Monthly Archives: October 2022

Saying Goodbye

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2015

Nov. 2021

Dickens said that life is about meetings and partings; that is the way of it.  Or maybe it was Kermit the Frog.  But the point remains the same:  those who come in to our lives eventually must leave, and we are left behind to somehow muddle on without them.  This week, we said goodbye to our 20-year-old cat TimToms. He was part of our family the moment my Mom showed up with him at our house, back in 2008.

I had just lost Snorky, who had been hit by a car in my neighborhood, and I was distraught without a cat. I did find Jenny, who was maybe 6 months old, left alone in the rain to wander, and I took her in.  That was right around Thanksgiving.  Meanwhile, my Mom’s friend, who was a veterinarian, said she had a 6 year old cat who lived on her porch and was henpecked to death by her other cats.  Would I like him?  I would.

When Mom drove to Atlanta for Christmas that year, she brought this big, fluffy, growling hot mess of a cat with green, human eyes.  He lived under the bathroom sink about two or three months.  We didn’t see him often; we had his box and his food in the bathroom and left him pretty much alone.  Sometimes, I would peer under the sink to see how Thomas (as he was then known) was doing.  He would growl, and I’d leave him alone again.  Meanwhile, Jenny ruled the roost.  After some time, he moved into our bedroom closet and lived there for a few more months.  And then one day, he just decided he no longer wanted to live by himself and came out and joined us.  After that, he never left us alone. He was always out and about and underfoot, looking for anyone to love.

March 2022

TimToms was the kind of cat who never met a stranger.  Sure, he would growl a little (it was a “love growl,”) when my Mom or my sister would come to visit, but after a minute or two, he’d decide that he liked them, and he would jump in their laps and be ready for pets. The same with other guests.  He’d be momentarily shy, but as soon as they showed a modicum of interest, he had found a new friend.

He loved any love that was a love.  Even when you’d push him off of you, he’d come right back, and you’d find yourself petting him despite yourself.  He loved to lick—especially people’s heads. And his purr was loud as a lawnmower.  He could quite happily sit next to you (or on you) as long as you let him.

TimToms & Jenny, March 2020

Initially Jenny wasn’t too keen with him, but he won her over with his persistent good humor (he never fought or bit or engaged in any typical scrabbling for dominance, despite being more than twice her size); he would groom her, and they’d curl up together on the bed or the couch and sleep. She liked him, she decided, and the two became good friends.  (I can tell she misses him, because it seems like she’s looking for him.  She’s also meowing a lot, which isn’t typical for her.)

When Wrigley joined us in 2014 (?), he was thrilled to have someone new to hang with.  Wrigley didn’t take to him as Jenny had, but she also didn’t seem to mind him, and they lived together, if not as friends, at least cordially.

TimToms & Jenny, Aug. 2020

He was our darling boy for 14 years.  He loved nachos and watching football with his Daddy.  He liked to sit on my shoulder when I was crocheting—even when I didn’t want him there!  He made every day better with his joie de vivre and his loving, generous, and forgiving heart.

This last year was hard for him; he’d gone deaf, he pooped everywhere except his box, and he was hungry all the time but losing weight.  But no matter his physical frailties, he stayed full of love and loyalty.  I’m afraid that I wasn’t nearly as patient as I could have been with him this last year, but I know he forgave me, because he followed me everywhere and wanted to be with me as much as I’d let him.

June 2019

And I’ m so brokenhearted that he’s gone.  I know he’s crossed the Rainbow Bridge and he’s happy and whole again—playing with Thad and Baby and The Kins and Snorky and Chubu and all the cats we  loved who’ve crossed before him—and I’m happy that he’s free of pain and limitations.  But I miss his funny personality, and the way he was more doglike than catlike, and the way he bonked and purred and drank water out of the bathroom cup and took his paw and would flick the water on the bathroom mirror with the perfect Harry Potter “swish and flick.”  I miss how he loved to eat, and would get catfood on his nose.  I miss how he would eat plastic bags and bite and chase our toes.  I even miss how he would sleep on my head at night, or sit on my head in the daytime when I was reading.  I just miss him, and while I’m grateful for the 14 years we had him with us, I wish it could have been longer.  Fourteen years doesn’t seem nearly enough.

Rest in peace, sweet TimToms.  Know we’ll always love you.

Here’s a little video with mostly photos of TimToms (and a few with Jenny). (Don’t listen with the sound on though…the soundtrack is annoying.)

Here’s another video with TimToms battling the Christmas tree.

Struggling

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CW:  Depression, navel-gazing

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about writer’s block.  It’s a subject I’ve addressed before in previous blog posts, but, as I’ve said numerous times (to myself anyway), writer’s block isn’t really a thing.  People either write, or they don’t. I mostly don’t these days.

I could blame my old BFF “Deppie” because depression is just a daily part of my life, and despite being managed, it doesn’t really get better.  But I’ve written through depression before.  I’m not sure what’s different this time.  Except I just feel like all my good ideas have dried up.  So it’s actually painful sitting in front of the computer (or in a notebook), trying to compose.

I should have a lot to write about—two months in Scotland for instance.  And I still have my Medea project and my Mary Magdalene project, both of which offer ample opportunities for expansion. They’re just not speaking to me.  In fact when I go back and read poems from those sequences (with a few exceptions), my response is invariably “bleah.”

So try writing something else you say.  Well, I’ve tried writing a little fiction, and writing letters, and writing a bit of prose, but I don’t know, my heart’s not in it. I feel like such a fraud too.  I always tell my students that the best way to avoid writer’s block is to just write something.  But when you hate everything you write, that’s kind of hard.

So do some reading you say.  That I am doing.  Just not poetry.  Talk about painful!  I know that writing is difficult for everyone, so when I see great poems in books, I just feel worse.  Very petty and jealous of me, I guess.  So I’m sticking to light novels, but that only puts off the inevitable.

What’s the solution?  I don’t know.  Not writing makes the depression worse, because if I’m not writing, what is my purpose in living?  I don’t mean to get existential, but it does feel that not writing is a threat to my existence.

Folks trying to be supportive have suggested that I just—for a while—not write and not stress over it.  How does that work?  Because the longer I don’t write a poem, the more it seems like I’m forgetting how to do it.  And I have been trying to engage different parts of my mind and body—I’m crocheting a shawl right now, and sewing, and playing tennis again after a Covid haitus.  I’ve even thought about getting out my paints and trying to be creative that way, with the thought that maybe I could “unlock the block.”  (But I haven’t done that yet.) Maybe I just need to try a different medium until writing wants to come back to me.  But that’s scary too… because what if writing doesn’t want to come back?

Oh well, I’m not really accomplishing anything with this blog post, except reiterating my basket case status.  So forgive me, my five dear readers, for my pity party.  I hope it doesn’t last too long.