This blogpost is dedicated to the memory of the late Harry Creech, a Vancouver Island musician who wrote the best song about shitting yourself ever. It was oddly mis-identified in some places as being a Fugs song, but nope, it's the Salty Seamen. This temporary replacement computer is way too slow for me to provide you a link but just Google "the Salty Seamen I Shit My Pants" and you will find the song).
...So Shockabilly have a song called "When You Dream About Bleeding, It Means You're Embarrassed." Not sure if that's true or not, but I have learned from experience that dreams about peeing probably mean you need to pee.
But what does it mean when you dream you shit yourself? Because I woke up with a start at 5:30 this morning, my dreams disappearing (save for maybe the vague feeling that Burt Lancaster had been in them), coming to full alertness in the belief that I had actually shit myself. I had felt a wet bubble come out with a fart, felt my underwear fill up, smelled a vile smell, all very vivid and real-feeling. It did not feel like something that had happened in a dream, but rather, something that happened in reality, in my body, there in the bed, waking me from a dream. Full of dread and shame and annoyance with my own flesh, I got out of bed far quicker than I wanted to be moving and felt the topsheet for a wet spot, using the light of my phone screen - not the flashlight - to check for discolouration of any sort, hoping not to wake my sleeping wife. Then I rushed to the bathroom. The topsheet had been fine, but I thought I could feel a pile of hot wetness in my shorts as I walked: "I hope I'm not dripping on the carpet." I sat down on the can, pulling down my underwear and pajamas, afraid of the mess that I would find, and...
...I discovered nothing. I had expected a puddle, expected to be washing out my underwear and PJs in the tub and having to do an unplanned load of laundry, but I couldn't even see a damp spot. I carefully eyeballed my shorts (red with white and black stripes; I favour loud and/or illustrated underwear and socks, mostly to entertain my wife, who often now buys them for me for Christmas). There was nothing in them that I could see. Before commencing to poop, I did a quick bum-wipe - "check it now before you produce more and mask the evidence" - but again, nothing. Finally - a bit trepidatiously - I reached down into my underwear and felt the fabric, first tentatively and then with increasing confusion: was there even a damp spot?
Nope.
So I guess I just dreamed it. Irritation with my prank-playing subconscious and relief that I had dodged the bullet - or, uh, what's a more appropriate metaphor, "fired a blank?" - competed for primacy, though my wife, after she woke up was entirely on the side of "relief" as I recounted the story. I stayed in the toilet to poop just in case, but it took awhile - there wasn't even an urgent need for it, I just figured I'd best play it safe.
All in all, if you'll pardon the vulgar and obvious segue, it's been a shit week. First the computer dies, then the cat (I won't even bother mentioning the Queen). It's been pretty sad in the apartment - though Erika and I took Saturday off to take a ride, ending up by chance in Ladner at a delightful farm day event at Westham Island Herb Farms, where we've picked pumpkins before. We toured around a few farms, actually, finding an egg stand (farm eggs are amazing!) and some flowers and fresh veggies. But we both are feeling his absence when we return home: the apartment is kind of haunted with our memories of him, even though he didn't pass here. So many things remind us of him, and we both start crying periodically, though not always at the same time or in response to the same thing.
Gonna try not to go on about it, but I've never met a cat as polite as Tybs was - he was full of character and more than a few quirks. As one of Erika's friends has observed, it's kind of like losing a family member. He would have been greatly diminished, even if we had - through daily watering, force-feeding and the like - tried to keep him alive, and it wouldn't have brough his kidneys back - we've already been giving him fluids under his skin for over four years, when his kidney failure was first diagnosed. Even diminished, as he was, he was still capable of receiving and giving love, still happy and purring to be petted, but he was so weak, so deprived (of vision and motion and appetite) and the likelihood that things would only get worse, probably quite rapidly, that it would have felt very selfish to keep him around any longer. I hope he would have agreed with our decision.
Hard to believe that just a few months ago, after an $800 dental surgery that relieved pain he was clearly in, he was running and jumping and chasing his toys, flinging about his catnip-stuffed flamingos and sprinting about in a way he hadn't for some years. At least because of that, he likely associated his trips to the vet with relief from suffering.
I doubt this was the kind of relief he imagined. Do cats understand tears? We didn't hold them back... maybe he understood something of what was going on?
No way to know.
I am relieved that we didn't take the ashes. I have no fucking idea what to do with ashes. Mom and Dad are still in the laundry room storage closet because - well, first off, Erika feels weird about the idea of having my dead parents in the living room with us, and secondly, because I feel like I'm supposed to have some sort of attachment to the act of scattering their ashes, and don't. I don't even know where I want to do that, let alone how I'm supposed to feel about it or what it "means." It all feels alien as hell to me, frankly. My father was definitely wanting to be cremated ("no bugs on me," was how he put it), and both my parents wanted their ashes mingled, so after he died, I held onto him (mostly in my living room closet) to wait for Mom to join him, but I kind of just got used to the idea of having him in my care, and when she joined him, it was just in the form of an urn placed next to him in the closet. What, I'm supposed to just dump them in the woods or water supply? What if the area I pick gets zoned for condos? What if I move out of town - am I supposed to come visit them?
I don't even know what I would want done with my remains, though fer fucksake, don't spend thousands of dollars on a fancy box or drag me to a church.... I kinda love that Edward Abbey wished for his body to be put in a sleeping bag and dragged out into the desert to be eaten by scavengers, though there are practical reasons for not asking people to do that for me here. I can understand leaving your body to science or wanting them to "cut me up and pass me all around," as John Prine wrote, though he was thinking more of organ donation in "Please Don't Bury Me" than he was a Stranger in a Strange Land scenario (Gerry Hannah tells me that Michael Valentine Smith asks his friends to eat him, at the end of that novel; I haven't actually read the book to completion, myself, but take his word for it, and love the idea, though again, it seems a bit much to ask anyone to want to do - "Sure, I'll eat you!"). I can even grok, if you will, that Hunter S. Thompson had his ashes fired from a cannon, at least making a fun, memorable event of his scattering, but in the absence of any good ideas of my own, I remain my parents' custodian after death, until such a time as inspiration strikes. It did occur to me that if Erika and I had a house, I would see about fashioning their ashes into a brick to be used in the construction, but that's about the only good idea I've had, the only one that actually has felt meaningful to me....
Anyhow, ashes or not, it's weird in the aparement without Tybalt. Every place we were used to him inserting himself - the meow at the door as we unlocked it after having been out, the previously-mentioned walk to the kitchen for treats, the spaces where he used to sleep... we don't have to watch where we step anymore, speaking of misplaced poops. We both catch ourselves expecting Tybalt to leap into bed with us, to come trotting around the corner to sit between us to watch The Walking Dead and get patted and brushed and loved. What's that Kinks' song, "No More Looking Back?" - "just when I think that you're out of my head I hear a song that you sang/ read a book that you read/ then you're in every bar/ you're in every cafe/ you drive in every car/ I see you every day/ but you're not really there/ you belong to yesterday," or something like that...? We've washed out his bowls, thrown out his toys (I think I saved one for sentimentality), laundered his blankets, and made plans to give his remaining medicated fluids and kidney care foods to a local SPCA. We're healing, we're okay, but we sure do miss him.
I will presently turn my attentions to VIFF blogging... enough shit and death and disaster, for now (I hope).
Think I'm gonna go back to bed, feeling weird that Tybs isn't there to leap up beside me and keep me company. We got some good naps in (though usually he was just coming to wake me up and remind me he hadn't had a treat in the last few hours).
Onwards...
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