I have the email addresses of dead people. For some reason, I’m reluctant to delete them. They were not really friends, in the classic sense, but they were people in my life and now they are gone. So why is it so hard to check the “delete” box and get them out of my email address list?
The Mail-daemon (a whole ‘nother subject) will only send me a terse notice that a message was undeliverable, so I never send them anything. If I did, where would it go? Do email messages fly off into the infinite reaches of space? Do any of them actually make it to Heaven?
“Delete” is an ugly word when you apply it to a human life. Even if that life is no longer here. “Delete” has implications that can never apply to the life of a human being. Every life makes an impact somewhere. No life can be deleted, as if it never existed.
Maybe I cannot delete them because these people left their footprints in my life. Maybe it is because the act is so harsh, and makes their deaths so final. Maybe it is because I have a difficult time throwing things away if I think I may need them again someday…
All Hallows Eve
All Hallows Eve,
and a lean wind sweeps
the last withered leaves
from the street,
leaves them heaped by weathered walls--
against this gray stone wall.
There is no treat,
only trick of light
and cold gray stone
and I am alone
when the Lost Ones come,
tiny wisps in the night
singing their songs of joy.
I never heard them laugh
or cry--
never said goodbye,
only gripped the empty place
that cradled them,
screaming “Why?”,
and kept on walking,
kept on,
one foot,
then the next,
till the years were spent
and I found this place
among the stones,
crumbling withered leaves in my hand.
All Hallows Eve
and the cringing light
of the dying year
shudders in a chilling wind
and every trace of green and fire
is swallowed up in murky doubt
when I sit alone
among these stones
and the Lost Ones come,
tiny wisps in the night,
singing their songs of joy.
I wrote this poem for my babies who died before they were born. Most of them died in the fall...a sad season.
and a lean wind sweeps
the last withered leaves
from the street,
leaves them heaped by weathered walls--
against this gray stone wall.
There is no treat,
only trick of light
and cold gray stone
and I am alone
when the Lost Ones come,
tiny wisps in the night
singing their songs of joy.
I never heard them laugh
or cry--
never said goodbye,
only gripped the empty place
that cradled them,
screaming “Why?”,
and kept on walking,
kept on,
one foot,
then the next,
till the years were spent
and I found this place
among the stones,
crumbling withered leaves in my hand.
All Hallows Eve
and the cringing light
of the dying year
shudders in a chilling wind
and every trace of green and fire
is swallowed up in murky doubt
when I sit alone
among these stones
and the Lost Ones come,
tiny wisps in the night,
singing their songs of joy.
I wrote this poem for my babies who died before they were born. Most of them died in the fall...a sad season.
Cell Rebellion
Boobs. Tits. Jugs. The twins. The girls. Whatever you call them, breasts are breasts. Symbols of the feminine gender, they nourish infants and attract guys. Poets write about them; artists paint them. Women are supposed to have two of them. Sometimes it doesn’t end up that way.
I have one and a half. I was “lucky” and didn’t need a mastectomy when the little cluster of calcifications that “nine times out of ten is nothing” turned out to be cancer. Never well endowed, in my case a lumpectomy took out a lot of real estate.
After ten years, the half-boob still hurts; a constant reminder that life is short and days are too precious to waste. The doctor told me the pain is from the radiation, and should go away eventually. Ten years is a long eventually. Ten years is also a gift—many women don’t get ten years after surgery for breast cancer.
With a diagnosis of cancer, there comes a flood of questions. The most perplexing circle like vultures around the word “why?” Why does a woman who eats broccoli, takes vitamins, nurses her babies, and has no family history of breast cancer get breast cancer? Was it the abortion I had at nineteen? Was it the time I used heavy-duty paint stripper on the kitchen windows? Was it the stress of years living in a difficult marriage? Who knows?
What is it that triggers a cell to take on a demented life of its own? Matt Ridley, in Genome has a good description of the cascade of events within a cell that impel it to rebellion. Such a tiny thing, a cell, a net of chromosomes, a scrap of a spiral of DNA—you could die from that one tiny thing.
Cancer is strange. You go along with your life, feeling fine, and all the time there is this tiny thing growing inside you that carries your death. And you have no clue. I was too busy with children and life to take time out for a mammogram. When I finally made an appointment for the big squeeze, the last thing I expected was a call from the doctor suggesting a biopsy was in order. And what the heck did a biopsy involve, anyway?
It turns out there are two kinds of biopsies. One consists of lying on your stomach on a table with your breast hanging out through a hole so the doctor can stick a needle into it, remove some of the suspicious tissue, and send it off to the lab for the inquisition. So I got all ready, up to the point of assuming the position, only to be told that I didn’t have the required minimum size for the procedure. (Insult to injury!)
No, I had to have the other kind. The kind where they put you to sleep and take out a chunk, which seems a little odd to me because my total boobal endowment was just a chunk to begin with. When I heard the word “biopsy,” I always assumed it was just a little smidgeon of tissue that gets removed—not so. But the doctor was reassuring, thought for sure it wasn’t cancer, said he’d call me when the results were in.
So a week later the phone rings. It’s the doctor. I have three different kinds of cancer going on in my breast. I have a 30% chance of getting it in the other one. Oh crap.
I didn’t fall apart. Didn’t cry. Just went through the grim setting of one foot in front of the next and then doing it again, and again, step by step. The surgeon. The oncologist. The second opinion at Mass General. The CAT scan. The bone scan. The science fiction horror of sterile walls and fluorescent lights and plastic and steel, the giant machines in this factory of life and death where there is no living thing to be seen, and the dead are hidden away.
I had a lumpectomy (there’s a word for you) and weeks of radiation. Were all the errant cells destroyed? How does one know for sure? A cell is so small—what if one got away, slipped into a capillary and headed on down the river to God knows where, to pick up where it left off? That is the sword of Damocles that hangs over the head of every survivor of cancer treatment: what if one got away? You wouldn’t know. You wouldn’t know until the symptoms started to take over, and from what I understand, once that happens your chances go way down...
I have one and a half. I was “lucky” and didn’t need a mastectomy when the little cluster of calcifications that “nine times out of ten is nothing” turned out to be cancer. Never well endowed, in my case a lumpectomy took out a lot of real estate.
After ten years, the half-boob still hurts; a constant reminder that life is short and days are too precious to waste. The doctor told me the pain is from the radiation, and should go away eventually. Ten years is a long eventually. Ten years is also a gift—many women don’t get ten years after surgery for breast cancer.
With a diagnosis of cancer, there comes a flood of questions. The most perplexing circle like vultures around the word “why?” Why does a woman who eats broccoli, takes vitamins, nurses her babies, and has no family history of breast cancer get breast cancer? Was it the abortion I had at nineteen? Was it the time I used heavy-duty paint stripper on the kitchen windows? Was it the stress of years living in a difficult marriage? Who knows?
What is it that triggers a cell to take on a demented life of its own? Matt Ridley, in Genome has a good description of the cascade of events within a cell that impel it to rebellion. Such a tiny thing, a cell, a net of chromosomes, a scrap of a spiral of DNA—you could die from that one tiny thing.
Cancer is strange. You go along with your life, feeling fine, and all the time there is this tiny thing growing inside you that carries your death. And you have no clue. I was too busy with children and life to take time out for a mammogram. When I finally made an appointment for the big squeeze, the last thing I expected was a call from the doctor suggesting a biopsy was in order. And what the heck did a biopsy involve, anyway?
It turns out there are two kinds of biopsies. One consists of lying on your stomach on a table with your breast hanging out through a hole so the doctor can stick a needle into it, remove some of the suspicious tissue, and send it off to the lab for the inquisition. So I got all ready, up to the point of assuming the position, only to be told that I didn’t have the required minimum size for the procedure. (Insult to injury!)
No, I had to have the other kind. The kind where they put you to sleep and take out a chunk, which seems a little odd to me because my total boobal endowment was just a chunk to begin with. When I heard the word “biopsy,” I always assumed it was just a little smidgeon of tissue that gets removed—not so. But the doctor was reassuring, thought for sure it wasn’t cancer, said he’d call me when the results were in.
So a week later the phone rings. It’s the doctor. I have three different kinds of cancer going on in my breast. I have a 30% chance of getting it in the other one. Oh crap.
I didn’t fall apart. Didn’t cry. Just went through the grim setting of one foot in front of the next and then doing it again, and again, step by step. The surgeon. The oncologist. The second opinion at Mass General. The CAT scan. The bone scan. The science fiction horror of sterile walls and fluorescent lights and plastic and steel, the giant machines in this factory of life and death where there is no living thing to be seen, and the dead are hidden away.
I had a lumpectomy (there’s a word for you) and weeks of radiation. Were all the errant cells destroyed? How does one know for sure? A cell is so small—what if one got away, slipped into a capillary and headed on down the river to God knows where, to pick up where it left off? That is the sword of Damocles that hangs over the head of every survivor of cancer treatment: what if one got away? You wouldn’t know. You wouldn’t know until the symptoms started to take over, and from what I understand, once that happens your chances go way down...
An Unwilling Cancer Student
After my surgery, I read everything I could find about breast cancer. So many books, so many articles, so many studies, trying to find out what happened and what I could do to keep it from happening again. There is so much conflicting advice in this age of information.
I Google the survival statistics, even knowing that for one individual, percentages don’t matter. You either get it again, or you don’t. All or nothing. One hundred percent or zero. And ultimately, does it matter? We are all guaranteed one visit from the Grim Reaper regardless of what we do.
What about mammograms? Do they cause cancer themselves? Some suggest so. Others swear that early detection far outweighs any risk.
Does diet make a difference? Some studies suggest so, while others seem to indicate not. Vitamins? Herbs? Green tea? Antioxidants? I use them all; take the shotgun approach.
Is cancer a failure of the immune system? Some say yes; others say no. Eat meat—don’t eat meat. Eat soy—don’t eat soy.
The geographical distribution of breast cancer is telling. Low in Africa and Asia; high in the US, Canada, Europe and Australia. Something about modern, high-tech countries is correlated with breast cancer—what is it?
Is it even possible to cut off a cancer recurrence before it starts? Some consistent factors seem to run through all the varying opinions. A diet high in raw, fresh fruits and vegetables apparently gives some protection—some of the sources I found suggested that the intact enzymes in raw foods are beneficial to the body. Eating raw fruits and vegetables is easy enough to do, and can’t hurt you even if it doesn’t work—which you wouldn’t know until the cancer grew big enough to take you down.
Vitamin D, melatonin, and selenium are associated with a lower incidence of cancer. The latest studies imply that vitamin E supplements are ineffective in preventing cancer.
I am groping in the dark, trying to find answers to something that, in the end, may have no answers. The pieces of the puzzle don’t fit together. And what good is it to have a few pieces, if you can’t see the whole thing?
Here is a list of my favorite websites for breast cancer information:
The Center for Disease Control. Has a lot of interesting statistics and general information.
The National Cancer Institute. Many articles, statistics, etc.
The Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation. Author of The Breast Book and medical authority on breast cancer. Much information about breast cancer, recurrence, survivor stories.
Susan G. Komen Organization. Covers every aspect of breast cancer.
Breast Cancer.Org. A wealth of information, open to alternative treatments as well.
Dr. Lorraine Day’s Official Website. Dr. Day overcame her own breast cancer using natural therapies.
Alternative Cancer Treatments Comparison and Testing. The best website I have found if you are looking into alternatives to conventional medical treatments.
PawPawResearch. Interesting information about the inhibiting effects of pawpaw on cancer cells.
I Google the survival statistics, even knowing that for one individual, percentages don’t matter. You either get it again, or you don’t. All or nothing. One hundred percent or zero. And ultimately, does it matter? We are all guaranteed one visit from the Grim Reaper regardless of what we do.
What about mammograms? Do they cause cancer themselves? Some suggest so. Others swear that early detection far outweighs any risk.
Does diet make a difference? Some studies suggest so, while others seem to indicate not. Vitamins? Herbs? Green tea? Antioxidants? I use them all; take the shotgun approach.
Is cancer a failure of the immune system? Some say yes; others say no. Eat meat—don’t eat meat. Eat soy—don’t eat soy.
The geographical distribution of breast cancer is telling. Low in Africa and Asia; high in the US, Canada, Europe and Australia. Something about modern, high-tech countries is correlated with breast cancer—what is it?
Is it even possible to cut off a cancer recurrence before it starts? Some consistent factors seem to run through all the varying opinions. A diet high in raw, fresh fruits and vegetables apparently gives some protection—some of the sources I found suggested that the intact enzymes in raw foods are beneficial to the body. Eating raw fruits and vegetables is easy enough to do, and can’t hurt you even if it doesn’t work—which you wouldn’t know until the cancer grew big enough to take you down.
Vitamin D, melatonin, and selenium are associated with a lower incidence of cancer. The latest studies imply that vitamin E supplements are ineffective in preventing cancer.
I am groping in the dark, trying to find answers to something that, in the end, may have no answers. The pieces of the puzzle don’t fit together. And what good is it to have a few pieces, if you can’t see the whole thing?
Here is a list of my favorite websites for breast cancer information:
The Center for Disease Control. Has a lot of interesting statistics and general information.
The National Cancer Institute. Many articles, statistics, etc.
The Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation. Author of The Breast Book and medical authority on breast cancer. Much information about breast cancer, recurrence, survivor stories.
Susan G. Komen Organization. Covers every aspect of breast cancer.
Breast Cancer.Org. A wealth of information, open to alternative treatments as well.
Dr. Lorraine Day’s Official Website. Dr. Day overcame her own breast cancer using natural therapies.
Alternative Cancer Treatments Comparison and Testing. The best website I have found if you are looking into alternatives to conventional medical treatments.
PawPawResearch. Interesting information about the inhibiting effects of pawpaw on cancer cells.
Where, O Death, Is Thy Sting?
A yellow jacket stung me last summer. I was mowing near a ground nest, careful not to get too close. But she snuck around behind and nailed me good.
It hurt. Just like all the other times I’ve been stung. And just like all the other times, I stopped mowing, went in the house to rub baking soda into the stings, bathed my toe in cold water, and went outside to finish mowing the lawn…
At first I thought I was just imagining that I didn’t feel right, kind of lightheaded and a little sick to my stomach. I kept mowing. Then my ears began to ring, I could feel my heart pounding, and darkness began to close in around the edges of my vision. Suddenly, I made the connection: this was an allergic reaction to the sting. I don’t DO allergies, I thought. How could this be happening?
I staggered into the house, calling for my husband to take me to the ER. He ran upstairs to look for some Benadryl, and I collapsed on the couch, fighting the darkness, talking fast while I still could, “It’s too late, call 911! Call 911!” As he spoke on the phone, it occurred to me that it would be easier for the EMTs if I got as close to the door as possible. So I rolled off the couch and dragged myself halfway down the front hall, and then I couldn’t move anymore.
The wood floor felt cool on my face. Lying there, I could hear my husband’s voice, and then the voice of a woman who was putting a blood pressure cuff on my arm. I focused on my one job—breathing. Air in…air out… it was a lot of effort. I heard the woman say she couldn’t get a reading.
The EMTs arrived. (Air in…air out…) A stinky oxygen mask covered my face, and they lifted me onto a stretcher. On the way down the front steps, there was a lurch—were they going to drop the stretcher? Then into the ambulance. An IV, some epinephrine and I don’t know what else…I heard someone say my blood pressure was 60 over 30, and thought whoa, that is low.
But I was not afraid.
There had been a moment, while I lay on the front hall floor, when I realized this might be the end. And in that moment I crossed some kind of line from anxiety to peace. I remember saying, “It’s OK if I die,” so my husband would not be afraid. Lying in the ambulance there was no fear; instead, I looked forward to Heaven. In my heart I kept saying, over and over, “I love you, Jesus, I love you. Thank you so much for the life you gave me.” And I knew it was all right to leave, that God had used me to bring good things into other people’s lives. And I was going to see Him really soon.
Well, the medications worked, and I’m still here. But there was a strange comfort in that experience, learning that when death finally does come, it will be OK. I am certain that God will be there with me at the end.
There is also a lesson here, and a warning. I have never had a reaction to a sting beyond the expected pain and local swelling. They hurt, but in the context of life they have always fallen into the annoyance category. The last thing I ever expected was a yellow jacket sending me into anaphylactic shock.
So, if you are ever stung, I highly recommend staying near a telephone for at least a half hour, until you are sure that the danger of shock has passed. It happens without warning, and it happens fast.
It hurt. Just like all the other times I’ve been stung. And just like all the other times, I stopped mowing, went in the house to rub baking soda into the stings, bathed my toe in cold water, and went outside to finish mowing the lawn…
At first I thought I was just imagining that I didn’t feel right, kind of lightheaded and a little sick to my stomach. I kept mowing. Then my ears began to ring, I could feel my heart pounding, and darkness began to close in around the edges of my vision. Suddenly, I made the connection: this was an allergic reaction to the sting. I don’t DO allergies, I thought. How could this be happening?
I staggered into the house, calling for my husband to take me to the ER. He ran upstairs to look for some Benadryl, and I collapsed on the couch, fighting the darkness, talking fast while I still could, “It’s too late, call 911! Call 911!” As he spoke on the phone, it occurred to me that it would be easier for the EMTs if I got as close to the door as possible. So I rolled off the couch and dragged myself halfway down the front hall, and then I couldn’t move anymore.
The wood floor felt cool on my face. Lying there, I could hear my husband’s voice, and then the voice of a woman who was putting a blood pressure cuff on my arm. I focused on my one job—breathing. Air in…air out… it was a lot of effort. I heard the woman say she couldn’t get a reading.
The EMTs arrived. (Air in…air out…) A stinky oxygen mask covered my face, and they lifted me onto a stretcher. On the way down the front steps, there was a lurch—were they going to drop the stretcher? Then into the ambulance. An IV, some epinephrine and I don’t know what else…I heard someone say my blood pressure was 60 over 30, and thought whoa, that is low.
But I was not afraid.
There had been a moment, while I lay on the front hall floor, when I realized this might be the end. And in that moment I crossed some kind of line from anxiety to peace. I remember saying, “It’s OK if I die,” so my husband would not be afraid. Lying in the ambulance there was no fear; instead, I looked forward to Heaven. In my heart I kept saying, over and over, “I love you, Jesus, I love you. Thank you so much for the life you gave me.” And I knew it was all right to leave, that God had used me to bring good things into other people’s lives. And I was going to see Him really soon.
Well, the medications worked, and I’m still here. But there was a strange comfort in that experience, learning that when death finally does come, it will be OK. I am certain that God will be there with me at the end.
There is also a lesson here, and a warning. I have never had a reaction to a sting beyond the expected pain and local swelling. They hurt, but in the context of life they have always fallen into the annoyance category. The last thing I ever expected was a yellow jacket sending me into anaphylactic shock.
So, if you are ever stung, I highly recommend staying near a telephone for at least a half hour, until you are sure that the danger of shock has passed. It happens without warning, and it happens fast.
All Diets Lead to Death
When my youngest daughter was eleven, she designed an experiment on the effects of nutrition for a science fair. I took her to the pet shop—her favorite place on earth—and bought four baby mice from a single litter, two males and two females. She put a pair into each of two cages. Both cages were alike: clean bedding, toys, a hiding place, a bottle for fresh water, and an exercise wheel. The only environmental difference between the two pairs of mice was their diet.
One pair lived in junk-food heaven. They eagerly grabbed at the chips and cookies that made up the largest part of their diet, and relished occasional treats of sweetened cereal.
The other pair enjoyed their daily offerings of nuts, fruit, vegetables and whole grains.
Sarah weighed them every day, and measured their growth (I have forgotten those statistics now), and they became quite tame.
The experiment took on a darker edge when the two females gave birth. The well-nourished mother had a large litter of strong little pups, who all remained healthy to weaning. The junk food mama gave birth to a large litter as well—and promptly devoured all but two of her babies. Of course, you can’t draw a conclusion from such a small sample, but we couldn’t help thinking that the junk food mama’s deficient diet had something to do with her ravenous appetite for fresh meat.
Sarah designed a maze to test their problem-solving ability and memory. Here again, the sample is way too small to draw a conclusion, but it was kind of interesting. The well-nourished mice figured out the maze more quickly than their junk food counterparts, and subsequent tests bore that out as the well-fed mice ran quicker and quicker courses through the maze without making mistakes. The undernourished mice never quite “got it.”
It was a good experiment, and Sarah got an A in the science fair. But the most memorable thing about it, the thing that has stayed with me and put so much of life in perspective, was my daughter’s observation: “You know, Mom, when you think about it, all diets lead to death.”
One pair lived in junk-food heaven. They eagerly grabbed at the chips and cookies that made up the largest part of their diet, and relished occasional treats of sweetened cereal.
The other pair enjoyed their daily offerings of nuts, fruit, vegetables and whole grains.
Sarah weighed them every day, and measured their growth (I have forgotten those statistics now), and they became quite tame.
The experiment took on a darker edge when the two females gave birth. The well-nourished mother had a large litter of strong little pups, who all remained healthy to weaning. The junk food mama gave birth to a large litter as well—and promptly devoured all but two of her babies. Of course, you can’t draw a conclusion from such a small sample, but we couldn’t help thinking that the junk food mama’s deficient diet had something to do with her ravenous appetite for fresh meat.
Sarah designed a maze to test their problem-solving ability and memory. Here again, the sample is way too small to draw a conclusion, but it was kind of interesting. The well-nourished mice figured out the maze more quickly than their junk food counterparts, and subsequent tests bore that out as the well-fed mice ran quicker and quicker courses through the maze without making mistakes. The undernourished mice never quite “got it.”
It was a good experiment, and Sarah got an A in the science fair. But the most memorable thing about it, the thing that has stayed with me and put so much of life in perspective, was my daughter’s observation: “You know, Mom, when you think about it, all diets lead to death.”
Of Mice and Men
A little more on the subject of mice: they are beautiful. Their perfect tiny paws can hold a kernel of corn like little hands. Their heads are finely sculptured, handsome in structure. And I am a sucker for those big black eyes.
Mice live together in cooperative social groups. The fathers care for the babies just as tenderly as their mothers do, and females will nurse each other’s babies. I have watched older sisters care for their younger siblings just like human big sisters. And believe it or not, they are fastidious about personal cleanliness.
Knowing this about mice does not keep me from using d-Con, however. We live in a very old house, and having a few mice around is OK, as long as they keep to themselves. I draw the line at mouse droppings in the kitchen drawers. When I have to empty every drawer and use bleach, the mouse population is out of control.
That is when the little d-Con treats show up in the kitchen cupboards.
This has always been a dilemma for me, and a source of low-grade guilt. I tried mousetraps years ago, but the sight of those mangled little heads was more than I could bear. For a while I used a Hav-a-Hart trap and released them one by one, far away from the house. But one time a crow swooped down and snatched up the little guy before he could scurry into the bushes, and I realized that my attempts to have a heart were probably resulting in death anyway, far away from friends and family.
Those sticky traps are out of the question. How horrible for a little animal to be stuck in glue, alive, terrified, unable to escape. And then what? Do you drown them?
So I resorted to poison. I don’t want to know how they die, if it hurts, if they know they are dying. All I know is that they love the stuff, enjoy a last meal, and then there are no more mouse droppings in the kitchen drawers for a while.
There is a big downside to using poison, however. The theory is that the mice get thirsty and go outside to find water before they die. In real life, it doesn’t always work that way. In real life, usually right before a holiday dinner when guests are coming over, a mouse will die inside a wall. At first, there are just faint whiffs of something “off,” and you wonder if it’s time to clean the refrigerator. The next day, the undeniable smell of death hovers in the air.
I have read “advice” on this problem that includes ripping the wall apart to find the body. Trust me, that is way too extreme. After many years of facing this situation over and over again, I know the best solution is to wait it out. Burn incense, light scented candles, spray room deodorant, open all the windows, apologize profusely to your guests if you have to—in a few days, the problem will go away by itself.
If you could graph the smell of death, you would see a line that rises quickly to a peak, and then suddenly drops off to zero. The smell is always the worst just before it stops. So when you reach the point of gagging when you enter the room, take heart—it is almost over. (Just a little housekeeping tip.)
In a perfect world, mice and men could live together in harmony. We have so much in common, after all. But mice can be a threat to human life—unfortunately for the mice, humans rule.
Mice live together in cooperative social groups. The fathers care for the babies just as tenderly as their mothers do, and females will nurse each other’s babies. I have watched older sisters care for their younger siblings just like human big sisters. And believe it or not, they are fastidious about personal cleanliness.
Knowing this about mice does not keep me from using d-Con, however. We live in a very old house, and having a few mice around is OK, as long as they keep to themselves. I draw the line at mouse droppings in the kitchen drawers. When I have to empty every drawer and use bleach, the mouse population is out of control.
That is when the little d-Con treats show up in the kitchen cupboards.
This has always been a dilemma for me, and a source of low-grade guilt. I tried mousetraps years ago, but the sight of those mangled little heads was more than I could bear. For a while I used a Hav-a-Hart trap and released them one by one, far away from the house. But one time a crow swooped down and snatched up the little guy before he could scurry into the bushes, and I realized that my attempts to have a heart were probably resulting in death anyway, far away from friends and family.
Those sticky traps are out of the question. How horrible for a little animal to be stuck in glue, alive, terrified, unable to escape. And then what? Do you drown them?
So I resorted to poison. I don’t want to know how they die, if it hurts, if they know they are dying. All I know is that they love the stuff, enjoy a last meal, and then there are no more mouse droppings in the kitchen drawers for a while.
There is a big downside to using poison, however. The theory is that the mice get thirsty and go outside to find water before they die. In real life, it doesn’t always work that way. In real life, usually right before a holiday dinner when guests are coming over, a mouse will die inside a wall. At first, there are just faint whiffs of something “off,” and you wonder if it’s time to clean the refrigerator. The next day, the undeniable smell of death hovers in the air.
I have read “advice” on this problem that includes ripping the wall apart to find the body. Trust me, that is way too extreme. After many years of facing this situation over and over again, I know the best solution is to wait it out. Burn incense, light scented candles, spray room deodorant, open all the windows, apologize profusely to your guests if you have to—in a few days, the problem will go away by itself.
If you could graph the smell of death, you would see a line that rises quickly to a peak, and then suddenly drops off to zero. The smell is always the worst just before it stops. So when you reach the point of gagging when you enter the room, take heart—it is almost over. (Just a little housekeeping tip.)
In a perfect world, mice and men could live together in harmony. We have so much in common, after all. But mice can be a threat to human life—unfortunately for the mice, humans rule.
Dry Bones
Anatomy and Physiology 101. I held a human skull in my hands. It once cradled a living brain, anchored muscles that smiled and frowned, chewed countless meals. Now an anonymous teaching tool, this skull belonged to a real person who once walked this earth.
I was in a bad place the year I took A&P 101 at Salem State College. I had just learned that the baby I carried within me was dead. The sixth dead baby. My concept of a loving God was shattered—how could he love me, hitting me over and over with dead babies? He seemed more like a nasty bully who gives random electric shocks to caged rats, or pulls the wings off flies to watch them suffer. Life was a horror with a boss like that in charge. I wanted off the planet.
It was ironic that I was studying bones. My faith in God was stripped down to its skeleton. There is a creator. Jesus really did come and die and rise from the dead. Period.
I was slowly collecting night classes for a possible nursing degree someday—in between being the best mom I could to my two-year-old son. At 26, I had become an unwilling expert on grief. You run. You run as fast as you can, you work with all your strength, you study with all your mind, anything to keep the darkness at arm’s length, because if you let it swallow you, you might not find your way out. So taking a challenging class was a relief, a way to run.
I had learned that if you can just keep running, after a while the intensity of grief will slowly soften, the way a deep gouge in the earth will lose its hard edges after years of erosion and layers of fallen leaves. Yes, it is still there. But somehow it will begin to fit into the landscape of your life, you get used to it being there, and its power to hurt is blunted. That probably goes against all the advice in the psychology books, but it works. What are you supposed to do, especially when you have a child who needs you? Sit around and cry all the time? Go to bed and don’t come out until it’s over? You run.
So there I sat in the classroom with a human skull in my hand, weeping inside for my dead baby and raging against God.
The dark ivory skull was etched with delicate zigzag lines where the various bones met. I learned the names of those bones: orbital, frontal, parietal, temporal, occipital, mandible, maxilla. Studying the skull in my hand, I noticed little holes piercing it to allow nerves and blood vessels to pass through. And then it hit me: there were two tiny holes, one under the corner of each eye, for tears.
How did they get there? When you think of the details in a human body, how a single cell can generate such a complex being, a complex being that actually has tiny holes carved through its skull so its tears can drain into its nose, it is hard not to believe in a Creator. A Creator who knew that we would cry.
Odd, that the bones of a man or woman I will never know became my first step on the way back to God.
I was in a bad place the year I took A&P 101 at Salem State College. I had just learned that the baby I carried within me was dead. The sixth dead baby. My concept of a loving God was shattered—how could he love me, hitting me over and over with dead babies? He seemed more like a nasty bully who gives random electric shocks to caged rats, or pulls the wings off flies to watch them suffer. Life was a horror with a boss like that in charge. I wanted off the planet.
It was ironic that I was studying bones. My faith in God was stripped down to its skeleton. There is a creator. Jesus really did come and die and rise from the dead. Period.
I was slowly collecting night classes for a possible nursing degree someday—in between being the best mom I could to my two-year-old son. At 26, I had become an unwilling expert on grief. You run. You run as fast as you can, you work with all your strength, you study with all your mind, anything to keep the darkness at arm’s length, because if you let it swallow you, you might not find your way out. So taking a challenging class was a relief, a way to run.
I had learned that if you can just keep running, after a while the intensity of grief will slowly soften, the way a deep gouge in the earth will lose its hard edges after years of erosion and layers of fallen leaves. Yes, it is still there. But somehow it will begin to fit into the landscape of your life, you get used to it being there, and its power to hurt is blunted. That probably goes against all the advice in the psychology books, but it works. What are you supposed to do, especially when you have a child who needs you? Sit around and cry all the time? Go to bed and don’t come out until it’s over? You run.
So there I sat in the classroom with a human skull in my hand, weeping inside for my dead baby and raging against God.
The dark ivory skull was etched with delicate zigzag lines where the various bones met. I learned the names of those bones: orbital, frontal, parietal, temporal, occipital, mandible, maxilla. Studying the skull in my hand, I noticed little holes piercing it to allow nerves and blood vessels to pass through. And then it hit me: there were two tiny holes, one under the corner of each eye, for tears.
How did they get there? When you think of the details in a human body, how a single cell can generate such a complex being, a complex being that actually has tiny holes carved through its skull so its tears can drain into its nose, it is hard not to believe in a Creator. A Creator who knew that we would cry.
Odd, that the bones of a man or woman I will never know became my first step on the way back to God.
Fading Away...
A very old man lives with us. Ninety-one years of memories sparkle in his brain as the connections between them begin to fray.
He can’t take care of himself anymore. On a good day he will shuffle into the kitchen, fill a little pot with water to boil an egg, make some toast and heat up his coffee in the microwave. Sometimes he forgets to turn off the stove. Sometimes he forgets how to turn on the toaster. Most days, he gets dressed, then falls asleep in his recliner, and I make him breakfast and wake him up to eat it.
His world has become very small. He watches TV, reads the paper from cover to cover, and sleeps. He does a lot of sleeping.
He was a captain in the Army Air Corps during WWII. He married his childhood sweetheart, raised two sons, built his home with his own hands. He managed a hardware store all of his working life, with a friendly smile for each customer. He could answer any number of do-it-yourself questions, and calculate complicated math problems in his head. In his 50s he took an IQ test and scored 130.
Five years ago—shortly after his wife died—he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. At that point he was still driving, still living in his own house, paying his bills, cooking his meals, going out to lunch once a week with an old friend.
But slowly, relentlessly, his brain unraveled. On good days, we questioned the diagnosis. It was, after all, just his doctor’s opinion. What kind of test definitively indicates Alzheimer’s? Wouldn’t depression have the same symptoms: the forgetfulness, the lethargy? Should he be taking Prozac instead of Aricept?
His typically careful attention to finances drifted away. He forgot to pay important bills, and paid others twice. He wrote checks to any organization that asked for donations. It didn’t take them long to recognize a patsy—solicitations filled his mailbox.
Sometimes he forgot to take the medications that his son set up for him in compartmentalized boxes once a week, or forgot what day it was and took a double dose.
Always neat and tidy, he began to let the housework go. He stopped taking care of his yard. His two sons took turns cleaning his house and mowing the lawn when they could. And then one day he fell and cut his head. And we knew he couldn’t live alone anymore.
Lives changed—his, and ours. We created a private area for him in our home, where he could have his familiar bed, his chairs and couch, his pictures. At first, I was able to leave him alone for a few hours while I worked. But his need for supervision increased to the point where I had to quit my job and stay home with him.
He can’t be left alone. My husband and I go to different services at church. If we go out to eat, Dad goes with us. Our weekends hiking in the mountains are over for a season--even an hour walk in the woods behind the house could be too long. In many ways, it is like having an elderly three-year-old to care for, but different, because he is a father to be honored and respected. We count our blessings, though: he is kind, he never complains, never asks for anything. It could be a lot worse.
Sometimes I wonder what he thinks about his life. Communication is difficult; he doesn’t hear well, and often struggles to find words when he speaks. We try to provide a happy environment for him, but I really don’t know if he is happy or not. He obviously enjoys food and family, likes the dogs, and always welcomes the daily newspaper. If he is living in the eternal present, then maybe the erosion of his memory is not that significant to him. But sometimes I see him gazing at the picture of his wife on the wall, and I know he misses her.
I’ve never lived with a really old person before. There is a certain horror in watching the decline of a human being. All the years of learning, growing, living—is this how it ends? “Not with a bang, but a whimper?” Lost in fog, with the walls slowly closing in?
And no less horrifying is the realization that my husband and I are next in line for this.
He can’t take care of himself anymore. On a good day he will shuffle into the kitchen, fill a little pot with water to boil an egg, make some toast and heat up his coffee in the microwave. Sometimes he forgets to turn off the stove. Sometimes he forgets how to turn on the toaster. Most days, he gets dressed, then falls asleep in his recliner, and I make him breakfast and wake him up to eat it.
His world has become very small. He watches TV, reads the paper from cover to cover, and sleeps. He does a lot of sleeping.
He was a captain in the Army Air Corps during WWII. He married his childhood sweetheart, raised two sons, built his home with his own hands. He managed a hardware store all of his working life, with a friendly smile for each customer. He could answer any number of do-it-yourself questions, and calculate complicated math problems in his head. In his 50s he took an IQ test and scored 130.
Five years ago—shortly after his wife died—he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. At that point he was still driving, still living in his own house, paying his bills, cooking his meals, going out to lunch once a week with an old friend.
But slowly, relentlessly, his brain unraveled. On good days, we questioned the diagnosis. It was, after all, just his doctor’s opinion. What kind of test definitively indicates Alzheimer’s? Wouldn’t depression have the same symptoms: the forgetfulness, the lethargy? Should he be taking Prozac instead of Aricept?
His typically careful attention to finances drifted away. He forgot to pay important bills, and paid others twice. He wrote checks to any organization that asked for donations. It didn’t take them long to recognize a patsy—solicitations filled his mailbox.
Sometimes he forgot to take the medications that his son set up for him in compartmentalized boxes once a week, or forgot what day it was and took a double dose.
Always neat and tidy, he began to let the housework go. He stopped taking care of his yard. His two sons took turns cleaning his house and mowing the lawn when they could. And then one day he fell and cut his head. And we knew he couldn’t live alone anymore.
Lives changed—his, and ours. We created a private area for him in our home, where he could have his familiar bed, his chairs and couch, his pictures. At first, I was able to leave him alone for a few hours while I worked. But his need for supervision increased to the point where I had to quit my job and stay home with him.
He can’t be left alone. My husband and I go to different services at church. If we go out to eat, Dad goes with us. Our weekends hiking in the mountains are over for a season--even an hour walk in the woods behind the house could be too long. In many ways, it is like having an elderly three-year-old to care for, but different, because he is a father to be honored and respected. We count our blessings, though: he is kind, he never complains, never asks for anything. It could be a lot worse.
Sometimes I wonder what he thinks about his life. Communication is difficult; he doesn’t hear well, and often struggles to find words when he speaks. We try to provide a happy environment for him, but I really don’t know if he is happy or not. He obviously enjoys food and family, likes the dogs, and always welcomes the daily newspaper. If he is living in the eternal present, then maybe the erosion of his memory is not that significant to him. But sometimes I see him gazing at the picture of his wife on the wall, and I know he misses her.
I’ve never lived with a really old person before. There is a certain horror in watching the decline of a human being. All the years of learning, growing, living—is this how it ends? “Not with a bang, but a whimper?” Lost in fog, with the walls slowly closing in?
And no less horrifying is the realization that my husband and I are next in line for this.
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