My Aide Taken Away

My aide was taken away, so now i more than intensely dislike the home health care service. This is the same ...
stupidity that i suffered in Rochester. Just when I settle into some routine or expectancy it is snatched away.

So what is the universe trying to tell me? If all is change, then change my paralysis into mobility again.

And this happens AFTEr i see her and soI must make do, go hungry and without food until the new person shows
up, because of course it is not on the day-- Monday that I usually had support. Another relationship lost, severed.

Mourning Niles

The end was horrible. He was in so much pain that the pains meds barely took the edge off. He growled with, not meowed, but growled, a low guttural cursing. In between cursing he would purr thickly as I rubbed and brushed his jaw and his head. While his tumor at the side of his neck grew back, as before surgery, it was not a source of apparent discomfort. This was shocking as wherever else the lymphoma was hitting, was not visible, but was devastating, robbing him of use of his tail and back end in a matter of days.

I had to fight, cajole to get the technician to come with the requisite forms. But as the print out had a code and line and charge for " technician home visit" yesterday's frantic search for someone to
relieve Niles of his wrenching pain was unnecessary stress. The vet hospital's resistance to my request that he be euthanized at home, because I can't bring him in, was just wrong. I knew from able-bodied friends that they had had their animals euthanized at home, and not because there were no other options. So it rankles, that I who have no other options, was initially denied a service that they clearly have and had available.

I played and sang the two Niles songs for him on the piano, and then My Romance, which he likes a lot and We'll be together again. A new ditty came to me to sing to him and this pleased me.

We were exiled by my inexplicable paralysis, at first from each other, for four agonizing months while I was hospitalized and then in rehab. And then finally together in a small apartment in another city while home was being made accessible. I am so grateful to him for hanging in there with me. He was used to space --an upstairs, a basement, a yard, a neighborhood to roam and that time in that awful apartment was hard for all of us, but we became closer. He was an aloof kitty who barely tolerated hugs. He changed into a cat who slept by my bed, talked to me, sought and gave affection. He helped me make it through the pain and loss. He helped us make it home again.

Returning home, he unfurled himself. He was large, handsome and in charge, facing down threats and intruders. It just hurts so much that he didn't have more years to munch his particular grasses, roam
the neighborhood, tell me which tunes he liked.

Obi, slender pointy cat, returned home when the technicians arrived. He stayed while Niles, big fluffy
cat, growled and hissed with pain, calmed, groaned, relented, sighed, died. Then Obi went back outside.

I am so grateful to have had such a sweet and funny companion and friend.

Akua
R. I. P. Niles 8 years, 1 month, 11 days
9/25/08

Bernie Mac

I resisted loving him and having newly and finally arrived at that embrace, that ownership, that pride and joy, how I felt him speak THROUGH the inanity and perversity of silliness on his show to always always always arrive at LOVE
LOVE LOVE in that uniquely black american way I mean the character, a version of him is a triumph and he is triumphant presenting himself, not his whole self but so much of himself that yes, the poets weep for such
representation

all those lessons worked in while we laugh and maybe cringe or even yell in recognition

The sister whose children he tends in this show, whose hearts he woos and pursues whose souls he frets over is this not our best and worst story how we overcome and how we must reach back and how it hurts and how it glories?

He is a success in that he has not just a career, but a woman. And the sly story is that he is not complete until the children come. His marital life forever changed but still he is erotic with her... o we see black love so seldom on the screen. this sweet playful intimacy he has with the TV wife

and my baby sister loved this show and i didn't and then i came to love it and appreciate him for these lessons he was feeding America and lord! to hear he had been asking how he could heal his city that shortly before his death there was a something he wanted to do to end the violence

and i dug looking at his shiny darkness, his round face and Chicago accent, a kind of twang to the slang and slant to the stance to my New York ears a street and a church in there

I say thank you Bernie Mac for raising up as you set it down for being the best of clown, who makes us laugh and see the truth of ourselves and dream ourselves better. Bless you Bless you Bless you and yours

Thank you.
Akua

Even his Shadow

though he was a shadow of himself
he was warmth
though what spoke was only a portion
I felt how wide wide how vast he was
because I could still drink
from him and with him
we could still make merry without strain
we could walk together in his light and could
hear him smile and sometimes he would cry
and it wasn't yet goodbye
because even as he grasped at straws
there were logs even though
self was frayed the cloth still held
and what leaked out was more love

more love
o father!
love

What to do with the ache

What to do with the ache
what to do with the loss
what to do with the absence
what to do with the gone
what to do with the abject absolute lack

what to do for the gone
how to reach the departed
to hold them close and let them go

How to remain and find meaning
when who made meaning
has died how to live in
a now without the loving ground
that held you up without your gravity