Thinking about death this week

On July 17th/18th I had a severe cardac episode which subsided over the span of the night. On the Friday of the episode, I also lost my cat, Booty. In the following days, although weak, I began to recover from the effects of the heart episode, but Boothy never came home and I was terrified that he had gottten stuck in the shed of the neighbors who had gone on vacation. They were the last ones to see him alive on Saturday when they went away. I couldn't sleep at night thinking of him without food or water for days. My sister and I had both gone to the shed but by then he would have been dead. It was an awful week. On Thursday the 23rd, Booty's body was found in my recycle bin and on Sunday the 26th, my sister came over and buried him for me in the pet cemetary in the back yard.

She found 2 bottles when she dug his grave, one of them from 1891 and the other from 1927. They were easy to identify by their names and serial numbers. Sue dug the dirt out and I washed them. The 1927 bottle seemed to mean something to me.

Today, still struggling every day with sadness and crying periodically during each day, I read about Bettye Saar dying. She was one of my favorite artists. I saw a show of her work called Souvenirs at the Academy of Fine Arts (now closed after a hundred or more years). She would have been 100 on the 30th of July 2026 having been born on that date 1926.

The Body Keeps the Score was the title of a book I heard about during a book review interview on npr some years ago. The gist of it was that memories are not only in our brains but the emotions of the experience are also filed in our bodies. The 10 days from my cardiac episode have been riven with deep sadness and emotional pain. When I read about Bettye Saar, I remembered that July 25th was the anniversary of my mother's birthday. My mother would have been 100 in 2024 having been born July 25th in 1924. I think some of my misery was the memory of my mother hidden in my body and surfaced in the sorrow of the death of my animal companion and the painful episode with my heart.

My sister was with me today and did a lot of work for me. She is a light in the dark coal mine of my current existence. Her energy and her vitality give me stength and the work she does gives my life order. She is the gift my mother gave me.

That's all I had to say about all of that. Hopefully as time goes on, I will continue to recover and reach the calm surface of my life again.

Safe seas fellow voyagers

wrightj45@yahoo.com