windthread

is

some conversation while placing stones.    Me :  something about Tay    ...  is        Emrie :  was,   Old Nana.  she is dead.     i am stopped....in my tracks.  Was....Is.....   and i say no.   Is.   for me,   Is.       Emrie:  maybe she is deciding.

for me,   is.

These last nights i have talked  to Kay.  Phone.    i have talked about her here before.   She who taught me to draw.    Who i partnered with with the book store till i bailed.  Who i studied with some years.   Who taught my son to draw.   Who introduced me to all manner of things.   Kay.   Kay Gould Caskey.  back in Michigan.   and Kay,  who receives conversation with ones  who have "crossed over".   not by her own choice, in the beginning,    but because she was  chosen.   her work.      for 30 some years i have known of these exchanges with people,  here and from the "other side".   i KNOW them to be real and true.   i have not felt the need to "go there".   but i know.  because of her.   She is Beauty FULL and Brilliant and taught under the ....i choose this word.,  it's not her word,  ...under the beauty full umbrella of 

Metaphysics

Wikipedia

Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality;  the first principles of being,  identity and change,  space and time,  cause and effect,  necessity and possibility.

Metaphysics studies qyestions related to what it is for something to exist and what types of existence are there.

Metaphysics seeks to answer,   in abstract and fully general manner,  the question of:  what is....It....that exists,  and what ...It..is like.

That first evening then night "without" Tay.   I felt this Horrible Emptiness    from my scalp down.   Through my face and whole body to my pelvis....Emptiness and off and on that emptiness felt filled with some thick substance.  i thought...how can i live?

Kay said...watch for her.   she will come.   

I have been the handmaiden of Qualifiers  always,   over and over,  always.   I am letting them GO.  I feel like this is the opportunity of a lifetime,  MY Life Time which now is clearly finite.   I am ready.   Tay and I learned eachother,  learned  Love for these years together in such a total way that this Hill has given.  required.   We will continue.   That sense of horrible emptyness has become a sense of OPEN NESS.  and that's all i need to begin.   

 

 

hold

 

 

 

after a while,   she asked if she could use the shovel,  and dig her own hole.    while she worked,  Alyssia and i just sat either talking quietly or staring off.   i thought she was just working off some energy.    she propped the shovel finally after probably a half hour and was looking for the little pinecone.     she had a handful of sticks and set the longest down,   looked,  got the shovel and dug more.    Satisfied,   she came away and i asked what she had been doing.   Burying some sticks for Tay to take with her.

When Sunny Ray was attacked by the dogs,  we called our first mobile  vet Stacey who told us to call SarahLynn as she had come to focus her practice only  on palliative care.    We called SarahLynn this time and she told us to take Tay to Chico,  that she only does livestock.    Tuesday  afternoon Tay was having trouble.   We called Stacey hoping she could come and evaluate things,  maybe help come up with a plan if Hope were possible.  She came the next morning.   She is very gentle.   We had Tay out in front of the tin house door on a folded sheet.   We took a long time telling every detail we could think of that might give her information that would help.  She listens closely and asks questions.   Then we just were quiet while she ran her hands over Tay,  looking closely.  lifting a foot,  held her face.  She went to her truck and came back with treats which she offered and Tay wanted.  She put one in her mouth and then held a second in the palm of her hand.  Tay could not figure out how to get her mouth to take that treat.  Several tries.   She then began telling us what she was seeing.  Pointing things out as she talked.  specific things.  She talked about the difference in spinal cord injury v.s.  brain.   it was Tay's brain.   some silence.     i told her we were willing to go to great ends if she could recover,  even just some?   She said that things would continue to get worse.   She said to know how to help her would take all those diagnostics at UC Davis.   Tay would have to stay there.  and then,  depending on what they found, there would be a treatment plan of some sort and maybe ,  maybe something good.  Also,  maybe not.   She looked off into the trees and said it would be very hard for a dog like Tay.   Talked a little about the question of quality of life.   Silence again.  a while.    i said 

i can't.

she said what she would do for Tay.     3 steps.     the first a relaxant that would allow her to release all that she was having to do to maintain.   Second would be a sedative.  She would fall into a deep sleep of Dreaming .    and then third the one that would stop her heart.   She told all of the signs we would see with each,  how long each step would take.  

i held Tay's head,  i felt like i would ....what?....i felt like i would  implode into her,  but Alyssia,  my Alyssia needed me to HOLD. and it was done.      There was a long time of  just being there.   i asked her how she had come to the decision to devote her Vet practice to this.   she said  many things but truly because of her grandmother being hospitalized and dying there.  How Wrong that felt to her,  how much she had wanted to take her Home.   how much she believed that Home was the Place.

when we were looking on the internet for things in the last days,  Alyssia saw a site that talked about the high incidence of suicide among Vets. As she got in her truck,  i called out    No Te Rindas   they say in New Mexico,  she asked me to repeat....i did.  She went off.

both of them.  her and SarahLynn.  young women.  trained at UC Davis.  Mobile Vets.   You call they come.  for the times of helplessness.  They bring Help.  

and now,     and now

 

 

 

 

loss

typepad has lost so many words.  so i will just let that be.   LOSS.   it's HUGE.   but....not.    I am hanging all  my life on some kind of line that i don't understand,   don't know.   i am empty.  full of some substance.  at the same time.   i am LOST  without Her.  I don't know how to live.  i need to learn.

Tay sometimes called Big May. Catahoula/Australian shepard cross.

i will just leave this until there is some change.   The entire day is Her.   She cannot get up  as in standing, sitting  alone.  She falls.   She is not shitting.   We tried again,  a long laborious walk about this morning and then shorter ones in the day....no.  Ordinarily she goes off a long distance for that...its private.   on a leash is hard enough but the one time she tried she couldn't maintain her balance.  it's a Hill.    i did not leave her ALL day.  at all.   Once we got her out in the morning,  we just stayed there until Alyssia came again to get her in.  She's 80 + pounds.     i could go on with details but there's no point.  Things are not good.   i can't imagine life here without her.  

i'll just add anything in the comment box if there's something different.   Otherwise......

 

is

maybe she is a little better.  maybe that's magical thinking.

she has no balance.   falls down.   sometimes on her face.

basic neurology workup  UC Davis  is  $4,000 up front.

i spent ALL the moments  of time with her,  watching her,  helping her .   On leash.  the dog that runs everywhere.    at the end of this day she peed.   Was no worse.

emergency

something is wrong with Tay.    i can't run through the progression,  but it began maybe just before Jack Flash slammed her into the Rain House.    Since,   things have looked like they were holding their own and then not.   Things happened.  I'd hoped it would all just end up ok  and i wouldn't have to talk about it at all.   But this afternoon we took the first appointment available in Chico at the emergency vet hospital.   Where i took Tay that first year here for the rattlesnake bite.    it took almost 5 hours.    There are no answers.   The treatment plan was that we go directly to UC Davis who is open 24 hours for a Neurology workup.

second  was to leave her there and begin her on IV meds for seisures.   coming home from that with various steroids,  seisure meds.    

i have ZERO ability to be coherent about it all in this moment.     I signed the against medical advise paper and we brought her home.   it's dark.  night.   we were gone when it was Feed Time for Goats.    The first Ever.   We were not here.

She is lying in a normal position on her rugs.   I will lie down.   What comes,  comes.

i don't  know what i will be able to write about this tomorrow or even when Ever.   If you choose to comment,  i don't know if i will be able to respond.  i hope you understand.   Tay is Me.   I am Tay.   someThing is blindsiding us,  out of no where.   

i feel like this sycamore out front....just skin

just this

the weight of things

drew this as a waking moment,  just quick,  like they are...no thought,  really   how it often begins with the bridge of the nose and over to an eye and the angle was there.    Went on with things,   to come back later and listen to NPR's Leila Fadel's conversation with a mother in Turkey,   no where to go.   and i think about all my concerns.............................

All the mothers there.  old ones   young.  

Assalah Shikhani  fled Syria 12 years ago and became a teacher in Turkey at a school for Syrian refugees run by Karam Foundation.  Fadel asked what she would tell the world.... paraphrase        anything.  anything to help. even just to pray for us. 

the tag was photographed on a page of this months  National Geographic.

making decisions and following through

 

they were the third company to make a bid.   They came.  based just on some intuition.   

and they were perfect.   Arrived ON TIME...which is a biggie....and after very short discussion set to work.  a crew of 6.  Two Climbers.   a way to the right of this tree was the second,  larger,   one climber for each.   I LOVE watching people work who know exactly what to do moment to moment.  They communicated with whistles.   I loved their equipment...their chain saws are small,  enough to climb with but amazing.   Their ropes and carabiners,  leather body straps,  leg straps with more ropes.......they were like squirrels....they scampered up and down back and forth,  the 4 on the ground hauling and cutting into "managable " pieces.   Two other ones that had broken off and were partially down.   Precision.  Within 4 hours they were finished and loading to leave.   no other trees were sacrificed.    
To repeat....these trees needed to come down to obtain the building permit.   Had they fallen on their own,  it would have been into the construction.   No insurance possible.   and so....no way out.   There are feelings,   how we are changing the Hill with our presence and with this,  in a permanent way.   Here,  i am a squatter.  i could go and leave no sign.  

i am drained.   i woke,  off and on from 2 am  not wanting to oversleep...i had to close the Doe Goats in at morning feed so they would not be in the way of this.  Had to have them fed and gated by 8.   i did it.  it's over.   

 

 

A test