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Connected

con·nect·ed (kə-nĕk′tĭd) adj.

1. Joined or fastened together; 2. Mathematics: a. Not decomposable into two disjoint nonempty open sets. b. Having a continuous path between any two points. Used of a curve, set, or surface; 3. Related by family; 4. Logically or intelligibly ordered or presented; coherent: a stroke that left him incapable of connected speech; 5. Associated with or related to others, especially to influential or important people: a photographer who was well connected in the fashion world.

So this definition from the Free Dictionary (aka American Heritage dictionary) says this word is an adjective. Which, by these definitions it is. But I am thinking of how it is used in the form of a noun. To be connected. Do you feel more connected with all the technology, telephonics, satellites?

I get this a lot, especially in surveys which I really enjoy (so long as they are about stuff I know). Am I connected? Do I feel more connected because of cell phones, Internet?

Well, yes and more, no.

I can talk to anybody anywhere whenever I want because of cell phones. I can go online and share information with people, most of whom I have never met, on a facebook/myspace/linkedin or some other page. Yes, I see there are people who think as I do, who are as passionate as I am about many things. But do I feel connected? No, not in the sense other than that we share this common interest. I have never looked in their actual eyes (except by avatar or thumbnail). I have never noticed the hint of a smile, shyly maybe at first then spreading as we discover a shared hope or wish or interest. I can’t see them cry or laugh other than that ridiculous “lol” which I never liked as an alternative to actually hearing someone laughing out loud. Anybody can say lol, but maybe they are too self-conscious to be able to actually roar out an lol. Maybe they are too proud to let somebody see them cry and I can’t see they are trying to hide their tears. Maybe they want to appear aloof and typed words have never, in my experience, been able to give any accurate indication of inflection or intonation or emphatic insistence. They are just words. Indifferent. They lie flat, two-dimensional, only their meanings are expressed by definition, not by how they sound.

No, I would not say this makes me feel more connected. If I did I’d be living in a vacuum.

Vietnam Veterans Day

Reblogged to friendwise.wordpress.com

Just Cruisin 2

Today is a day to show respect for and reflect on
the sacrifices of our Vietnam veterans. These brave
men and women returned home to protests and ridicule
instead of accolades and parades.

58,286 lost their lives, 153,303 were WIA, and
1,643 are MIA. During the war 30% of those wounded
died.

“If you are able, save for them a place inside
of you and save one backward glance when you are
leaving for the places they can no longer go.

Be not ashamed to say you loved them, though
you may or may not have always. Take what they
have taught you with their dying and keep it with
your own.

And in that time when men decide and feel safe
to call the war insane, take one moment to embrace
those gentle heroes you left behind.”

Major Michael Davis O’Donnell
1 January 1970
Dak To, Vietnam
Listed…

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Healing

Finally, amid the swirl of grieving, sadness, pain, and emptiness comes the peace and calm of healing. The beginnings of which we recognize, with renewed hope that we have not really lost, just changed the relationship. The pain is honoring in its way, of the one we miss and pine for. The healing comes as a cleansing wash of warmth and grace over the iciness of loss, the sharp finality of death.

People recommended and even sent me many books to read after Murphy died a few of which I have read, some I have not, and one, Saying Goodbye by Linda and Allen Anderson (authors and owners of http://www.angelanimals.com) which helped the most by assisting me in examining my relationship to Murphy. Not in a calculating or analytic way, just gently encouraging me to ask myself questions about our first encounter, things about him that made him who he was in his quirks, needs, personality, what he taught me, and how I felt when he passed. How did he appear in the moments before. When I think of this, I see and feel him in my arms and as the anesthesia took effect he did not appear to alter in any way, his breathing imperceptably stopped and as I placed him for the vet’s nurse to take him away could feel the limpness of his little body, lifeless but I still somehow felt his presence with me. That is how I knew he is still part of me, not something like a light that had merely been turned off.

I won’t miss the difficulty he had at taking his medicine or even refusing to eat his hand-fed meals those last days, or the way he looked at me when he was too tired to move. I know because of the nature of grief I will still have moments maybe longer periods where I am sad and miss him, miss his little dance before we went for a walk, miss how he’d prance for a stranger or friend, hoping for a little attention or a pat, miss his play bow where he’d pound his paws onto the floor challenging me to a chase, or bounce after a bouncy ball to bring it back to me, drop it and wait expectantly for me to throw it and applaud him as he raced it back to me.

Who he was in health and joy, remains.

Laundry

This is not one of my least favorite chores but something I do routinely, like most people. I live alone so the washing machine is my laundry basket, thereby eliminating middle-steps to the hamper and expediting the whole process I guess.

Anyway, yesterday was such a beautiful day I decided to do a bit of advance spring cleaning and wash bath mats and dog blankets. Picking up my late beloved Murphy’s 3 ultra-soft blankets I paused and held them to my nose, inhaling deeply. I could no longer detect his smell. This made me incredibly sad, but also posed a dilemma: ought I to go ahead and wash the blankets? They were his after all, and besides me were pretty much the last things he touched. I had already been able to put away his numerous water bowls I had placed for him, conveniently so he wouldn’t have to walk too far to get a drink. I decided in tribute to him I would wash the blankets and dry them outside so they would have the springy-bright sunshine smell after they had dried.

I know that there are some people who remove everything of a deceased pet’s immediately after the pet passes. This may be simpler I suppose, no lingering reminders creating echoes of sounds and sights of the pet. It’s not as though I thought Murphy was actually going to return, nor that some sepulchral self of him would come back to visit the dog beds or water bowls. It was just something final about removing these things that I could not make myself do. I sharply remembered once when I tripped over a water bowl, spilling water everywhere and became so angry I kicked it outside, breaking it into too many pieces to glue back together. I put the pieces in the trash and for days after Murphy wandered over to the trash can, sniffing at the top as though he knew it was in there and wanted it back. No, I needed to see these things, knowing the pain of his not returning to them. Their emptiness and uselessness somehow amplified his absence. Not that I enjoy being maudlin or grieving, but somehow I felt it would dishonor him to simply whisk away his things, as though I had just broken a precious vase and were sweeping it away.

Miss Woofie

Lily became part of our pack after Murphy’s buddy Savannah died. She was a border collie and Murphy adored her. I thought he would enjoy another friend but I guess no one could be like Savannah. Anyway, I adopted Lily from the pound, nobody seemed to know what kind of dog(s) she was but she looked a lot like a combination of husky and golden retriever to me. She was about a year, or so the pound people thought, and very high energy.

We walked. And walked. I lived in New Mexico at the time and there were some bluffs near where I lived and I could let her off leash and run to her heart’s content. She never ran far and if I started to go, she quickly caught up to me. I guess somebody tried to dump her because she never lets me get too far away.

But her eyes… almond-shaped, they are thickly rimmed in black, and when she tilts her head a certain way the soft brown glows a deep golden color, just like a wolf. So, clearly living close to what this city girl considers wilderness — I could drive 15 minutes from my house in any direction and not even see a fence post — I decided to do some research because really, nobody knew exactly where this dog came from. She was a stray.

Wolves have black-rimmed, slanted, almond-shaped golden eyes. They have a narrow girth between their front legs. Lily has a wide barrel-chest. Wolves have webbed feet. Lily has webbed feet. Wolves’ paw-span can be 4 inches or more. Lily has lovely, dainty paws, no more than 2-3 inches across. Wolves have a dark caudal spot 3-4 inches down their tail, but not a white-tipped tail. Lily has a white-tipped tail, and a patch of black hair mid-way down her golden-haired tail. But Rhodesian Ridgeback dogs have this spot also.

The teeth, however… wolves’ canine teeth are at least an inch long. Lily’s, though impressive, are no more than 1/2 inch (yes, I really measured). And wolves howl. Lily does not howl, not even for the most incessant siren.

So I guess I can have a DNA test done, people do, but why bother? Lily and I have been friends now for almost 7 years. What difference would a test make? I love her now and I do not see how knowing whatever her genetic make-up is would make a shred of difference.

Moving On

There are some things though at first you might be afraid of leaving behind, as you move forward you find go right along with you. In dreams, thoughts, and even though there is no physical presence they really are with you. Sure, sadness hits every so often when you realize it’s not a fantasy or just imaginings and that they are tangibly no longer there. But In dreams, in your habits, routines of everyday life there is still a presence. That dimension the friend created in you stays, even if the friend is no longer there, which means the friend is still very much a part of your life.

What a relief.

Love

This is something we feel, yet it is completely intangible. It is a bond that once established remains forever. When that with which we share the bond is gone it’s almost as though an appendage has been severed, or a critical food source has stopped. We feel the hunger for the sustenance, yet we feel no real pain. What we feel is the absence of what once was. We don’t like this emptiness. We cry over it, we bemoan its end. We bargain, pray for and hope against all we have or know to have it again but we know we will not. Somehow when that reality eventually settles in our minds the cruelty of the loss becomes even sharper and we have to fill the void with memories. It helps to write or talk about that which we have lost. It helps to remember specific things we did or said or that happened. We have to remember the value of what was through what we shared or else we’ll fall into an abyss of loss. We have to be tossed a bit on the waves of grief, crying our hearts out for sadness over what we loved. Is it that we continue on, leaving the beloved behind, or is the beloved moving on, leaving us behind? Doesn’t matter. The simple fact is that love which existed only in and of and for itself, specifically between ourselves is no longer living and breathing in our dimensional world.

We have to remember. Before and after we say good-bye. And be grateful for that which we did have, for however short a time.

Pain

So many levels, degrees, depths of pain… there is something dreadful, like abuse, or comparatively minor like a paper cut. There is pain of surgery, humiliation, misunderstanding, mistake, sadness, abandonment, grief, loss, hopelessness… whenever we have pain we want relief from it. For some it is thought to be found in drinking, drugs– the escape through deviating or anesthetizing whether by prescribed or found means. Eventually though we have to go through this pain. We have to feel it and if we know what it is that’s causing the pain we are lucky. Sometimes we have this nagging– guilt, conscience, vacuous wonderment –that we simply cannot find answer for. When we leave it alone the reason often will surface and we acknowledge it and deal with it. But pain of loss simply must be cushioned with memories of what was. We fill the hole, the void, the emptiness with the remembrance of what was when whatever it is we have lost causes pain. Nature abhors a vacuum.

It has to be filled. So remember the joy, the grace, the love, the contentment… the good that was before the loss of that good created the pain.

Be at peace.

Beating the Odds or Relinquishment

Sometimes accepting what is, is all we can do. Kidney failure cannot often be reversed, but the function maintained by medicine. When that ends quality of life matters. To my gentle, lovely Murphy, I know you are out of your stressful pain now. You never complained. You were always my blessing and joy. Thank you.

Goodbye Murphy

It is like being in the ocean, a wave gliding toward me, I am lifted gently to its crest and just before the curl froths, I slide quickly to the bottom of the trough. Right now I am approaching the knife-edge of the crest. I know I will soon be sliding down, deep into the dark forlornness of loss.

I had to say good-bye to my precious little dog Murphy today.

I guess my life had pretty much been defined by his for the past couple of years, maybe even before that when he had acl surgery in 2010, then his gall-bladder became sick, finally kidney failure, and, 3 days ago his kidneys simply stopped functioning at all. For those moments, hours, days, weeks and months since I have been happy to have my definition follow who he was becoming. Caring for him was easy. He was a joy. He taught me so much- about patience, kindness, handling perceived rebuffs, and most of all making the best of things. He’d been born with a kneecap on his left hind leg out of place. The specialist thought surgeries would be best. But he did fine without surgery until he needed his acl replaced on his knee. He made it through all of that fine. He loved his walks, rides in the car, but most of all meeting people. He did not care for other dogs at all and certainly loved chasing cats, but he received people with such joy and bubbled over with happiness of greeting them, whether they were known to him or not.

I know I will begin that slide of the aching, the missing, the remorse over things I wish I’d taken more time to do, things I wish I’d not become so impatient over, things I wish I’d not complained about, but his doctor said I did do everything for him that I possibly could do. If they had organ transplants for dogs I likely would have pursued it, though at 12 he may not have been a candidate for it.

When we first met I was collecting my then-other dog, Savannah, from boarding. I heard crying and asked what it was. They said it was the last of a litter of puppies a vet tech’s boyfriend had thrown down the stairs, the others had been already adopted and that they did not expect him to live. I asked to see him. When they placed him in my hands (he was a tiny 4 weeks old) he stopped crying… I asked them to please let me know if they thought he’d make it and they called the next day. Thus began a wonderful friendship. He adored Savannah and she eventually warmed up to him. He followed her everywhere and when she was dying of lung cancer one afternoon he lay there watching her. Her chew bone was a ways from her. Murphy got up, picked up the bone, carried it to her and placed it in front of her. He went back and lay down again, watching her.

That’s what he did, who he was. Love. My first boy-dog.

I love you, Murphy. I loved you to pieces. I will miss you, forever.