Appreciation (38) …Poppy died today

Appreciation (38) …Poppy died today

Torrey Orton

Oct. 4, 2011

There's an absence here today

I keep expecting to see him in his usual haunts – before the dining room radiator, on our bed, beside the pond in a corner outside Jane's study. I have never known, or just forgotten, the absence of a presence in this way. It began early yesterday when I looked in the early half-light for him near the radiator and couldn't see him. He had shrunk it seemed, though on closer view was laid out in a relaxed, balanced array - head to the heater and back legs and tail fanning away from it on his two ply sleeping pad. And lifeless, already stiffening by 6AM.

Or is it the presence of absence that's happening? He howled his way into death earlier that night, already having lost much of his locomotion when his back legs failed under him as they had been threatening to do for a couple of months. He had woken about 2am and struggled around a bit and we went to see him and then left again and ½ hour later he set off one, the last it turned out, of his trademark howlings. This mimics with convincing similarity the roar of a lion, even to the pose of the head thrust forward and down a bit which gives throat to the sound - ouaagh, repeated on a rising crescendo of pace and volume, to tail off in a couple of fading breaths. Altogether, about 8 calls.

This performance was almost always elicited by emptiness, by rooms in which he found himself unexpectedly (?) alone. Audible in the street, neighbours say. This was his last alone, throated with the fullness of his late ageing self. Just to write it brings tears for me. Such a roar! He also beset the garden at times after meals as if some latent memory of a long not present competitor arose to take the meal off him.


We finally buried him the next day a few feet away and just as far down as his predecessor Moon's resting place in the enclosure outside the bathroom - like her, wrapped in plastic and topped with a rose and a sprinkle of white wine and tears. Later will come the azalea above.

Before that had already come the clean-up, especially of bowls. He had three flash water bowls of distinguished design: one outside the back door, two inside - one by the eating space in the kitchen and the other near the heater in the dining room. They supported his mild struggle with failing kidneys over the last two years. He, however, sought often the pleasure of more natural containers – pot plant saucers' remnant traces or the pond's more prodigious offerings – passing by the flash without a nod.

He was just 18 and been with us 12 years or so, after a neighbour offered him …his many other virtues can be found here.

Here's potted Poppy in his youth, always a good fit for a tight spot.

Being here (2) …. Hurdles along the way to now…not submitting to sleep.

Being here (2) …. Hurdles along the way to now…not submitting to sleep.
Torrey Orton
May 11, 2010

The pull of doing (and having?) on being.

As I was contemplating my sleep disciplines and decision-making, I realised that for longer than I can remember I really had not been outside the boundaries of my self-imposed requirement to be doing something most of the time. I never just let go, though I am an agile napper. Yes, I can let go a little, and this acknowledges a capacity to be with how I am at various moments – to feel tiredness unmitigated by purposeful overdrive (which I apply automatically of course). It's not a virtue, just a normal adult habit, started in the depths of early childhood by requirements of others. Not a vice of theirs either, just normal bending to the wheel.


But, this napping and self-acknowledgment occurs in the blind spots of the general commandment to be doing something. The closest I get to evading the commandment are periods of mindless activity like shopping, lawning (my nephew's word for grass cutting when he was three helping push a hand mower around our yard) and car cleaning. I almost do not feel the commandment, only know it by inference from occasional awareness (as that which started this reverie) of deep, undifferentiated drives sturdily pulling/pushing away at me all the time … the flowing undercurrent of my energies.


Consciousness carved
I am imagining this current as the sort which flows through caverns and crevices in deep limestone formations, trackable by spelunkers 'til the point of nowaythrough where quiet waters slide between too-narrow gaps in smoothed stone. An out of sight consciousness this, its weirdness perhaps signalled by the very different names for the same exploration - caving, potholing, canyoning and spelunking. The surface evidence of these formations are the famous canyons of flash flood fame, followed by potholes which have surface access, and then caves which are 99% out of sight.


Anyway, it is an unbalanced drive this flow. I am extremely good at putting my often unconscious perception of the demand of the moment before longer term considerations of my health, rest, preparation, etc. I think this experience is related to that of low grade chronic stress, where the original stressors are now out of sight, but the drain on the total system continues. It is a hurdle I usually do not even notice I am stumbling over on my way to my possibly being present.


Recently I have had therapy clients fronting up with similar hurdles. Probably they have more often been there than I've noticed. So, insight into others follows insight into self, which allows more delicate evidence to become visible. Strange to think of stress as delicate.


NB – I do much of my writing these days by starting with a theme, image, or perception strong enough to demand a first step recording – a note in my always handy pad - and then letting it unfold from the act of writing itself. Putting down the first elaboration of the image elicits other words allied to those already on the page in some way which often is not immediately apparent…I used to sketch outlines of posts, but have found that they do not advance the production all that much. Revisiting the partially developed piece does the job of extracting its completion from the further images and perceptions which those already down pull up from my innards.