The Long, Slow End

Right now, there is a dog upstairs with me in the office as I type out these words. Her name is Molly. We call her Molly McButter, because, really, she basically looks like a stick of butter. When we adopted her from the Morris Animal Refuge, she was called "Miley", but we weren't going to have that happy horseshit. So we changed it. She didn't get it for a little while, but then, she did.

Right now, there is another dog in this house, but Finley isn't upstairs with me in the office. He's downstairs, in the living room. Incessant panting and sporadic yelps that echo up the staircase indicate that Finley wants to be up here in the office with me and Molly (well, okay, probably just with me) but it seems that Finley's upstairs days are over. On Thursday night, for the first time since he came bounding stupidly into my life in March of 2003, he and passed an evening on different floors of the same home.

If you could affix a lighted taxi sign to his hind quarters, it would flash "Out-of-Service". His back legs just aren't functioning anymore. They are atrophied, quivering shadows of their former selves. In the morning, he cannot rise up of his own strength. I have to scoop my hands underneath his big old gray butt and force him to stand up, while he tries to brace himself on his two front legs, which are going, too. I won't pretend that, once, I didn't accidentally shove my finger into his cornhole. I washed my hands five times that morning, but that finger smelled for hours.

Recently, the situation has crept perilously towards untenable, especially considering the impossible-to-blink fact that we've got twins on the way, and they are going to require scads of our time and attention, and having an ailing, failing dog on our hands, who is miserable, unpredictable, frequently unmovable, is, well, troubling.

On Friday, I thought Mrs. Apron and I were taking him to the vet for the last time, and that all we would return with was a leash. But that didn't happen, partly because Mrs. Apron declared herself unready to part with our big, gray friend. Partly because the vet encouraged us to try a last-ditch effort of Tramadol, anti-inflammatories, a new diet, and glucosamine supplements.

Is this going to reverse the damage that 13 (or is it 14, or is it 15?) years have done to deteriorate this dog's muscle tone, will it reverse or at least stabilize the probably severe joint pain he is enduring at every moment? I don't know. I have lots of doubts but, really, I don't know.

And maybe I'm a coward for not insisting that Finley be put to sleep in our arms as we sat on the floor of the vet's office and cried ourselves blind, like so many other dedicated and foolish and lovestruck pet owners have done before us, and will continue to do after-- but I don't know about that either.

I suppose that every pet owner ends up writing something like this, sooner or later, or, at least, they think about it. They feel it. They go through it. This is something you must go through as someone who loves an animal. I've owned a dog since 2003, but I've never gone through this-- the end.

The long, slow end.

I don't know what this is supposed to look like, all I know is what it's supposed to feel like. I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing, to protect my dog, to protect my wife, to protect myself. I don't know if I am to follow doctor's advice, or defy it.

In her post about this, my wife went back in her memory and shared on her blog memories of Finley, from when he was young and spry and fun.

I can't do that. I won't let myself go there. It's rather the same way that I won't take out old pictures of my wife and I, when we were new to each other-- not because we were happy then and we aren't now, but because I'm too afraid of looking back. When I was a boy, I would bring my baby album to my mother, climb up on the couch with her and say, "Mommy, let's reminisce." I had a vague notion, I suppose, of what the word meant, but I didn't realize that you can't really reminisce until you've grown old enough to experience memories in a more tremulous, fragile and, oftentimes, painful way. When you get older, I guess, there is that knowledge that what's passed cannot be repeated-- not the expression or the sentiment or the emotion or the circumstance. You can look at wedding pictures and you can even go back to the place where you got married, and it can feel good, and it can feel sweet, but it will never feel the same way it did on October 22nd, 2006-- it just won't.

And you can go back to the dog park, too. But Finley has to stay in the living room.

Flat or Upright?

Last night, I was fortunate enough to enjoy a bowl of noodles and several different animals at a Vietnamese restaurant with my wife and an old friend. During the course of this dinner, we discussed the terribly annoying Tea Party movement, why there is an old-lady-shower-style grab-handle on the bar ("For retards, probably," I mused in that worldly way of mine), how my friend's iPhone charger port got corroded, and whether or not the waiter was going to poison my food and/or try to pick us up.

We all know that someone like me is the kind of person who has precious few friends. That's a given. I mean, if this is how I come off in the blogosphere, where I actually have time to think about and craft my thoughts and ponderings-- you've got to imagine that it's at least 80-95% worse in real-life and real-time, where asinine idiocy constantly tumbles out of my mouth like regurgitated, well, Vietmanese food. The one or two friends that I do have who have consistently stayed by me and whom I have carefully conditioned over the course of many years to expect and sometimes even appreciate my own particular brand of social incompetence know what they're going to get when they spend time with me.

If the friend is female, she will be treated to my eccentric and haphazard way of talking/behaving, the unexpected topic shifts, maybe even a reference or two to her breasts, if I'm feeling especially frisky/moronic. If the friend is male, any topic of conversation is fair game, and whatever we are talking about will be peppered lovingly with homoerotic undertones. If the word "coming" comes up (see?) then just forget it. Homosexual references and comments only increase in the presence of my wife, who has also come (see?!) to expect this behavior.

All this is to say that nobody, not my old friend or my wife, was especially surprised when, as we were enthusiastically exploring our entrees with chopsticks tenuously in hand, I looked at my old, dear friend and said,

"So, when you die, do you want a flat or an upright tombstone?"

My friend and my wife laughed. It wasn't a surprised laugh, however.

Always one to indulge me, my friend considered the question carefully and gave the following answer,

"Well, I've given some thought to green cemeteries. Really, I think, I'd like to be just left in the woods. I know there are laws about that sort of thing. And, I mean, fine, if I have a family, and they want to know where I am to go visit me, then, yes, I understand that-- that need to have a marker of some kind, but I don't think I'd want an upright one."

And then he asked me if I'd ever read a poem with some unpronounceable name. I told myself to remember the title, and he said it twice, but I can't remember it. I can't remember anything anymore. Of course I hadn't read the poem, because I am an uncultured lout. Asking me if I've read pretty much any poem is like asking me if I have ever worn pants after 9:30pm on a Sunday night.

"Well, it's about death and the recognition that it is nothing to fear, and that the fate that awaits us is the same fate as awaits kings and noblemen, and that it equalizes every man."

Why the hell do I need to read poetry? I just need to spend more time with my friends.

I considered what my friend had said. I could have guessed he might say something like this. Even though he was wearing his grandfather's houndstooth blazer, he's really just a big hippie. I can't believe he can stand to be friends with me sometimes.

"Yeah," I said, "I think I'm going to go upright. And if it weren't so fucking expensive, I'd have something really witty carved on the stone-- but that shit is very expensive."

"Right, that's true," he replied. He shoved a stickful of chicken into his mouth and chewed, considering further. "Actually, there have been times where I wanted a stone hand, you know-- a carved hand, with the fingers sort of closing, just coming out of the ground, with the fingers curled as if the hand were going to close. And, you know, in the days and weeks after I die, maybe my relatives will come and stick flowers inside the hand, and, much later, when nobody cares anymore, it'll just be there to scare the shit out of little kids who come to the cemetery to play."

I took a drink of water.

"Right, but what about stoner asshole teenagers who come to the cemetery to drink and fuck off? You just know one of them will take his pants down, on a dare or whatever, and stick his penis into the hand."

"Bring it!" my friend said.

Fuckin' aye, Death, you little faggot.

Bring it.

Limousine Farts; Part II

Remember Aunt Mickey?

Well, unless you joined the My Masonic Apron fold recently, you probably do. If you don't recall hearing her name, or remembering her name, or hearing of her limousine farts, read up.

Aunt Mickey finally died on Thursday, February 18th. "Finally died." That sounds like such a silly thing to say. Of course she finally died. We all die, finally, and, as Basil Fawlty once said about death through clenched teeth, "I'd say it was pretty bloody final."

Pretty bloody final indeed, Basil.

According to her doctors, she should have passed away somwhere around January 10th or so. "You probably won't make it through the weekend," they told her on Friday, January 8th. Well, they were wrong. Doctors sometimes are, you know.

My mother called me Thursday night at 8:43pm. My wife and I were taking a rare break from the Olympics, snuggled up together on the couch like two pretzels in a bag, watching "Julie/Julia" when the phone rang. I know I sound like a bad son when I say it, but ordinarily, when my parents call during a movie, I let it go to voicemail. But, ever since Aunt Mickey mounted her epic Dying Odyssey back in early January, every time my parents call, I pick it up. I always take a moment to summon up the strength to hear the news before I hit that little green button on my cell-phone. Strangely enough, I didn't think Thursday night was the night.

I'm going to talk a little bit about "Julie/Julia" for a minute-- I hope that doesn't make me sound like some emotionally-detached wackjob with Aspergers who doesn't comprehend the enormity of the matriarch of his family passing away. I do. But Aunt Mickey loved the entertainment industry-- and she loved movies (remember "The Hornymooners?") so I don't think she'd mind, if she were alive to mind.

I didn't like "Julie/Julia," barely at all. I think Julie Powell is incredibly narcissitic and obsessive, and not in a charming way, either-- and I don't think Amy Adams brought anything remotely affirming or sympathetic with her wooden, whiny portrayal either. I think it's very obnoxious when you have a character who is self-absorbed and a bitch, and then thinks that she's likeable because she admits to being so.

The performances of Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci certainly elevate the film, and these scenes are filmed, directed, and acted with palpable affection and sumptuous detail for a bygone era, but I didn't think they were enough to save the movie, to justify its existence. I would hope that, if Julia Child had ever met Julie Powell that she would have had enough sense to smack Julie Powell upseide her head with a rolling pin-- and a rolling pin from the 1950s, not one of the cheap, crappy ones that are made today.

Then, the more I thought about it, I thought, well-- you didn't hate "Julie/Julia," you hate Julie Powell, because she's a blogger who is famous and wipes the Boeuf Bourguignon off her chin with money and you are a blogger who will never squeeze a book deal out of this bizarre cacophany you call a blog and you get Kraft Lite Ranch salad dressing on your pants with disturbing regularity.

Or maybe I didn't like "Julie/Julia" because I'll always associate it with the phone call I got at 8:43pm on Thursday night, February 18th, 2010.

Speaking of phone calls-- I didn't make mine. When we were all told that Aunt Mickey was sent home from the hospital, we, my mother's children were told that we could call her before it was too late, before she slipped into her inevitable coma and then organ failure took her away. I didn't call. Now, you know me. Well, some of you do, I think, and pretty well, too. I think you know that I'm not going to turn this blog upside-down and make of it a soapbox upon which I will stand and lecture you in my guilt about the importance of saying goodbye when faced with death-- about how you'll never get another chance to say farewell to loved ones who are slipping mercilessly away. To tell you how wracked with regret I am. To say I'm sorry to whomever's listening.

Well, you know I won't do that. Am I sorry? Oh, yes, I suppose I am. I suppose I "should" have called my Aunt Mickey, on whose freshly-waxed parquet floor I used slide in my white cotton socks, in whose Cadillac I quietly prayed we would arrive at our destination safely, at whose chic country club I feasted on countless corned beef and pastrami sandwiches. I suppose I should have called her.

But I didn't know what to say.

Isn't that funny? Me-- the man who's been blogging every single day for three hundred and seventy-seven days, who shoots his mouth off at work with reckless disregard for the consequences, who makes flip and crass comments at every family dinner, sending everyone into hysterics and head shakes, whose ruthless commentary and remarks have more than once made my mother, Aunt Mickey's little niece, remark, "You're murder," her cheeks red with embarrassed laughter.

I didn't know what to say.

And I was afraid-- of crying, of making her cry, of saying something stupid, of saying nothing at all, of wishing I hadn't called at all, of everything. Of nothing.

I didn't know what I'd say to her youngest son, who was at her bedside from the first day returning home from the hospital to the moment when she breathed her last. Her oldest son had been to Vietnam and came back completely fucked up-- but I think this must have been a thousand times worse. I didn't know what I'd say to him if he'd picked up the phone.

After I put the phone down on Thursday night, I looked at my wife, who knew already because you can hear conversations had on my cellphone if you're in the same room and I said,

"Well, that's that. It's going to be on Sunday and we'll see if we can go," and I pressed play on the DVD remote.

I was kind of alarmed at myself at how apparently callously I took the news, especially considering that, several years ago, when my mother called me to tell me that my pediatric allergist had collapsed and died suddenly of a massive heart attack, I fell into the living room rocking chair and sobbed hysterically in my wife's arms. When I think about Dr. Greene, sometimes tears still fill my eyes, to this day. Maybe it's because he was 55 and it was so shocking-- this passing was anything but. It was a goddamned shame.

"She could have been playing tennis today if she'd had that operation," said my uncle.

Well, maybe. Not for us to say, really. It was her choice, and it was her life. Her's till the end.

I read about a BBC reporter yesterday afternoon named Ray Gosling. He's an elderly man and, while filming a documentary about the right-to-die, he made a startling confession whilst walking through a graveyard on a blustery Midlands day.

"I killed someone once," he said, his voice trembling with emotion, "...he was a young chap. He'd been my lover, and he got AIDS. And, in a hospital, one hot afternoon-- doctors said, 'There's nothing we can do' and he was in terrible, terrible pain. And I said to the doctor, 'Leave me, just for a bit.' And he went away, and I picked up a pillow and I smothered him until he was dead. Doctor came back. And I said, 'He's gone.' Nothing more was ever said."

Ray Gosling, 70 years old, was arrested after Nottinghamshire Police reviewed the documentary and interviewed its producers.

After watching the clip of Gosling, walking through the cemetery, his thinning white hair blowing about as he made this astonishing confession, I realized something my father had said to me back on January 9th. He told me on the phone that Aunt Mickey had told him that she wanted to die, and that she wanted him to 'help her with that.' He had said it, and I'd heard it, but it clearly didn't register that Aunt Mickey had asked my father to help her end her life. Of course, he refused, instead agreeing to arrange hospice care for her and to plan out her funeral in exact detail. Her obituary, for instance, will not be released to the newspapers until exactly two weeks after her burial. That's Aunt Mickey, pulling the strings even from beyond the grave.

Now, just like I don't want this blog post to be about guilt, I also don't want it to turn into a debate about assisted suicide. You think what you think, I think what I think, and maybe what I think will evolve over time after I've had enough experiences with life and death. Maybe yours will, too. I don't know. I just know that my Aunt Mickey's dead, and that I didn't like "Julie/Julia" and that being a blogger is very, very good for me.

Thank you.