Grief

Hope In The Spring

/ Anita Marie / 12 Comments
W.A. Mozart
W.A. Mozart

 

This is Wolfie, he died two years ago from kidney failure.

He was 17 years old.

Wolfie isn’t  like my other cats because:

He loved eating potato chips

he would fight  me for my cheeseburgers

and he considered stealing food from my plate a contact sport .

For fun he enjoyed getting into my book bag, probably just so he could hear the crash when he would knock it off the chair.

He also found ways to steal my pillow when I was sleeping- I guess I should be grateful he only wanted to sleep on it.

The thing of it is, after he died I realized I wasn’t use to pillows anymore and I was waking up in the middle of the night and tossing it on the floor.

Wolfie had some weird habits, but I wasn’t the perfect pet owner so it balanced itself out.

This is Carl Kolchak

Carl Kolchak
Carl Kolchak

 

Last year I rescued him from a bad end- he was caught in a trap and on his way to the Humane Soceity when I took him home.

Carl isn’t like my other cats because:

He eats potato chips, hogs my pillow and if I blink he will steal the food off of my plate.

 

And when I walk in the door and sit my book bag down he purrs so hard his body shakes and then he jumps up grabs it and pulls it down.

When it hits the floor he doesn’t even flinch.

 

It’s funny, the way life finds ways to go on.

 

 

Back At You Tia

/ Anita Marie / 3 Comments

my brother

 my brother at his son’s memorial service

Yesterday on my way home from work I was thinking how much the world has changed in such a short period of time I think about my Nephew who is not alive to see it.

Sometimes the world is pretty awful and sometimes it’s pretty great and most of the time I like it and I’m sure he would have too.

Yesterday on my way home from work I saw this beautiful silver hearse pull up along side of my bus.

Okay, yes I noticed it,

That may sound weird but the fact is I drove black hearses ( which are boring and old school ) and that silver one?

It was a beauty.

So I’m watching this great looking car, which I could easily see myself behind the wheel of

when I see the Funeral Homes name stenciled, tastefully on the driver’s door.

It was a hearse from the funeral home that my Nephew went to after he died.

As a rule, that home doesn’t do a lot of work this far up North in our state.

So I suppose

on that day

at that time

when I was thinking about my Nephew

he was thinking of me too.

What Remains

/ Anita Marie / 4 Comments

There is an artist

who takes cremains ( cremated  human remains )

and for a fee ( and NOT an inexpensive one ) turns them into artwork- a memorial to  your loved one – composed of your loved one.

A little strange, but given that Funerals are a way for the living to separate themselves from the dead so that both can go on to find peace is a very necessary ritual. How you chose to do that is personal and I would never question how people to express themselves in this process as long as they find a way to do that which is true to themselves and their beliefs.

So I was concerned when I read that an Artist- with little experience in dealing with people who are going through one of the most devastating experiences of their lives sits down with an Art Review Critic and says things like:

 ” What is a ripp-off is people my age burying a 16 year old…what I’m trying to get across is that death is a part of life. “

First of all, I could have gotten that philosophy from the pages of  any Pop Psychology  book that you can grab off of a clearance table at a bookstore or out of a box at a yard sale- but  what is disturbing to me is that this Artist is using this philosophy to guide him in consultations with people who have just had a loved one stolen away from them by Death.

Back to the quote- what this Artist says is true- people who have found a ways to make money from the dead is a part of life.

I would advise that if you go into a situation where anyone is asking you for money and death- which has only just started to change the way you used to be- you really need to take someone with you – someone to watch out for you, to make sure you’re not entering into an arrangement where your loved one would say, ” for that much money – just take it and LIVE ” 

Keep in mind this Artist never mentions what it’s like to see  the deceased before they were cremated, has never had a family member or friend hand him blanket to keep their Mom- who has just passed on- warm on her way to the funeral home  because she has always hated the cold- or talks about what it’s like when a Parent hands him their child’s favorite toy with no words and he knows they are doing that because he may be the last person to ever hold their child again.

That lack of acknowlegement concerns me because these are the people he is working with, these are the people he is taking money from I hope that as he pursues this practice he treats these  people – the living and the dead with the care and empathy that the most vulnerable of us need.

This Artist needs to realize he is no longer just an artist- he is a guide now and the people coming to him have never been more lost.

 

December 24, 2007

/ Anita Marie / 6 Comments

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So on this Eve of Christmas I started to think about:

My childhood friends- gone from this life-  who used to call up on Christmas and ask if it would be okay for them to come over and how my Mom or Dad or one of my other relatives would snatch the phone away from me and say to them, ” if you weren’t busy asking stupid questions you could be here by now.”

I thought about my Grandparents and my Aunts who left us but not before they taught me to be brave and kind and creative – and to never be afraid to speak up.

And I thought about my sweet cat Wolfgang- aka Insanity Jones- whose confidence in me to take care of him and to be his friend never left him- I saw it in his eyes when he died.

I thought about how I could easily sit here and just grieve over all of these losses on a night that’s about gathering together to celebrate life and hope.

And in the end  I knew I couldn’t do that because

what they all gave to me, nothing can ever take away.

Remember that.

I always will.

Merry Christmas

amm

Where The Insanity Began

/ Anita Marie / 7 Comments

img_0011.jpg   

Sixteen years ago my sons and I took a bus to downtown Everett and met my husband’s bus that he drove into town daily from Granite Falls, Washington.

One of his passengers had brought us the newest addition to our family- it was a tiny little kitten who was the runt of the litter and just about seven weeks old with bowed front legs, blue eyes and a little ringed tail.

The kitten was sitting in a McDonalds bag with the edges rolled down and he smelled like French fries.

He looked up into my face and meowed and when I reached down to pick him up he crawled up my arm straight to my shoulder- where he promptly sunk his claws into my skin so he wouldn’t slide off and then he tried to bite my glasses.

It took three of us to get him out of my hair.

My sons and I had already picked out a name for this tiny creature- we’d just seen a movie that we all loved and my boys were already familiar with the music- I made them aware of it because the composer was my Grandfather’s favorite- he said this man wrote the most perfect music in the world…

 we named that little guy Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

The funny thing is when the boys heard ” Amadeus ” they thought it sounded like “Mama’s Deus ” so they called our Wolfie ” Mommy’s Deus”  for years.

Anyway on the bus ride home we had put Wolfgang in a box and he howled and growled and the bus driver, a bear of a guy named Pat laughed and called back to us, ” Hey, what wild animal do you have back there?”

I opened the box and lifted Wolfgang out by the scruff of his neck held him up and he hissed and spit at everybody and that was pretty much sums up Wolfie.

He’s been more of a companion then pet and he’s inspired stories that I’ve written and some of his real life exploits have turned up in a series I did about a character called ” Insanity Jones “.

People thought I made up things about ” Insanity” like how he sat in the middle of the street one day and backed up traffic and his hatred of fire engines and how I had to lock him up if he saw firemen because he’d try to bite them – but that was all true.

And then there was the Summer four years ago when Wolfie saw my oldest Son’s pitbull running straight for me- I was not in danger but Wolfie didn’t know that.

The next thing I know Wolfie is running by me jumps up and wraps himself around Puma’s head and tries to take his eyes out- and at the end of the day my cat didn’t have a mark on him.

He also spent the rest of the week tormenting that poor dog and barfing on my Son’s suitcase- don’t ask, but when Wolfie got mad at you that’s what he did.

That’s Wolfie’s story, his true story- he was loved and cherished and spoiled and loyal and mean and smart and he was my heart.

When he died that morning, part of me did too.

Tonight we buried him under his favorite tree, then we made a little bonfire for him.

He was up there somewhere wishing, I’m sure, that it would have spread so that he could’ve had one last shot at those Firemen.