29 July

My New Work Space

by Jon Katz
My New Work Space

Someone messaged me today to say she envied my new newly re-organized and cleaned up office, and I had to smile. She said it looked so peaceful. I am sorry to say it is anything but peaceful, even though I love it and am delighted with the changes we made over the weekend.

I am fortunate to have a wife and partner who loves to undertake projects like this, it’s like living with Wiley E. Coyote, she is a dervish, hauling  tables and books around, filling trash bags, organizing trips to the dump and Goodwill.

Maria says it bothers her to see my office looking like hoarders live there, she can’t rest until messes are cleaned up and junk is hauled out of the house. I obliged, we hauled big bags of garbage to the dump and a carload of stuff from Goodwill.

Offices are a great challenge for me, my Dyslexia never makes itself felt or seen more intensely than in my office, where I am simply unable to keep books in place, or papers stored, pens piled up,  my desk uncluttered with symbols, muses, papers and printouts.

Maria told me last week that apart from vacations, I have written on my blog or my computer every night since she had known me. I said this couldn’t possibly be true. She laughed and said it was absolutely true.

I didn’t believe it, i still don’t. But here I am, heading for 11 p.m., writing. More Dyslexia, I imagine, it has worked for me in many ways.

Maria is amazing to see in action, but we both know this office will not look like this in a few weeks, or even days. Taking my study apart is actually quite  frightening for me, I can’t breathe normally, and the panic bubbles up and tightens my stomach, and makes me sweat.

Nothing stirs up the Dyslexia more than filling out spaces, tracking wires, and throwing out things I saved and might need. I hate this, but am grateful to love someone who cares about me enough to help me sort it out when things get crazy.

Everybody knows this, so the work is done in a determined, rushed and experimental way. Maria wrote about it on her blog today.

This all began when we went to a restoration shop in town called Shiny Sisters looking for a new table for my office, I don’t remember for what or where. I saw this 150-year old British Partners Desk with a $225 price tag on it and I said I wanted to buy it, and Maria said logically, but you already have a desk.

This was so, I said, but I would love to have this desk. And then her wheels began to spin and she was already thinking of how to re-organize my study. When she gets going, it is like watching a tornado race across the plains.

She said but I had a desk, and I said this should be my desk, it practically shouted at me to take it home.

This is a very good move for me, the kind of thing that focuses me, stirs the creative spark and makes it easy and comfortable for me to write. I paused tonight and said some silent prayers for my new desk and welcomed it into my life.

I think we will make some beautiful words together.

it is dark and solid and funky and reeks of character and  history. A writer’s  desk for sure.

I winced when I thought of the amount of work and disruption that would be needed to get all the stuff out of my office, so this could come in and we would re-arrange my two farm tables around it. So that’s what we did, a friend came over to help, but like me, she mostly watched in shock as Maria tore all over the place in a blur moving things and hauling them out.

So I love my new study, sorry Sheila, it will never be a peaceful place but it is a creative place, and I will work hard and continuously to keep it orderly and rational for as long as I can. Tonight, I am quite at home in here, Red sleeping at my feet, I’m planning to head for Albany in the morning to write a check to help an Iraqi couple in trouble keep their electricity from being shut off.

More to come.

29 July

Talking Truth With Carol: “What Is Wrong With Me?

by Jon Katz
Talking Truth With Carol

Note: I believe Ed Gulley is actively dying, and so I no longer think it appropriate to take photos of him.

I saw Carol Gulley’s blog post around 11 a.m. this morning,  it was powerful and honest and important. It went straight to my heart.

I called her right away, and I said “Carol, that was a beautiful and amazing  post this morning, and I wanted to tell you how important it was for me to read, how brave and authentic it is.”

“Maria and I would like to come over and talk to you about it, if that’s all right,” I said. ” I think I can help you.”

She said sure, Carol is always startled by compliments and has little or no regard for her great strength and  worth. Ed woke up in the middle of the night, she wrote, and begged her to tell him why he stays in bed all the time, and why he just can’t get up and do all of his chores, and all of the other things he needed to do.

Carol never asks for help, but I know a call for help when I read one.

Carol never once imagined in all of her life that she would be in the position she was in now. I have never interfered with any of the decisions she or her family has made, but there were times that I just felt i had to offer to help.

This was one of them.

“Again,” she wrote in her post, “I told him he needs to build up his strength and he said I am lying to him…why won’t I tell him the truth?”

Carol has at times been deeply wounded by Ed’s lashing out at her, telling her she wasn’t telling him the truth, a common symptom of late stage brain cancer.

Ed kept asking her “what is wrong with me?,”  she wrote “I try to say things that he can understand but does he really not remember he has brain cancer? I couldn’t bring myself to say the words.”

__

If you ask Carol, she will always say she is fine.

She wasn’t saying that today, and she wasn’t fine. When Maria and I arrived we all sat down at the kitchen table for a talk, an important one for all of us, a hard one for all of us, but especially for Carol. She looked crushed, grief-stricken.

He is slipping away, she told us,  And she is giving him morphine every day.

This is tearing her to pieces, even as she knows it is what she wants to do and ought to do. What Carol is doing is one of the hardest things any human being ever has to do, and that is to help someone she loves – in this case a partner of 47 years – die.

She can hardly bear the thought of living without him. She feels enormous guilt.

These are the dark days for Carol, and there is no sugar-coating it or softening it. It will get much worse before it gets better. But, I think she can see a bit through the fog and knows it will be one day be better.

“I hate myself for feeling this way but I look forward to an end for his suffering,” wrote Carol,  “and I am reaching for the right words to tell him so. I feel that telling him it is okay to go is not enough…”

I felt it was very important to speak with Carol and I was grateful that Maria came. I thought I might be able to help her with the words she is seeking.

Carol is very easy around Maria, easier sometimes than she is around me. Maria’s presence would make what I had to say easier. And Maria has her own  wisdom to share. She just radiates warmth and empathy.

I told Carol that I felt it was important for her to find the words to tell Ed the truth when he asks.

I said I was not trying to tell her what to do, just offering help in how to do what she said and wrote that she wants to do. Words are my  business, my life. I know Carol is struggling for the right words at such a time.

It will not be long now.

I told her that my first great lesson in hospice was to never lie to anyone who was near death, to never suggest things would be better, tell them the were fine, to never offer false hope or suggest good news was just on the horizon.

Sitting with Ed these past weeks every afternoon, I see again that many people have no idea what to say to death, or to people who are dying. I never did either, until I was taught. We all hide from death, and when it comes, we are struck dumb.

A few days ago, one of Ed’s oldest friends came in and roared, “Hey Ed, you look great today, so much better than last week! Congratulations!”

My jaw dropped a bit and Ed stared at him in bewilderment. It was well-meaning of course, but there is little anyone could say to Ed that would make things worse, since he knows better than anyone that this is not true.

I believe people at the edge of life need truth offered thoughtfully, not unreality.

Later, a neighbor down the road came into Ed’s room and leaned over to tell him he would be up on his tractor and mowing hay in a couple of days. Don’t worry about it, she said, the doctors don’t know everything.  She told a joke to cheer him up. It didn’t.

I kept my mouth shut, it wasn’t my business, and she meant nothing but good, but I wished she would go away.

Ed has a right to hear the truth, it is his body, his life, his pain. It makes me uncomfortable to patronize the dying.

He is on morphine and five other kinds of medication and sometimes the drugs and the cancer speaks instead of him. But he knows who he is and where he is almost all of the time.

When he asks me the questions he asks Carol, I say “Ed, I am so sorry, but you have brain cancer and that is why you can’t do the things you want to do, why you can’t sit up or walk or milk the cows. I wish I could make it go away, but I can’t, and it is out of our hands. Nature is taking its course now.”

When I say this to  him, he says, “oh, yes,” or just stares, and since last Saturday, he then falls back to sleep. In fact, he rarely awakens now.

I told Carol that I see how much she loves him and how hard this is for her, but I hope she can see that he is lonely now, alone with his death, and what he wants to hear, I believe, is that the ones he loves will stand with him in truth at this moment and share this final experience as best and honestly as they can with him.

I don’t believe he wants to hide.

He wants to reach out for reassurance and he is frightened, and he needs to know there will soon be relief, this will end. His questions are rhetorical, he is trying to understand what is happening to him. His only solace can come from knowing.

This is all up to  you Carol, I said, I believe this will help you greatly, and through you, him. The hospice staffers will help you.

Whatever  you do is fine.  This is time of truth and dignity. But it is up to you, not to me. You are here with it all night. He is the person you love the most.

I hope you are proud of yourself for how you are dealing with this.  We all are.

“I know this is right,” she said, “it’s what I want to say, and should say, but I just can’t speak the words.”

I said it was her decision when to speak and how to speak, Ed is moving beyond our reach. You need to take care of  yourself now, and all you can do is be there and let him know you are with him at this time.

I tried to remind Carol that no one could possibly to more for any human being than she is doing now for Ed and will be doing for him in the coming terrible days. Guilt is such a poison. Only the righteous ever feel it.

You can say the words out loud, you can say the truth to him if he asks for it: he is dying, and you know he is dying, and there will be no more walks through the barn or sculptures in his workshop or rides to Montana.

Carol And Ed believe in God and I told her to let God do his work, and she will do hers. I said this will be a great gift to Ed, and to her, as awful as it is and as painful as it is. I believe this is what Ed has asked me to do.

Then Carol began to cry and I suggested we close our eyes and pray together so that she might have a  respite and think about our talk and gather herself. And she did, she is so strong and loving.

Then I left her to talk with Maria, who is gentle and warm like Carol, more so than me, and I went to sit with Ed.

It was ironic, because the minute I said down with Ed, he grabbed my hand and asked me “why is this happening to me?”‘ in this raspy and almost unrecognizable voice. “When can I die?,” he asked me.

And I said I didn’t know, but I believe he would die when he was ready to die, it seemed to me it was up to his God and his body now, I was much too small to know.

And then he closed his eyes and I sat with him for a long time while Maria and Carol talked in the kitchen, I could hear Carol’s voice brighten, they talk so easily to one another.

I went into the kitchen to talk more with Maria and Carol, Carol was so much better, she seemed herself. We heard Ed calling out to her and she went into his room and I heard them talking and she came back in the kitchen to bring him some pudding.

“He asked me again what he can do to make himself better?” she said.

And she poured water into Ed’s glass and turned to me and said “I told him its the brain cancer thing, and there is nothing we can do about it.” Her eyes were full of tears and she said, “and he said, oh yes,” and he fell back asleep.

Maria and I left soon after that – Carol was  giving Ed some pudding – she asked us if either of us could sit with Ed Tuesday afternoon while she went to the Schaghitcoke County Fair to see her granddaughter show one of the Bejosh Farm cows.

She might get a ribbon.

We said we would be happy to, we could come together or take turns.

29 July

The Lost History Of Dogs: Can They Save Compassion?

by Jon Katz
The Lost History Of Dogs

In a sense, the history of dogs is the history of the human search for compassion.

If you were to ask me what is the single most destructive and dangerous human trait, it is a lack of empathy and compassion – for people and for our sister, the earth.

it kills and harms more people and causes more wars and does more harm than almost anything I can imagine. Just watch the refugee children cry out for their mothers from behind the prison bars where we have placed them.

The history of dogs is, in many ways, a lost history. We love them to death, but so often fail to see their significance.

Historians and sociologists believe the first isolated and violent humans first learned compassion and empathy from the dogs who protected them and guided them in their search for food and who they came to love and nurture over time.

For 15,000 years, dogs have helped teach humans how to love and feel.

Most of us have always known that dogs are good for us, and for our mental and physical well-being.

From them, we learn skills that are essential to maintaining peace and harmony. Conversely, psychologists have found a strong correlation between the abuse of dogs and the abuse of people.

Cruelty towards animals is widely recognized as an indicator of mental illness and psychopathic behavior.

In my work, I have seen dogs comfort the lonely, connect people to one another, and  keep love alive where it is missing or fading. They provide unconditional love and connection in our fragmented and polarized world.

“Dogs,” writes Mary Elizabeth Hurston in her fascinating book The Lost History of the Canine Race: Our 15,000 Year Love Affair With Dogs,  “are heirs to a rich, varied heritage reflecting their influence on modern thinking, as well as the thinking of our ancestors.

In this sense, canine history not only chronicles the remarkable story of a uniquely adaptable animal, but documents the spiritual and emotional evolution of the human species as well.”

In our time, the left and the right, those avatars of our increasingly inability to think for ourselves, argue about everything, but not about dogs. Most of us love and need them, there are more than 70 million dogs living in America today, many filling the holes in our emotional lives.

The ability of people to empathize with other creatures has been considered one of the seminal and unique landmarks of human beings, requiring not only a sense of the self but a capacity to recognize others as distinct and separate from the self – in other words, the very essence of consciousness.

As the culture of compassion continues to evolve outside of politics, there is a growing body of anecdotal and empirical evidence to suggest that dogs and other animals have the ability to express compassion for one another and for us.

It is this idea that draws us so powerfully to them, to living with them and rescuing them and loving them back.

In our civic arena, our leaders seem to be losing the very qualities of empathy that have always been associated with great leadership and great civilizations.

Dogs have so much to teach us. “Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures,” said Albert Einstein.

In his landmark book, Pets And Human Development, Dr. Boris Levinson, a psychologist and scholar, noted Americans growing disenchantment with the institutions that once sustained them – technology, politics, religion.

They were becoming disconnected from one another, and alienated from the institutions of government, which they believed no longer served them.

Even more than a half century ago, Dr. Levinson wrote, alienation and isolation was resulting from complex stresses created by a technological society whose values and institutions were in many ways dehumanizing. And this was written in 1963, before America became a Corporation Nation that forget what it was that people are for.

He foresaw a time when we would turn to dogs and other animals, when they would provide relief to beleaguered humans, giving much love and pleasure and reminding us of our origins.

I think this time has come. I think dogs are keeping love and compassion alive for so many of us, and may yet teach us how to care for one another.

In my lifetime, dogs literally taught me how to live and care for another living thing. To me, it is no accident that our very cruel and uncaring White House has no dog living in it. Dogs soften us and guide us away from the dark side of life.

It is something of a strained cliche to hear dog people say they don’t trust people who don’t love dogs. That’s too far a stretch for me, I know a lot of good people who don’t love dogs.

But if  you look at this idea another way, there is certainly something to it.

Dogs force us to be good, they challenge us to be patient and empathetic and to listen. A great dog demands that we be better people, and this gives me nothing but hope and optimism for the future of humanity. Love is always alive when dogs and cats are around, and more of them are around then ever before.

People who love dogs are by no means perfect, but they often demonstrate the better sides of humanity: love and compassion and nurture.

There are just too many dogs lovers for us to all drift to the dark side.

29 July

Gifts Of The Blue Birdbath

by Jon Katz
Gifts Of The Blue Birdbath

After every storm, I find there’s a gift left for me in the blue birdbath. This time it was a pink flower I never saw before blown off of a nearby stem. Sometimes I think there’s a garden elf named Maria who leaves these gifts in the birdbath for me, but she denies it and looks innocent.

I never quite imagined the color impact of the blue ceramic birdbath, I just thought it would look like in the garden. But there is a secret voice in the head of every photographer whispering “color, color…”

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