally" button into his grave, having held my friend Sarah, having met Mike’s families (adopted and birth), having retrieved nuts from the cemetery grounds for friends in Laramie, having gotten lost and been rescued after a prayerful call of guidance to Mike, and after pulling into one-way traffic the wrong way and surviving. I was back.
But as long as I stayed in West Virginia, the truth remained surreal. I wasn’t surrounded by friends who needed to cry; I was removed from the desperation of trying to find the right words to say to Sarah and other friends. I could still pretend it wasn’t really true.
Then in mid-October, I came home to the new reality. Laramie without Mike. For weeks, I had told littlesky I had a terrible feeling about going home. I fretted that some kind of bad had descended over my lovely town. And, I explained, I didn’t want to go back to being a grown-up again. I didn’t want demands on my time. I didn’t want to worry about grants for historic preservation. I didn’t want people calling me on the phone. I didn’t want to get the emails that told me there was a meeting halfway across the state I had to attend. I didn’t want to add the more than 100 names of those who had died in Iraq since August to my "Iraq Wall." I I didn’t want to stop giggling.
And I didn’t want to worry about my kitties. What I had never told anyone – not littlesky and not my husband – was that I knew, one day, I would post missing fliers for my dear sweet little Maine Coon, Calliope Joad. I’d known it since the day I got here and I hated myself for believing it would come to pass. She had always been too adventurous for my tastes but my husband insisted she was fine and I wanted to believe him. One night last year, when she was late and I was a wreck, he tried to calm me by saying, "Oh, come on. She’s always come home." "Yes," I snapped, "and she will until the night she doesn’t."
As my husband and I pulled into Laramie that Friday afternoon in October, my chest tightened as I worried about my kitties. I told myself this was misplaced anxiety – what I really feared was finding the right words to comfort Sarah and Mike’s other close friends – but that only reminded me of that sadness. When we pulled around the corner towards my much-loved home, we saw little Calliope, sitting on the corner. My heart skipped a beat to think she was that close to traffic but then I saw her pretty face and melted. When I called her, she came in fits and starts, running towards me and then stopping, wondering if it was really me. I had been gone two full months, a long time in the life of a three-year-old kitten. I called again and she came closer. Finally, on the third try, she ran up and started rubbing my legs and crying to be picked up and cuddled.
For the next three weeks, she rarely strayed from my sight for more than a couple hours. Whether she was inside or out, she made a point of coming around periodically, to ensure herself I was still there. On October 26, one day after the second month anniversary of Mike’s death, Calliope celebrated her 3rd birthday and something inside me unwound a little. She was 3 now, a responsible age. My irrational fears of someday posting missing posters had come to nothing. Not every premonition comes true, I told myself. I had enough to worry about, enough loss to mourn, without borrowing trouble. And, besides, look at how good she had been since I got home. No more prowling around for hours. A quick check of her yard and neighborhood and back in for warmth and quiet and love. Why would any animal wander away from where she received all that?
On Monday, November 5, that all came crashing down. As usual, Calliope went out shortly after I got up. Around 4 PM, I realized I hadn’t seen her for a few hours and, immediately, I knew something was wrong. I went outside and called her. When she didn’t come, I checked the streets in front and behind our house. Nothing. For the next half-hour, I called and clapped her special clap. Then I called my husband. She’s not home, I said, something’s wrong. He came home and joined the search. But he, too, found nothing.
As the sun went down and the temperature began to drop, I felt like vomiting. I knew Calliope would come home, if she could. And it was the "if she could" that devastated me. Because she didn’t. As I watched for her sweet little face to suddenly appear, my mind filled with terrible thoughts of horrible children doing unspeakable things to helpless animals. And the worst possibility of all – that we might never know what had happened. That night, we waited and we called and we walked the neighborhood and we drove around and we asked friends and we asked neighbors and nothing. Eventually, we tried to eat and tried to sleep and failed at both. All night, I waited for the bed to bounce with a little kitty weight. But the bed never bounced and Calliope never came home.
In the morning, my husband made and posted the missing fliers I’d always known would be part of her history. I called the vets and the shelter and got lots of sympathy but no news. The local paper took our ad and told us they ran missing pet ads free for 3 days. And then we spent another day calling and searching and walking and clapping and asking and riding and yelling and crying and worrying and hating the thoughts you can’t dispel. At dinnertime, we waited anxiously, hoping that she’d gotten locked in someone’s garage and would scurry out when they came home. But 6 PM came, then 7 PM, then 8 PM, and no Calliope. After the last search of the day, my husband finally broke down. "We’ll be all right," I assured him. "Even if she’s gone, we’ll survive it." And I knew it was true because I hadn’t forgotten about Mike or Brianna and that kept everything in focus. Although, to be honest, that Tuesday night, the loss of my kitty seemed every bit as acute as the others.
On Wednesday, hubby had to return to work and I was left alone to wait and wonder. By now, our older cat, Kezia, had begun to show signs of stress as well. She would walk to Calliope’s favorite hiding places and, not finding her friend, go hide under the bed. I decided to walk the neighborhood before getting some "Rescue Remedy" for the household stress. I braved the winds that Calliope hates, talked to neighbors I’d never met before, looked in garages and sheds, and stopped to pet photos on the missing posters. I arrived home just as the UPS guy delivered the curtains I’d ordered, the curtains I worried Calliope would mess up, the curtains I doubted I would ever now enjoy. When I opened the door, Kezia rushed to greet me and then, seeing that I did not have Calliope, returned to her hiding place. I went to get the Rescue Remedy.
At the Herb House, I couldn’t contain my tears. The clerk, a friend of a friend, told me to ask my angels to bring her home. Yes, I nodded, secretly thinking that, while I believe in all of that, I prefer not having to put it to the test. Loaded down with Rescue Remedy and lavender aromatherapy, I returned home with a reality-diminished hope that I might find Calliope waiting there. She was not.
With Rescue Remedy taken and lavender drops on my pillow, I lay down and tried to rest and rely on my angels to bring her home. And I tried to get used to the new new normal, the normal that would overlay the inexpressibly sad loss of Calliope over the already devastating grief of Mike’s death. I wondered how I would tell Sarah that I couldn’t yet watch the DVD of Mike’s memorial because I was crushed by losing Calliope. I knew Sarah would understand – she had, after all, been sending supportive and hopeful emails all week – but why should she have to? How could I even ask her to?
About 4 PM, as the light began to fade, I went looking for angels. Finding no representations in my house (gasp!), I appealed to what I did have – my crystal ball, a wizard, my malachite totems and small Kachinas. As I looked out the back window, I banished that awful new normal and tried hope. Extending my hands, I said, "Go out and find Calliope." Then, bringing them close to my heart, I whispered, "And bring her home." I did this over and over until I felt strength in it. When Kezia emerged, asking for dinner, I refused, telling her: "Calliope is coming home for dinner."
An hour later, I went and called her again. As I stood on our porch, I heard our answering machine. "Have you found your cat yet?" someone was asking. I grabbed the phone. Our neighbor, the taxidermist, thought he might have just seen her. His friend had noticed this cat’s really long tail. Calliope has a very long tail. As he spoke, I heard something at the back door. I went back into the kitchen and there on our back porch was the sweetest little pootie face in the whole wide world.
"Ohmigod, she’s here, she’s here, she’s here!" I screamed, my voice a mix of laughter and tears. I hung up and tried to pet Calliope, but she scampered away, still skittish but seemingly fine. I called my husband and screamed: SHE’S HOME, SHE’S HOME, SHE’S HOME!!! He ran the last few blocks, walked in, threw something on the floor and grabbed her up. Later I discovered what he had thrown down was a torn-from-a-tree missing poster. Then I called littlesky and yelled my happy news again.
And that night, we fed Calliope and Kezia and Calliope again. We sat and hugged her and each other and laughed as Kezia nuzzled up to her best friend. Calliope didn’t seem particularly dirty or tired or even traumatized. There were no wounds, all of which convinces us she got locked in somewhere. For the first time in days, we relaxed and laughed and cried happy tears and ate a decent meal.
Then I thought about Mike. I wanted so much to go to the window and do my "bring him home" for Mike. But Mike is still gone and my heart is still heavy and my new normal is still a huge dose of sadness. Tonight, though, as I sit and mourn the loss of my very dear friend, I have a fuzzy friend beside me to pet.
What are you missing tonight? What are you happy to have beside you, bringing you comfort? Besides my fuzzy friends and my sweet husband (who made sure to join our weekly stand up for peace tonight for the Iraq Moratorium), I am happy to have the hope that Cronesense will again begin to grace us with her story-telling ways on Friday nights.