It’s like catching snow on my tongue

30 08 2016

Gene Wilder died.

I liked him, liked his movies, and understand why more avid fans are distressed at the thought that all he’s ever done is all he’ll ever do.

I also understand why some like to imagine him reunited in the afterlife with his third wife, Gilda Radner.

David Bowie died, Prince died—Man, imagine those two in the Big Sky Studio?

It’s a nice thought, that those matched or who should have been matched in the world will find each other after they’ve left it. And it comforts, in that Julian-of-Norwich sort of way: All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.

We shall be released, and reconciled.

A lovely thought. . .

. . . that I don’t quite believe. I don’t disbelieve it, either, exactly, but I doubt that there is any great reunion beyond the grave. We take our delights while we can, bear our sorrows as we must, and the only mercy granted is what we give to each other.

I’m not very good with holding on to delights or letting go of sorrows or harms; I may get past without quite forgiving, and mercy, well, I’m still working on Vonnegut’s admonition God dammit, you’ve got to be kind—I am so rarely kind.

So it seems too easy to think that I can be kind, later, that as a ghost I’ll get yet more chances to be human, that I can put off the something more for. . . later, after.

It’s a lovely thought, that our chances never end, but better, if harder, to hold close the wisdom of Maxine Kumin: Our ground time here will be brief.

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Help me, I think I’m falling

10 11 2011

D. was kind.

Her younger sister, J., was glamorous and a little forbidding, but D. was warm and she asked questions and listened to the answers, and even my teenaged snot-self could see that it was not a bad thing that my older cousin was soft and caring. We both loved animals, could always talk about animals.

I didn’t see her much: the occasional Sundays and my grandma’s, and, later, she and her husband would always at least stop by for the holidays; I’d sometimes see her at her job at the mall. Always, again, still warm, still kind. A little sad, maybe, but not crushingly so. She had a weakness for the weak, so it made sense that her kindness could also make her sad.

And it has again, or so I’d guess. I just found out that her house had been condemned, and that she was taken into custody for hoarding. Forty cats, 5? 7? dogs, a number of birds. The place smelled so bad passersby complained to the police. My parents told me so many of the cats were sick, emaciated; they probably had to be put down.

It was on the news, my mom said. It was really upsetting, to see those cats like that. She worked at a vet’s office, and these cats had ear infections, eye infections—she couldn’t get them treated? But then again, that was probably where the problem began, she reasoned. People probably brought in animals they wanted to get rid of and D. took them in.

And it got to be too much, I nodded. She wanted to save them, thought she could save them, and when she couldn’t take care of them she wasn’t able to ask for help.

I feel so bad for those animals; I feel so bad for D.

I hope they all get help.


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