The Hits Just Keep on Coming

It's Prozac time here in the Pacific Northwest. As of today, Winter 2009-2010 has steadfastly refused to unclench its stubborn grip on those of us who call this cool, damp latitude home. According to my weather station, which has dutifully compiled temperature and rain data in Battle Ground, WA since 2004, this month has been far rainier than the preceding five Junes -- and we're only halfway through the month. Similarly, last month was nearly twice as wet as even the wettest May during the years 2005 through 2009. As a result, skies are cloudy, lawns are drenched, and forlorn spirits sag. Prolonged cool, wet weather is the topic of many a conversation among locals, especially those of us who imported their version and expectations of a more pleasant spring. I fully realize that if I want 300 warm and sunny days each year, I should move to southern California (no thanks -- been there, done that). But when indigenous Northwesterners lead the chorus of complaints, I know it's not just me. According to my sources at the National Weather Service, the condition responsible for our upside-down weather is a rather potent El Nino which, however, has now decayed into neutrality. How a washed-out and nearly negated aberrant ocean current could be responsible for unseasonable late-spring gloom is beyond me. For another slant on this phenomenon, flash back six months to Christmas lights on Main St and a tree in your living room. You may recall the frigid, plant-killing low temperatures we had at the onset of winter. El Nino in the Northwest is characterized by less-than-normal precipitation, and typically mild temperatures. Surprisingly, brief record-breaking cold events do often occur during El Nino conditions. Simply stated, El Nino is a mixed bag. But a winter that won't quit and a spring that won't begin? Where does that fit in? To add a few variables to the mix, we may be heading for a mild La Nina late this summer, the effects of which will likely become apparent in the next four or five months. Since normal weather is normally abnormal, no one can say precisely what effect this will have on our local forecast. If the aforementioned La Nina does grace us with her presence once again, statistically we would likely see a harsher winter, followed by a milder spring. But that's eleven long months away. For now, I just want the sun to come out, the creek to recede so I can mow my pasture, and the mercury to settle in at around 75 to 80 degrees. After all, it is June.

Goodbye to an Old Friend

Today was the day every pet owner dreads. It visited my home once again, and the results were predictable. Just like every other time in my life when I have extended the hand of mercy to a pet whose ailments had caused life's curtains to draw prematurely to a close, a horrible myriad of feelings has enveloped me. First comes the grief. If you have never experienced this unique type of emotional agony, you are either not human or you don't love animals the way I do. I suppose either possibility is reasonable. And there's always a healthy slug of guilt to go along with the flood of regret that washes in afterward. Let's put all that all aside for the moment. This remarkable dog's name was Crosby, though his ashes and his memory will carry his name until long after anyone is left who can recall him. He came to us in the summer of 2007 through an unlikely set of circumstances that are not particularly important. What matters is that he spent his last four years as a loving member of our family. Sometime early this year, an energetic and otherwise very happy Crosby developed a breathing problem. The veterinarian told us it was likely caused by paralysis in his larynx. As the surgical option for a twelve-year-old dog had quite a number of risks, we opted for a much less invasive pill treatment. The medication cocktail had mixed results for a short time, but ultimately the disease progressed, leaving him with suffocating attacks far worse than those of asthma. As his larynx seized, his breathing became impossible, and the poor dog would panic. At 1:20 this afternoon, the decision was made, and Crosby was loaded into the Jeep for his journey down the Green Mile. I prayed for an eleventh-hour miracle, but none came. I prayed that if there was to be no reprieve for him, that his passing would be sweet and blissful. I can only hope this is the way things went for him once he closed his eyes to the world around him. What was to be done would be final, irrevocable, and humane, and the product of much love and forethought. At 2:05, the vet administered a sedative. Almost immediately, Crosby's breathing slowed and he began to dim. He continued to fade as the seconds ticked by and in just a few minutes, exhaled for the last time as he left this world, mercifully released from the aches and pains and struggles to breathe that had plagued him during his final months. Did we wait too long? Did we pull the trigger too early? Who can say really? Only God can judge these matters. I hope he entered the equivalent of the heaven that awaits humans who put their hope and trust in God. If there is no heaven for our pets, at least there is no more suffering for certainly no dog is deserving of unending torment. In either case, Crosby is at rest now and has been set free from the earthly shell that bound him to his miseries. Sleep well, my friend. I hope to see you again one day. Our time here went by much too quickly. Your unique personality and exuberant bark, your zest for life, the funny way you walked - all will dim in our minds with the passage of time, but you will never be forgotten. Please remember to say "hello" to all those who have gone before you. We love them just as much today as we did the day they departed, just as we have loved you... Some Closing Thoughts It is now a little after 8:00 PM. The house seems especially empty tonight, strangely quiet even though other dogs live here. Crosby left a half-eaten bone, one of those Rawhides that would take a Skilsaw a week to cut through; his bright blue rubber ball, now ignored, lies on the floor in the living room; and his food bowl remains tucked away in a cabinet, unused tonight for the first time in years. The other dogs - even one of the horses - seem to know something is not right. Are they reading my mind, or do they have some sort of dual existence which allows them to peer into the Great Beyond? The items left behind by the death of my dog bear an eerie resemblance to that awful morning when my father passed away. I remember looking into his clothes closet at many things: shirts and pants that would never again be worn; pairs of shoes, some too new to throw out, others too worn to donate to the needy; personal effects belonging to a man who was no longer a part of this universe and who could not ever use them again. Yet there they were, like fallen autumn leaves collecting in a rain gutter, useless yet not without purpose, at least at some point in time. Twenty years later, I spent a couple of days poring over my mom's things after she had died. There was that same hollow feeling, the haunting memory left by a departed parent who had left all her earthly possessions behind. The big difference here was that my mother left far more than my father had -- she left it ALL, including most of the furniture I had grown up with. Then, in a flash, everything she owned had been reduced to an unclaimed jumble. Love is love, whether human or canine; life is a gift, an amazing journey; and death, though it is the completion of life, does not mean that love ceases, not at all. Possessions remain stubbornly tethered, even though there is no one left to possess them. It feels strange to simply throw away perfectly good items that Crosby would want, but without a portal to stuff them through to wherever he is, they lie here pointlessly, disconnected from the one who had once called them his. I guess I haven't yet decided what to do with them, the wound is still too raw. When I do, perhaps this will mark the beginning of the closure I need after losing someone who was my dog and my friend.

Morning Magic

Let's try a little experiment. Set your alarm clock for an ungodly hour tomorrow morning, if you aren't already in the habit of doing so. If you groan or bristle at the thought of arising twenty or so minutes before the sun's first light, turn off Konan or the guy with glasses and the annoying gray tuft on his balding head, and go to bed early. I live on acreage with (mostly) quiet neighbors and little nearby traffic, so this might work for me a little better than for you. However, while living in crowded southern California years ago, I had the same pleasant experience; if it can be done there, it can be done anywhere. Now that you're awake, go outside. If it hasn't rained in the wee hours, dew will most likely cover nearly everything, and the air will be cool, so you might want to dress accordingly. Unless a cold front has crashed through and wiped out the desired atmospheric conditions, the air a few hundred feet above you will be markedly warmer than at the surface. (I'm taking the liberty of assuming a cloudless night with little or no air movement.) Assuming the aforementioned, an atmospheric inversion will be in place, and you will experience an interesting phenomenon. Distant (up to a mile or so) noise is trapped under the inversion and will reflect off the cold-air/warm-air interface, returning to your ears quite loudly. This accounts for the interesting effect of sound waves carrying much farther than they do under typical daytime weather conditions, after the sun has warmed the ground and eroded the inversion. This ducting effect explains why a far-away moving vehicle sounds as if it is mere feet from you. Welcome to Physics 101. Now let's assume there is no traffic--perhaps it is a weekend or holiday morning, or you're lucky enough to live in a rural area. Perfect. You will find the quiet to be deafening, transcendental, and dare I use the word cosmic? Compared to the racket made by vehicles and noisy neighbors, the calm cannot be described. Later, as the first hint of sunlight appears in the eastern sky, birds will awake and begin to chirp. If you're a coffee drinker as I am, the pleasant aroma will add to the effect as you sip your brew and feel its invigorating effects. If you've followed my plan and not cheated by sneaking back to bed, you will greet the dawn with a euphoria that eclipses whatever benefit you might have had from watching the late-night clown shows, though modern technology has afforded you the luxury of recording their 11 o'clock antics, which I understand most people to do. In addition, you now have a whole day ahead of you. Of course this all washes out if you're a night person as I used to be. Perhaps I'm just getting older and am heeding the words of Ben Franklin.

A Long and Winding Road to Nowhere

It hurts when a childhood friend hits the pavement hard. It especially hurts when you can't do a thing to help him. I'll call my friend "T." I moved into a house next to T at the tender age of ten, way back in the late 1960s. He and his two brothers welcomed me into the neighborhood and showed me the ropes. What had been an empty house only hours earlier was now my home. And ten-year-old T was my newest friend. I won't bore you with the mundanities of two boys growing up living next-door to each other--I'm sure you can fill in all the appropriate blanks. T was a bright guy, and though we clashed on a variety of things, we managed to remain friends into the next decade and the one beyond that. But T was promiscuous in the area of, shall I say, chemical experimentation. (I remember seeing him smoke a joint and drink one of his father's beers when he was just twelve or thirteen.) By the end of the 1970s, T was showing signs which alarmed me, profound changes in his personality. Owing to what he was putting into his body--substances that ran the gamut from alcohol to marijuana to LSD to hallucinogenic mushrooms to God knows what--I could only assume he was under the lasting influence of one drug or another. Throughout the 80s, he developed an irrational rage; by 1990, he was verbally lashing out at phantom adversaries of a grandiose nature. Unbeknown to me, T had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in 1985. The news caught me off-guard, but it came as no surprise. Now in his fifties, T is unable to hold a job or care for himself. He wanders the streets of Los Angeles, threatening people--some real, some conjured up from within his tortured mind--without provocation. As a result, he has bounced in and out of jail. Everyone seems to have a restraining order against him, or they're considering filing for one, and for good reason. Seldom capable of rational thought, he doesn't understand why people don't want him around. T was rearrested this morning, and if the past is any indication, he'll be in LA County Jail for the next year. I don't know whether to be relieved or to cry for him. In the facility, at least he will have something resembling mental health care. Certainly he will have food and a place to sleep, and from what I understand, he will be with a group that is isolated from the true madness of a county jail, so he should be relatively safe. Where this all began probably doesn't matter; surely it matters not an iota to his family and friends who care for him, and it means nothing to T. Taking his prescription anti-psychotic medication, something he vehemently denies needing due to recurring bouts of irrationality, might be his only hope. Insulated from T by a thousand miles of interstate, I can neither help nor hinder his plight. But hope knows no boundaries, and I can hope that he is able to muster the presence of mind to take his medication and begin the long road back from his personal hell. At this point, little else awaits him but an open grave. So I will hope from afar, and I will beseech the God of the universe, through prayer, that T might find his way back to peace of mind.