Friday, July 23, 2010


Just happened into a comment on Facebook about the last song that Stephie ever heard, on this planet. It was a song I sang to her. The last song. Her last song, and I was the one to sing it to her. This seems too much for me right at this moment. I have been aware of this fact for nearly 5 years, yes 5 years on August 15th. I sang to her and held her hand. Her tiny tiny hand. I sang "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" I do not know how many times in the last 40 to 60 minutes she was here, preparing to leave her body. This earth. I sang, and sang. I held her hand. I didn't hold on to HER, just her tiny hand.

I didn't sing the Judy Garland version, I sang Eva Cassidy's more recent and what I feel is a very emotional and raw version of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." I am now only able to sing it this way. I am also now only to think of it as Stephie's. I barely keep myself from bawling during the song, even when I sing. I wonder what will be the last song I hear on this earth? Will it be a song playing over and over in my head like a commercial jingle you can't erase? Will it be playing in the background, something I would never want to hear? Will it be sung to me by someone that loves me? What sound will I take with me to mix in the soil and forever give back the earth what it has given me?

Thursday, July 22, 2010


I can remember the moment I knew I loved The Bun so much more than I had ever loved Neil. Where I was in the room, where he was ( the bottom shelf of my, now HIS bookshelf ) and the color the light in the room held. I also remember telling my friend's husband that I really didn't want to die on the freeway when he was going over 85 miles an hour, tailgating the driver in front of us so closely you could not only smell the paint and you knew what the driver had for lunch. He thought he was consoling me by saying that we would "oh, we'll all just die at once and then be in heaven together." I said he wasn't allowed that. The Bun would be left without me, and I was in no way going to die before him, no one else knew how to love him the best. No one could even come close for just one day, let alone the rest of his life. Well, I made it home alive, and The Bun died before me.

I cried such heavy tears today retelling the story of the day The Bun died to my friend that lost her dog of 15 years, last year when I lost The Bun. She had never known the details, never really dared to ask, not knowing how I would react. I bawled. I snotted all over the place. Mostly, I remembered him. I have tried to forget about remembering him, thinking it unfair to Peanut. How will I ever get to really love Peanut if I keep The Bun so forward in my heart? How will I let myself say all of the sweet goobery words that naturally spill from my mouth when I just love that he his here, and not betray either of them?

The Bun is the Love of my life. I know this. There are things I will do for Peanut and things I will be with Peanut that The Bun deserved. I wasted time not loving myself. The shame of it all is that it took The Bun's death to teach me that. He gave me the most it turns out.

I keep waiting for The Bun to visit me in my dreams, but I haven't had one SchnuggleBun dream. Yet. I have hope. I have peace in knowing that he is returned to the earth and that one day so will I.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

The only really big item I have owned, on my own, was my car. An unlicensed driver with three bullet holes in his chest, no insurance, cocaine, marijuana, a gun and three underage passengers drove into my parking lot at 50 miles an hour, plowed through three cars then landed in the fence nearly missing my apartment building itself last March. My car was one of the two cars totaled that night. I am lucky to have parents that co-signed with me to get another vehicle, but the sticky part is, I live on disability. I live markedly below the poverty line. I cannot afford car payments. Some months I can barely buy food. I pay the insurance on this car while my Mother pays the monthly lease. News on my Mother's financial front has not been too hot as of late, and this car may be taken away too. I don't have options to get one on my own. I feel this sudden urge to drive to Idaho for the day. Maybe Colorado. Take Peanut and go to Montana before I don't have the option. Oddest part of this whole thing is, I have had this wonderful new feeling lately...hope. It is exciting. I changed something that I was doing in my diet every day, it was simple. The effect was not. I am excited about each day. The chance to not be in as much pain, the chance to go, to do. Now, once again, all because of money, I am aware. It ends. Joy ends.

The awareness of having freedom with that vehicle is tainted by the awareness that possession is an illusion. I am aware I am greedy. I am aware I am lucky.

The Japanese word Aware ( ah wah ray ) is the sensitivity to the sadness of impermanence.

I am Aware.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

I am having the first period (menses) I have had in over eleven, yes count that, eleven years. I do not like it. Yes, it is gross. Yes, it is a bother in that my abdomen is distended and my inside feels as if it wants to be outside. This is not why I do not like it. It is the reminding. The reminding that I have an organ that is the strict definition of being a female and it will never be utilized. My empty candy dish. This refuse it is dispelling is just that, refuse. And now I am feeling a bit like rubbish. The oddest bit is how at this age, I am not as run down. Suppose it is the eleven year hiatus. A uterine hiatus. Do breasts make you a female? Is it the vagina? In the transgendered community those can be acquired along with the requisite hormones which my already lackluster ovaries provide. So, we have left the uterus. Relates to both the words Utopia and Hysteria. Can I be hysterical in my utopia? With or without a worthwhile uterus? The ticker I banished when The Bun left tries so hard to creep its way back in, but I refuse to let it. I am more stubborn than it. I am more stubborn.

My Peanut is lying on the floor, feet spread out behind him as if he were flying across the carpet to get to me. Little bits of Utopia, here and there. Then, when Stan Getz just asked from his song "What are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?" I laughed.

The Bun

The Bun
If you don't like rabbits, you can suck it, shove it and then go soak your head.