Category Archives: Shadow Mountain

Family, Feelings, Garden, Memories, Minnesota, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

There is a road, no simple highway…

Leave a comment

Ostara and the Moon of Mourning

Saturday gratefuls: Kate wanting to visit the fields of Heather around Inverness. SeoAh and her smile. The Grateful Dead shabbat last night. Ripple.* Mourning in the Mountains with CBE and CBE. Kate breathing freely, walking with purpose once again.

Sparks of Joy: Vaccines. Mobile Critter Care.

retired at last

There are ripples in the still waters of my soul. Kate. She lives there now for me, an eternal companion. Today and tomorrow. She reminds me of the love we shared, the way we were together, the way I am thanks to her. And I carry her forward in Malkut. Waiting someday to travel to the keter, the crown of creation’s endless motion, with her as a companion.

Irony. Having a sore in my mouth, above the left canine. Hurts to eat. What Kate experienced for at least three years. All the time. No wonder she became food aversive. Add nausea to that pain. Awful. The feeding tube gave her at least two more years of life even though it created problems as it solved them.

What will linger longest for me about her last hospital stay is sign language. Some of you may remember Kate learned sign language when she lost her voice not long after we married. While in bed, her speaking requiring extra breaths for a full sentence, we began signing I love you: little finger, index finger, and thumb extended. I would sign and place the hand with the sign on my heart.

While on the drive over to Evergreen Memorial to complete the paperwork for her cremation, I thought about family, our immediate family. The counted cross stitch she made, the one that took her three years and two continents to complete, is in Arts and Crafts style. It has mostly green vines on a beige background. Near the top are three words: Love is Enough.

I want this to be our family motto. I will have t-shirts made for each of us with her completed work printed on them. With a katydid. Kate had cloth labels made with a katydid and the words Katy did it.

The works of her hands cover so many beds, hang on so many walls, rest on various chairs and couches. Carry things from here to there. She loved sewing for specific people and she loved giving them what she had made.

She walks today on the most ancientrail of all: a road, no simple highway between the dawn and the dark of night. I know she travels it unafraid, curious. Open. Glad. Filled with Joy.

Ok, yes. My metaphysical honesty makes me add, how the hell do I know? I don’t know. But if there is a road, and if Kate is on it, her keen mind and open heart will serve her well.

I’m sleeping well. Eating ok with the exception of crowding food over to the right side of my mouth to avoid the sore. It will pass. Sadness and distraction still travel with me because I’m on a road, no simple highway, between life with Kate and life without her.

A lot of grieving happened as Kate’s condition worsened, as we both acknowledged it, said out loud where her journey would take her. As it has. I grieved her loss with her, saying what I would miss about her, how much I would miss her.

She reminded me that she was losing me, too. Oh, yeah.

Not sure how long this will go on. As long it must, I suppose.

 

 

*”There is a road, no simple highway
Between the dawn and the dark of night
And if you go no one may follow
That path is for your steps alone

Ripple in still water
When there is no pebble tossed
Nor wind to blow”

Family, Judaism, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Post remnant from Thursday

Leave a comment

Osatara and the Moon of Mourning

Thursday gratefuls: Kate, always Kate. Her memorial service and each of those who attended. Each person who has Kate in their heart right now. Ruth, who offered to stay with me last night and the night before. And, did. Jon, who saw Kate’s spirit before she died. Gabe. Kep and Rigel. The Woolly Mammoths.

Sparks of Joy: Ritual and its healing power. Sitting shiva. SeoAh’s arrival.

Wednesday I drove down the hill on an icy Shadow Mountain Drive. Evergreen Memorial Park. Finish the details of Kate’s cremation. When I left, as I realized suddenly what I had done, I had to stop, put my hand out and steady myself on the door jamb. Goodbye to the earthly container, the thing of Malkut.

Kate has returned to the cycle of life, ready to join the upcoming surge of spring and the growth of Beltane. As you, as I, move through this turning of the Great Wheel, she can walk with us, point out the energy and the power from her side of the veil. The gardener in her delights in this time and I delight in it with her.

As her condition deteriorated, I bought two sets of emergency call lights, synched them and place them around the house and up in the loft. We never used them. This morning, when I came up to the loft to write this, the receiver next to my computer blinked off and on, blue light flickering. I plan to let it blink until it runs out of energy.

We decided that I would I sit shiva, go through the mourning rituals. And, I am. There’s a lot about it that I don’t understand, most of the rules I don’t know, but CBE will guide me through it. Rabbi Jamie and my buddy Alan Rubin.

The torn garment, or torn ribbon, represents rending of life by the fact of death. I’m choosing a black ribbon to tear.

Not sure whether we’ll do seven nights (shiva means seven), probably not, but on Sunday night there will be a shiva minyan, requiring at least 10 members. A service very like the one done on Wednesday will be held.

Of all the statements made about Kate over the last week, the one that touched my heart most came from Lisa Deutsch, a CBE member and member of the Thursday mussar group Kate and I attended, “She was,” Lisa wrote, “what you would call a good Jew.” That makes me so happy because Kate considered her Jewishness a primary fact of her life, one she was only able to honor fully after we joined CBE.

 

Family, Feelings, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

She was joyful

Leave a comment

Ostara and the Moon of Mourning

Friday gratefuls: Kate. Seoah. Ruth. Important women in my life. CBE, our once and future life together. Woolly Mammoths. Snow. Once more, deep. Grief and its sad currents. Evergreen Memorial Park. Kep, who had to get up early today.

Sparks of Joy: The card from Carol Horger. “Kate brought yellow flowers to our class to remind us of joy. She was joyful.” Yes.

Mother’s Day, 2016

Life has changed, Kate gone. It’s like an unassembled puzzle with familiar pieces, yet a new picture waiting to emerge. Don’t know how long it will take to put it back together. But I’m confident. A new way of being. One informed by who I am and who Kate was and is in my heart. Lies ahead, is underway. Days pass and the reality of her absence becomes clearer, more solid. Less fear and pain, more memories and consolation.

I stood at the window yesterday, looking out over our driveway, and felt Kate watching the snow with me. She loved the mountains and watching the snow come down among the Lodgepole pines. Me, too. Her eyes and mine, one.

As I hear more about her, from so many, I wonder how I found such a remarkable woman. How she found me. The world has its ways of bringing together improbable matches. Ours was one.

Yet it fed both of us. Lifted us up, made us more than we might have been. Her whisper in my heart’s ear will not vanish. She will read my new novels as I write them. Admire my amateur paintings, encourage me to take on new challenges. Her body is gone, but her heart lives on, synching as it always has with mine.

She was my true love, the one who knew me better than I knew myself.

I miss her. I love her. I’m so happy she entered my life. Grateful.

Family, Health, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, The Move, Third Phase

Tough

Leave a comment

Ostara and Kate’s Moon

Saturday gratefuls: Kate’s clear head, her choices. Death with dignity as an option. The Ancient Friends. Rabbi Jamie. CBE. Sleep. Kep and Rigel.

Sparks of Joy: Sarah calling the Long Term Care folks. A Golden with his head out the window of a pickup truck.

I know about true love. And, about bad love. Kate and I lived and loved into each other, saying yes. Saying of course you can. Of course we can. In bad love you hear and say no, you can’t do that. I don’t want to. Not now.

We bring out the depth of each others soul. Kate’s needle gifts, her love of Mother Earth, Flowers, Vegetables, Dogs, Fruit. Grandchildren. Sons. My writing. My love for Mother Earth, Flowers, Vegetables, Dogs, Fruit. Grandchildren. Sons. Not hidden, not wished for, but acted upon.

Supporting each other, even when the world might not agree. Have 7 Wolfhounds and two Whippets? Sure. Put in an orchard? Of course. Go around Latin America. No question. Move to Colorado? Not only that, let’s go up in the mountains. End life on your own terms? Yes, if that’s what you need.

This ancientrail of human life may have come close to an end for Kate. She wants to consider death with dignity. I imagine she’ll choose it. Does it make me scream inside? Yes. Does it make me sad? Yes. Will I support her? Yes, as in all things.

This is stark. It means a time certain, not an ambiguous, drawn out process. But, the end is the same. And, it’s coming for Kate, as it is for us all. Just sooner for her.

I cried a lot last night. Sat up with friends talking. Then, slept well. No anxiety. This is sad. Not unexpected. No details yet. It’s not decided decided. But I know Kate. Once she broached this idea, her mind was close made up.

It makes sense to me. She was told she’d have to wear the bipap at least at night from now on. She hates it. It’s intrusive, invasive, and claustrophobic. There is no hope she’ll come off of it. Also, she’s exhausted from a two and a half year struggle with first this, then that.

She’s so frail, her breathing labored, her movement restricted to bed, mostly. No magic bullet. No procedure. No medications left.

What would you do?

Family, Great Wheel, Health, Holidays, Judaism, Myth and Story, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Easter Morning

Leave a comment

Ostara and the Ovid Moon of Metamorphoses

Sunday gratefuls: Broad spectrum antibiotics. Kate’s will. Jamie Bernstein. Easter and Passover and Spring. Friends. Rabbi’s. Countryfolk. Mountains. Dogs.

Sparks of Joy: Kate’s blood cultures negative for infection. Exhaustion, but exhaustion held in the care and concern of so many others.

Kate at Mama’s Fish House

Been thinking, a lot, about the holidays: Ostara, Easter, Passover. How they hold the wonder and awe of Spring and apply it to our human lives. On Maundy Thursday (no, I never remember what that means) Kate was in severe crisis. She had a crowd of nurses, physician’s assistants, respiratory therapists, a pulmonologist. All working carefully, quickly, urgently.

I had a hushed conversation in the hallway with the physician’s assistant and Dr. Fenton, the pulmonologist, about resuscitation.  Asking hard questions. Trying to be true to the situation, to her wishes, to the possible.

She survived the crisis, her blood pressure down and her breathing more stable. She moved to the 10th floor where she could be treated with nurses who work with more complicated cases.

Her situation got better, but death still seemed as plausible as recovery. On Good Friday, her lucidity returned, she made it off the bipap (a small mask that is actually a treatment for the pneumonia, among other things), and her white cell count continued to come down.

Yesterday we found her blood borne infection was gone. Though it still needs a four to six week bout of IV antibiotics to make it sure it doesn’t resurface. She passed her swallow study so she can drink and eat. Prognosis still guarded, but less so now.

Her friend, Jamie, reported she looks good. Jamie stayed all night with her.

It’s Easter morning.

Family, Feelings, Health, Shadow Mountain

Kate, Me

Leave a comment

Ostara and the Ovid Moon of Metamorphoses

Thursday gratefuls:  Kate. Swedish. Infectious Disease docs. Dr. Nguyen. Jewish Family Services. Diagnostic tests. Nurses. The Mountains. Kep and Rigel. Friends and family reaching out. Sunny days.

Sparks of joy: Kate, even in her struggle. Second vaccine for me today.

Kate’s situation could take a turn, perhaps toward death, perhaps toward a somewhat better tomorrow. This infection, MSSA, could push her in either direction. If she goes to a rehab facility for the long duration IV antibiotics she requires, that might finish with her gaining some weight and having enough PT to walk on her own again. If instead she returns home with in-home health care in addition to me, I think she’s moving toward hospice care.

MSSA, in her weakened condition, and with her immune system hammered by both drugs and Sjogren’s, may prove too much for her. She is strong of will, though, and has pulled through worse in her post-bleed recovery in 2018.

Rigel

Rigel, our big girl, defeated MSSA, and has gone on to a full recovery. She was much stronger than Kate is now, however. Weird that we have it twice within the same year. Rigel’s illness was in August of last year.

How am I, you might ask? I told Marilyn Saltzman yesterday that I’m sad and joyful. I learned you can experience more than one emotion at a time, even contradictory ones. A deep and persisting sadness set in over two and a half years ago when I saw Kate begin losing weight, fighting against Sjogren’s disease. It got more profound after her bleed.

I’ve gone up and down with her health over that time, sadness a constant companion. A signal that I took her situation seriously.

Joy? Oh, yes. Often. When Rigel prances in from outside. When I write this blog. When Kate’s feeling better and we can talk, play cribbage. Each time my PSA is undetectable. When friends and family communicate. When the sun rises. When it snows. When I got my vaccine, when Kate got hers. When Trump lost the election.

Today. Sad. Waiting for news. At 6:10 pm I’ll be joyful as the second Pfizer vaccine hits my bloodstream.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Aging, Colorado, Dogs, Family, Friends, Health, Judaism, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, The Move, The West, Third Phase

Considerations

Leave a comment

Ostara and the Ovid Moon of Metamorphoses

Saturday gratefuls: Tough towels. Morning lucidity. Vaccines. Kate’s appointment today. Georgia GOP. No doubt now about their racist, oligarchic ideology. The Voting Law. Ditching the filibuster.

Sparks of Joy: Vaccine #2 on April Fool’s Day.

Gabe’s bris

Miracles in my world. The greening of the Lodgepoles. The leafing out of the Aspen. (both of these I’m anticipating) A Black Mountain decked in white. Iris rhizomes throwing up stalks for another year. (this, too, anticipated) Fawns. Calves. Colts. Life. Abundant and rich. Puppies. Dogs. Love. Mountains. Justice. Memories. So many, everywhere. Hallelujah.

Oh. Terrible night. Kate talking throughout the night, explaining her dreams to herself, she said. Lotsa lost sleep for both of us. Makes everything more difficult.

Contacted Jewish Family Service in Denver. They’re sending a social worker out who specializes in gerontology. With her we’ll develop a plan, perhaps, plans, that we can use to define our next year, few years. Housing options. In-home health care options. That sort of thing.

There are lots of services available but knowing which ones exist, which might come to the mountains, costs, is difficult. At best. Same with housing options including, but not limited to, buying another home.

Kate’s healthspan, lifespan are critical, but unknown. I imagine this will include some more time with Dr. Thompson, consulting. Mine are, too, but I’m the more functional at the moment. Dogs are a crucial element. Our stuff is less of an issue. We can sell or keep. My library can be sold in whole or in part. In that sense we’re portable. Except for the Dogs.

I suppose you could say, why didn’t they consider all this before they moved to the Mountains? Fair enough. We did give it cursory attention, but we both felt good, were planning for a healthier time than we got. Didn’t happen.

Shadow Mtn. Drive, down the hill a mile from home. Black Mtn ahead

Living in the Mountains is a big adventure for us, something we wanted long before we decided to move. I don’t regret it, not for a minute. Even if it seems foolish. Even if it was foolish. To lose a sense of adventure, of new possibilities, is to die before the grave.

We’ve had six years so far. A really long vacation in a place people come to from all over the world. Would I make the move knowing what I know now? Maybe not, so I’m glad we did it without knowing.

Rigel and a bull Elk in our back a day before my first radiation treatment.

My hope is that we will find a combination of home health care services that allow us to remain here. Moving the Dogs would be very difficult. They’re both older, Rigel beyond the expected life span of large breed Dogs at 12, and Kep turning 10 this year.

I’m still alive, healthy for 74. Love Kate, the dogs, our house, family, extended and birth, our CBE friends, my Ancient friends. I love reading, learning, writing, creating. Colorado and the West. The humid East. The Midwest. The Mountains and all of our wild Neighbors. Neither resigned to life, nor resigning from it.

Ready for this moment and the next. Here I come.

Garden, Great Wheel, Holidays, Humanities, Memories, Mountains, Myth and Story, Our Land and Home, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

They Say It’s His Birthday!

Leave a comment

Spring! and the Ovid Moon of Metamorphoses

Shoutout to birthday boy Publius Ovidius Naso, or Ovid as we know him in the English speaking west. He’d be two thousand and fifty-four today.

Saturday gratefuls: Safeway pickup. Kabob skewers. Kate’s fluid flowing. Psalms class finish. New class start April 9. Writing poetry. Colorado Mountain Sun. Ancient ones on Justice. Vaccines. April Fool’s Day: shot II for me.

Sparks of Joy: Unclogging Kate’s feeding tube and avoiding another ER adventure. Wu wei, the Way of my life.

March 1, meteorological spring. No romance in that one. March 20, today, 5:37 MST, the Vernal Equinox. Spring. Ostara. Bunnies and crosses and parting of seas, oh my! Lots of romance, lots of theological pulling and hauling. This religion defining moment: resurrection and another: the Exodus. I settle these days for the Sun and the Earth’s celestial equator. See this explainer if you need more. More or less equal hours of Sun and night.

Yes. We’ve moved from the transitional time of Imbolc to the birthing blooming buzzing time. Spring. No wonder the Anglo-Saxons, those Northern European ancestors of so many of us, chose a fertility goddess, Eostre, to celebrate. Estrogen. Ostara. Easter. Yes, the Catholics took her name, added it to the resurrection celebration, and, voila: Easter!

Jesus as Eostre. A dying and rising God like Tammuz, Adonis, Attis, Dionysus, Osiris, or Jesus seem like good company for a fertility goddess. Any gardener can testify to the thrill of planting dusty brown clumps of vegetative matter in the Fall of the year and in the Spring of the next year, the rapture of a moistened bed pierced by green shoots, then Tulips, Crocus, Grape Hyacinth, Iris, Lilies in colorful flower.

Isn’t resurrection a matter of taking a dead thing, or what appears to be a dead thing, putting it away, and having it rise out at the right time? If you listened to the Southern Gospel Revival’s rendition of “Ain’t No Grave” )two posts below this one), you heard the line, “Ain’t no grave, can keep my body down.” Further on, “When that trumpet sounds, I’m a risin’ from the ground.” Could be sung by every Tulip bulb I ever planted.

This is the right time to celebrate those things you may have planted a while back, projects or dreams that have needed some time in the grave or the soil or the unconscious.

It’s also the right time to look at the bed you’ve tended, the one in which you planted them, your life. There might be weeds, or, as I prefer, plants out of place. Note that this means you may have good habits or plans or projects that have become plants out of place in your life. You may have to remove them so your new projects and dreams will flourish.

Ask Eostre for help. You might find her in your anima, perhaps buried in your shadow. She’ll burst out, give things a boost up, if you let her. I’m sitting right now on Shadow Mountain, imagine what lies beneath.

Coronavirus, Family, Health, Holidays, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Travel, Weather +Climate

A Good Day

Leave a comment

Imbolc and the waning Megillah Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Kate, feeling better with a new placement of her feeding tube. Our 31st anniversary. Vaccine shot #1! Vaccines. Polio. Snow. Big Snow. Living in the mountains.  Ruby, sure footed on the snow. Blizzaks.

Sparks of Joy: Vaccine shot #1! Vaccines. Kate. Seeing her yesterday.

Kate on our 2011 cruise around Latin America, Santa Marta, Colombia

What a day yesterday. A good day. Needed one. Went into see Kate. Can’t miss seeing your wife on your anniversary, right? She looked and sounded wonderful, better than she has for weeks. I took her an empty olive jar filled with wine. Looked like a urine sample since it was white wine. I figured the hospital would be less likely to reject a glass jar than a wine bottle.

31 years. Good ones. We’ve been places together, grown flowers and vegetables, raised many dogs, and have two wonderful sons.

Her self-advocacy convinced the interventional radiologists to snake her feeding tube lower, getting it all the way into the jejunum. We’d expected that placement during her surgery to create the feeding site.

This puts the tube further down, out of the small pouch of her stomach created during her bariatric surgery. Hopefully this will mean less or no leaking, allow a faster feeding pace, and better absorption of the nutrients and calories. Since malnutrition is a major, perhaps the primary, medical issue for her at this point, we may see some significant improvements. Yeah! Go, Kate.

Love is a verb. Love guides and wills you to act. And, love is the act itself. Life without love is a sterile desert, nothing blooms. Flower for those you love.

First vaccine dose. Pfizer. Left arm. No pain or swelling. I sat in a socially distanced chair afterward, a small plastic timer stuck to a doorjamb behind my head. 15 minutes. Carla, the nurse, watched the long hallway filled with just shot folks. My timer beeped and I could go on with the rest of my day. And, I was that much closer with being able to go on with the rest of my life.

Even with the chaos of the weekend and the last three days I felt jubilant. A positive, wonderful step toward dealing with the virus instead of passively trying to stay out of its way. After a year.

45 in the rearview. One of two jabs complete. Kate feeling better. The stimulus passed. A big snowstorm on its way. I could get giddy.

I started yesterday with a trip to Bailey, The Happy Camper. (THC, get it?) Bought my Cheebachews for a good nights sleep. Had to wait until around 10 am so 285 could clear the snow and ice collected over night. That’s the beauty of the Solar Snow Shovel. The continental divide snakes along the horizon just after Pine. Snow covered.

On the way home I stopped at Scooter’s Barbecue. Voted the top barbecue joint in all of Colorado two years in a row. And it’s in Conifer. Odd, but true.

The guy who runs it is a linebacker sized guy, Southern. Thick accent. “I have this catering job, a Mexican wedding in South Park this Saturday. I’ve told them we’ll not be here on Saturday, that they have to pick it up on Friday.” He shook his head, “These people.” I waited for a racial slur, “They just don’t understand March in Colorado.” Ah. Good.

We’ll keep yesterday as one of the good days.

 

 

Commentary on the news, Dogs, Family, Friends, Health, Politics, Science, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Dead Would Feel Better

Leave a comment

Imbolc and the waning Megillah Moon

Monday gratefuls: Rigel and Kep, here with me. Kate and her struggle. Swedish E.R. Lea, Kate’s nurse yesterday. Ruby, dutifully moving me up and down the mountains. Roads. Vaccines. The stimulus bill passing the Senate. My ancient friends and a soulful Sunday morning yesterday. Kate’s sisters.

Sparks of Joy: Thor, Jude’s (next door neighbor) Australian shepherd puppy. In fact, I’ll give Thor two sparks. A Dalmatian puppy I saw sticking its head out of a pickup on the way home. My own sanity.

When I saw Kate yesterday, she was still in pain, a headache adding to the mix. Unusual for her. At one point she thought she might be in Andover or Conifer. I was to sleep on Rigel’s couch, which was right there, she said. That got me concerned so I called the nurse.

A CT scan of Kate’s brain showed no clots, bleeds. No stroke. Conclusion was that an anti-nausea med, stronger than her usual one, caused temporary confusion. Good to know. She is, the nurse said later in the evening, oriented, normal now.

When I last communicated with the hospital, the scan for a possible clot in her lungs had not been done, though scheduled later in the night. Sometime around 11 am MST, there should be word on what the plan is. I’ll let you know

I’ve gotten good sleep the last two nights, feeling better rested. Though tired anyhow.

This hospital visit has me concerned. Not that the others didn’t, but this feels different. The ambulance and the paramedics. The confusion in the hospital. The inability of the docs to find a cause for her distress on Saturday. She said while in the E.R., “Dead would feel better.”

I intend to keep putting one foot down, then the other. Not to get lost in maybes and what ifs, stay in the present as much as possible. Do what needs doing. Come up with some more cliches to describe keeping on with keeping on.

 

Stimulus plan passed the Senate. That’s a win for Biden, for Dems, for the U.S. I wish Democrats could wield the sort of party discipline McConnell achieves for the GOP. In a 50-50 Senate the whip is the most important figure. Dick Durbin is important.

The Chauvin trial is imminent. That should give a boost to the voting bill, the police reform legislation. What will it be like in Minneapolis? Don’t know. My old home metro. 40 years. Feels weird to be gone during such an important moment in its history.

Meanwhile, SpaceX landed a Starship. It exploded afterward, but the landing was enough to declare a success. Perseverance has begun to roll across Mars, sending back spectacular photographs.

Life continues, no matter personal circumstances. Though jarring, this fact is also reassuring.