It is with a very heavy heart that I write this. Ever since keeping cats solely inside (since 1998), I have been afraid that one or more would die here and I would discover them. I always hoped Mom or Adam would be the one to discover them (terrible, I know) and would tell me about it after burying them. That was not the case yesterday morning. Gandalf the Grey (Gandi) was sleeping in Mom’s shower yesterday, and since the pups aren’t allowed in the bathroom, it made sense. Since he hadn’t been on my keyboard tray visiting with me after I got out of bed, I checked on him when I got up to use the bathroom and found that he wasn’t breathing and wasn’t warm.
I woke Adam up and told him that Gandi wasn’t breathing, so he got up and checked and confirmed that he was gone. Just like in the movies and shows, he walked back to me and sadly shook his head without speaking. I could only wail and ask “Why?!” repeatedly. We don’t know what happened. Before going into the bathroom, Gandi had briefly been on the bed with us by Adam, and after I fell asleep, Adam said he peed on the bed while lying there, then went to lay in the bathroom when Adam took the bedclothes off. I didn’t get a chance to make an appointment for him to see why that happened.
He and Theo have been staying out of Mom’s room since I got Ollie. Gandi stayed on the table most of the time near the cat food and water. Theo stays on the fridge. He had been to the vet two or three months prior for a urinary tract infection and received antibiotics.
For the past couple of days, Gandi had been in Mom’s room with me, sleeping on my keyboard tray and purring while I pet and loved on him. I figured he got lonely and said to hell with the dogs. He let me kiss his head and brush him and was being his old sweet self. Now, he’s gone and I don’t know why. He had just turned 10 in July. Both of my babies I got after Mom died are gone, and I’m so sad. I don’t know what I did wrong or how much he suffered or how I missed his cries for help. I just don’t know.
Huh. WP PC app is back to normal, so I don’t know what that was all about.
It’s April again, and I thought things would get easier but that isn’t the case. April 10, National Siblings Day, marked five years since my brother died. He didn’t even make it to 40. We weren’t physically close as he lived in a different state and neither of us liked using the phone, but I adored him and loved when he came to visit or I went to his house. After Mom died, I got the best sleep and rest when I stayed with him and his family for a weekend.
April 19th will make 10 years since Mom died. That is also the date of Taylor Swift’s new album, so I will have something to smile about at least. Mom and I were/are longtime fans since Tim McGraw. I cannot believe it has been a decade that she has been gone. I wish there was an AI program that could create her voice. All I have for that is an answering machine outgoing message that I captured on my phone after she died. No videos. No recordings.
I don’t sound like her, so I can’t even record myself and pretend it’s her. I sound more like my dad, unfortunately. My birthday is at the end of the month, 10 days after Mom died. I don’t celebrate it. Depression and trauma covers an entire month for me! I will be 29 again this year, per usual. Just like Phineas is 11 months old every year. He is my baby and always will be.
I was banned from Reddit again but only for 7 days this time. I made a comment that I don’t like the F-word and wish people would stop using it and someone called me a baby, so I tagged Adam in it. Adam made a comment to this guy, so the loser got Adam banned from the sub and when I participated in another post in the same sub, I was banned for “ban evasion” because the idiots at Reddit cannot comprehend that more than one person in a household can have a Reddit account. I really, really hate Reddit with a passion but I have no other social outlet. X is a cesspool as well, and Facebook isn’t really that active since they screwed up the feed and don’t show recent posts first. I don’t get Tumblr, although I do have an account I reactivated yesterday.
I appealed Reddit’s decision, again, and was turned down, again. It makes my blood boil, but I am trying to keep my mouth shut. Reddit workers and moderators are such fascists with too much time on their hands. They have subreddits with any type of porn (made up of Reddit users) one can imagine, subs for photos of upskirt shots (not consenual), and some of the most disgusting fetish subs, but I get banned because some pissant can dish it out but not take it when my husband defends me. It has not been a good month 😒.
I guess this month makes a year since I started this site/blog. Yay, me! Why do we use the word “yay” when the correct spelling is “yea”? I do it because people think I just made a typo while trying to say “yeah.” Why do people just take it upon themselves to change the way things are spelled and then claim that is what is correct? Like “could of, should of, would of.” Or, one of the worst phrases, “I could care less.” You’re not stating you really don’t care by saying you could actually care less than you do. Come on, people. If you could not tell, I am very cranky at the moment. It seems like it was New Years just last week.
In my next post, I will talk about how utterly insufferable Adam is because of Neville!! If only I had listened to myself. (Do I ever??) Also, we will be losing one of our babies very soon.
I got last week’s homework back; two free verse poems, and inserting line breaks in an unknown poem that had the formatting stripped, the latter of which included my all-over-the-place “reflection.” My professor said my reflection was exemplary 😂😂. She also said one of my poems, In the Garden of Remorse, was beautiful, which surprised me a bit because it was rather dark. She once again mentioned experimenting with structure and punctuation, which I don’t completely grasp yet. I have started experimenting with em dashes (long hyphens), something Emily Dickinson was very fond of, and I’m not even a fan of her work.
Poems with weird spacing and punctuation really throw me off, which I feel is because of autism, ADHD, or a combination of both. I really like the movie No Country for Old Men and was excited to read the book when I found out the movie was based on the book, but the author is not a fan of commas or quotation marks. I could not discern when people were speaking, and the lack of comma usage was so annoying that I stopped reading the book.
Another author did the same thing with quotation marks (what is up with that?) and I had to stop reading it which really stunk because I was enjoying the book aside from getting completely confused. Oh, it was 13 Reasons Why. I never watched the show so I’m in the dark about why the girl killed herself. Anyway, with poems, it really takes me out of what I’m reading when I am presented with weird, artsy formatting.
I forgot to write about what Neville did! I got rid of most of my stuffed animals, which I really regret now, but I kept a few that are important to me. I love pandas and tigers, so I have some of each. I dog-proofed the living room before Neville got here and it’s nearly empty, but I have some stuffed animals in there because the room’s theme is safari and pandas (weird combination, I know). I have some pandas on the entertainment center since removing the TV. I take so long to tell stories.
Nev likes to grab random things and bring them into the room and chew on them. He has plenty of chew toys and bones, but for some reason they aren’t preferable. He hunts for things, and I know he knows he is not supposed to have what he gets. He’s already destroyed two of my wireless mouses and the cord to my Dyson. He doesn’t seem interested in Adam’s stuff.
So, he comes into the bedroom carrying one of my pandas and I take it from him and put it and the other ones on the entertainment center on top of the entertainment center so he can’t reach them. I see my brother’s slippers on the entertainment center, so I scoot those back against the back so he can’t reach them. Then, I return to work. Nev goes in and out of the bedroom a few times, then he lies down behind my chair and is quiet, which is when I know to look at him. He is lying there with one of Bub’s slippers just going to town on it, ripping the top to pieces.
I can’t remember if I yelled at him or not but Adam comes into the living room where I’m standing and trying not to cry. I get very still and quiet when I’m angry or upset. I attempt to go back into the bedroom (I hate showing emotions around people) but Adam stops me and pulls me into his arms and I just lose it. I’ve had those slippers in the living room since Bub forgot them here and I like them being there so I can see them. I made it a point to move them out of the way so nothing would happen to them and they are the very next thing Neville goes after. I have my brother’s slippers and a pair of sunglasses, which he also forgot here, and that’s it. I’m not surrounded by his belongings like I am with Mom’s.
I looked a bit worse than that.
Neville is still here, of course, but I wouldn’t have anything to do with him for several days, and he stayed in the room with Adam. He is supposed to be helping me, not making things worse!
List three books that have had an impact on you. Why?
I’m sure I can think of three, most likely more, but I wanted to do this prompt because of one in particular. I’m an avid reader with severe ADHD, so I don’t remember much about a book upon finishing it, sadly. The good side of that is most books are always new to me! Speaking of books, feel free to follow or friend me on Goodreads! I’m an active logger and rater, but not big on reviews because of my terrible memory.
Because I want to, I’ll be listing my three picks counting down.
I read The Kite Runner years and years ago, probably around the time it came out, and I still think of it often. It and A Thousand Splendid Suns, another book by the same author, really jolted me out of my young adult and mystery/thriller/horror genres rut and introduced me to the terribly-named (assigned?), general “fiction” genre. I mean, all fiction is fiction, so why not give wonderful reads a worthy subgenre? That vague categorization makes it hard for me to find books similar to Hosseini’s. “Contemporary” is just as confusing because, after time, those books are no longer considered to be contemporary. But I digress.
Hosseini is a phenomenal writer and sure knows how to evoke feelings. I cried, I gasped, I laughed, I cried some more, and actually took a few days off reading after finishing this book, which is something I never do. This book made me think of how others live in other parts of the world and how different we all are, which is a great thing but can also be so disheartening and feel so unfair. Since reading The Kite Runner, I’ve not thought of theft in the same way.
My favorite quote (paraphrased) from The Kite Runner is:
“…there is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft.
“Do you understand that?”
“No, Baba jan,” I said, desperately wishing I did. I didn’t want to disappoint him again.
. . .
“When you kill a man, you steal a life,” Baba said. “You steal his wife’s right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone’s right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness. Do you see?”
Hosseini, K. (2003). The kite runner. Bloomsbury Publishing PLC.
Another book that stays rent-free in my mind is The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. This story takes place in Nazi Germany and is about a young German boy who befriends a frail Polish boy who is always in striped pajamas. The two strike up a friendship while on opposite sides of a fence. I flew through this book and was ugly crying by the end. When the movie came out, I immediately rented it and watched it with my mom and Adam, though I must say the book made a bigger impact on me than the movie, which is almost always the case. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is a wonderful read but it is a hard one.
My favorite quotes from The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas are:
“And then the room went very dark and somehow, despite the chaos that followed, Bruno found that he was still holding Shmuel’s hand in his own and nothing in the world would have persuaded him to let it go.”
“And who decided which people wore the striped pajamas and which people wore the uniforms?”
Boyne, J. (2006). The boy in the striped pyjamas.
Lastly, or firstly, I guess, the book that has made the biggest impact on me.
I watched A Monster Calls before knowing it was based on a book. I went in blind, merely choosing it because it sounded like a horror movie and because Liam Neeson was in it. (If this reads familiar, I’ve mentioned it before in another post.) Whenever I find out a book or movie I like has a book or movie, I must read or watch it, depending on if I saw the movie first or read the book first, obviously. I don’t want to say too much about these books so I won’t spoil anything, but sometimes that is difficult.
A Monster Calls is considered a children’s/young adult book but I was in my early 30s when I saw the movie and then read the book. The story, which was inspired by Siobhan Dowd, is about a young boy, Conor, whose mother is dying from cancer and he keeps having a recurring dream involving a tree “monster.” I quite enjoyed Patrick Ness’ storytelling and could very much relate to Conor and his situation. Like the movie, the book had me crying my eyes out and finally feeling heard and seen. I own the book and the movie but I don’t think I could reread or rewatch for a very, very long time, if ever.
My favorite quotes from A Monster Calls are:
“You really aren’t afraid, are you?”
“No,” Conor said. “Not of you, anyway.”
. . .
“I’ve known forever she wasn’t going to make it, almost from the beginning. She said she was getting better because that’s what I wanted to hear. And I believed her. Except I didn’t.”
There are a few things I would be devastated to no longer have. There’s my last birthday card from Mom; my cross necklace; my wedding dress; my Pillow People, Suzie, that I got when I was 5. One item that reminds me of one of my grandmas, Mom, and Bub is a painting that belonged to Dad’s mom. Grandma and I were the only two who liked the painting. Everyone else thought it was ugly, but I loved it. I would stand there and look up at it every time I was there. It was titled “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” It was painted by a German guy whose name I have long since forgotten. I told Grandma more than once that I wanted that painting left to me, and she told me it was mine. Bub and I were her only grandchildren, after all. Neither grandparent had a will, so it was on their word, and my worthless dad, to fulfill verbally-made promises.
Dad’s second wife was hateful, jealous, and petty, and she successfully pushed me out of Dad’s life, but I doubt he put up any kind of fight, as he never wanted me. She wore the pants in that relationship, and since she is a complete trash person, she emptied Grandma’s house after she died (Papa died about a year prior) and got rid of everything over a short period of time. I wasn’t told about it. My brother wasn’t told about it, but he found out somehow. There was so much I wanted from there, and her actions made me sick, and that is something I still haven’t gotten over (obviously). I was supposed to get the painting, Dad’s children’s books, my rock collection that was under Grandma’s bed, Grandma’s costume jewelry, Papa’s handmade Native American beaded belt from when he was young, handmade mocassins that I wore wear when I was there. Nothing worth monetary value, which makes it worse to me.
In total Bub fashion, my brother decided to break into the house one night on his way home so he could get a keepsake, and he wanted to know if I wanted anything. I asked him to get the painting. A lot of the stuff was gone but he was able to get one of Papa’s shirts (which is all he wanted), and my painting was still there. In the end, my grandparents’ belongings were taken to Goodwill. Some of my family tried to track some of it down to no avail. I love that they tried. I do have Dad’s baby blanket because I asked Grandma if I could take it home, which I’m glad I did. I’m sure Dad’s wife would be livid to know I have it. She got super mad at me because I went to see Papa the day he died and she had thought she was the last person to see him. Yeah, she is that childish and spiteful.
After receiving the incredibly heavy painting, I repainted the frame a light blue, and the painting hung on my bedroom wall for years, until one day it didn’t. Without provocation, it fell off the wall, and we found out the back was some sort of wooden sign advertising some German place. Papa was in the Navy and had been all over the world, so that didn’t surprise me. I put the painting, flat, under the bed to keep it safe until I could get it re-framed. It was there for years, and when I pulled it out, I discovered my cat had torn a hole in it with his foot and had ripped the edge. I guess he liked lying on it. I was very upset, but still couldn’t do anything about it. What would be the point in reframing it when it’s torn and has a hole in it? It was very old and already had a taped-up rip on the bottom edge.
More years pass, and Adam enters the picture. On my birthday (I forget which one), I’m ushered into the living room by Mom, and there, over the fireplace, is my painting 🥰🥹😭. Mom had it restored and reframed, and it was beautiful. Because of its age and fragility, a lot of it had to be trimmed, including the title and artist, and the guy added a dark matte border. Of course, I cried, which Mom made sure to get a picture of. She and Adam had cooked up a plan to get it out from under my bed and into Mom’s car, then get it back in the house after it was fixed. Not an easy task.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
So, that is my extremely long answer to a simple question.
I have anxiety. Bad. I get super anxious hearing other people talk on the phone. My husband makes all calls unless I absolutely have to talk to someone, like for my work. He even has permission to talk to our family doctor and psychiatrist for me. All of that to say, I don’t talk to family on the phone. I always got updated about family by Mom, who would talk to various family members throughout the week. Since I lived with her, I was kept in the loop. All that changed after she died. Family hung around for maybe the first year or two, but then radio silence on both our parts, save a FB group chat with some of my cousins and me.
Around the beginning of April in 2019, one of my aunts called me. She is Mom’s sister-in-law (aka “sister-in-love”), and Mom made her medical power of attorney before she died so my brother and I wouldn’t have to make hard decisions. She, of course, consulted us before making any decisions. I just love this aunt to pieces.
Anyway, my aunt called me and asked if my husband was home, and she wanted me to go to the same room as him. I did so, internally starting to panic. I begged her to please talk to him, I didn’t want to hear what she had to say. By this time, my husband was standing by me, obviously concerned. He caught me when my world fell apart once more.
My big brother (“Bub”), my childhood torturer and hero and only sibling, had a heart attack at work and was found unresponsive. He was taken to Johns Hopkins, where they did all they could, running tests and trying to normalize his temperature and checking for brain activity. He had just turned 39 the month prior.
Since Mom’s car was on the fritz and my husband didn’t think it would make it that far without issues, my cousin was going to take us over the weekend, but Bub didn’t last that long. He left behind an amazing wife and two beautiful, sweet daughters.
A couple of days before they turned the machines off, my sister-in-law called and put the phone to Bub’s ear so I could tell him goodbye. I mostly blubbered and told him I was sorry and that I loved him. He died 9 days before Mom’s death anniversary, 19 days before my birthday. I don’t celebrate my birthday anymore.
I rolled back the time and have been 29 years old for a few years. Everyone started dying after I turned 30. I lost my aunt and my dad the year I turned 30. Dad was a deadbeat, and that drama/trauma is a whole ‘nother story (complete with an Evil Stepmother). I lost Sprinkles, Mom, Ashes, and Soxers all in one year, and two uncles who were surrogate fathers. I’m just done.
I lost my mom to uterine cancer in 2014, ten days before my birthday. She wasn’t ready, I wasn’t ready, but that really didn’t matter. The cancer didn’t actually kill her, even though it had metastasized to other organs. She was on chemo and contracted pneumonia while in the hospital. Honestly, I think the pneumonia was harder for both of us to deal with than the cancer: Seeing her struggle to breathe, the audible wetness of her lungs, hearing she could not resume chemo until the pneumonia was gone, which never came to pass.
Her last 2 weeks in the hospital, she endlessly worried about me and the fact that she hadn’t gotten me a birthday present. She sent my cousins out to get my present and a card, and she signed that card the best she could the day before she died. I knew nothing about this until after she was gone. I left the hospital with my gift and card but without my mom. I waited until my birthday to open them, which absolutely ripped my heart to shreds.
“I love you, you are my world (Mommy)”
All of 2014 was brutal. My tuxedo cat, Sprinkles Ricardo Blah-Blah, died in January, before Mom died. He was 16 years old. After Mom died, her cat, Ashes Penelope, didn’t cope well with Mom not being here. He suddenly dropped one terrible night, and the vet at the animal ER said it was a blood clot and they couldn’t really do anything for him. We got an adorable tuxedo kitten, Soxers McGee. He died at 5 months old from FIP. My stress level was through the roof. Due to the stress, my pancreas broke, and I’m now a type 1.5 diabetic (LADA). I don’t know if that is related to my Dandy Walker or not, as it’s not my only autoimmune disease.
Sprinkles RicardoAshes PenelopeSoxers McGee
I existed for a few years. I paid off Mom’s car and house, thanks to Mom’s work and her smart planning for my brother and me. I lived with her my entire life due to me having Dandy Walker malformation, so her house and car came to me. I would be homeless if she hadn’t always put her children first. I have a difficult time coming up with the property taxes every year, so I guess homelessness is always a possibility, unfortunately.
I really hated living here, in her house, for a long time. I redecorated the living room and changed the theme from lighthouses to pandas and tigers so I wouldn’t be reminded of her every time I walked in there. One night, in a fit of grief, I ran to her closet and buried my nose in her clothes, hoping to find her scent, to no avail. My fiancé and I remained in our bedroom at the other end of the house.
Two years after Mom died, I married the wonderful man who took such amazing care of Mom when her cancer returned. My brother walked me down the aisle. I chose In Loving Memoryby Alter Bridge as the Bride-Mother of the Bride dance and fully intended to dance with my aunt/Mom’s sister. I crumpled as soon as the song started and couldn’t do it, so my aunt and my bridal party had a big, weepy huddle while the song played.
I didn’t know another death in the family was going to shake my foundation like Mom’s death did.
Cari R Esta 