Sitting on Empty a Million Miles from Nowhere...

Sitting here on empty, my brain’s a blank landscape.  There’s plenty of thankfulness and just as much non-thankfulness.  When we lose one blessing another is often most unexpectedly given in its place.  Why are we collectors of clever little sayings?  They’re really only for the people who don’t hurt, to surround themselves with warm fuzzy upbeat feelings.  For all of us who hurt, words offer no comfort to a heart that’s bleeding sorrow.

My Thanksgiving post…this is my Thanksgiving post because the holiday’s just around the next two corners and I don't feel like writing much more after this.  I need to gather my thoughts into a soft velvet bag, tie the cords up tight, and bury it in the back yard under three feet of dirt, take a deep breath and start fresh. 

Never plan a thing for this holiday.  It’s just a day off from work…my good, unless company comes…then I try to dream up a feast for the gods.  BUT…company seldom comes on November what-ever, so I’m usually safe in abandoning the date.  What are my favorite dates, did you not ask, but I’m going to pretend that you did?  I’m partial to the calendar day I was born, as in my small corner of this immense universe, I can selfishly claim it as all mine.  For a whole day I get to celebrate how important I think I am all the rest of the year.

Christmas…my second and only other holiday I live all year for its appearance, to openly celebrate what I keep in my heart all the rest of the year.  Love company, but seldom have it, and with husband overseas for another six months, it’s just me, five cats and a dog to take all the splendor in with awe and bask in the warmth of the season surrounded by chilly weather and sleeping landscapes.

A nod of deep affection to those who have left me at this stage of my life…my mother Helen, my brother Bob, and sweet kitties Andee and Travis.  You are so missed.  At this moment, feeling beaten up by life...my life, I don't seem able to rise above the ashes anymore.  I want to fade into the background for a while to rest and heal my soul in quiet, and I will heal...eventually.  Isn't it a bitch, that which matters most, always takes it sweet time to arrive?

  

Mindless in La La Land

I learned a devastating lesson last week at another’s expense.  I’m wondering why, in all my years of heartache and disappointment intermingled with hopefulness and good fortune, it’s taken me so long to finally become cynical enough to trust only my own judgment, to embrace the fact that others are quite capable of dropping me flat on my face, because it’s my face that’s smashed…not theirs.  Then they blow me off with sorry in the phrase and move on to not caring enough again.

I cannot even begin to fathom the blankness of a mind, the indifference it encompasses, to put a creature in a carrier and not latch the door…not even semi-latch it in careless haste or apathetic repetitious boredom.  It’s their obligation to their occupation and evidently a very lightly taken one.

Such a sweetheart and each time the back door was opened he wanted into our home so badly.  The choice was easily made to have him neutered, shots, and welcomed into our lives permanently.  Picked up from the vet at closing time in the dark and pounding rain, before I reached the car he pushed open his carrier door and disappeared into the night.

The clinic bought a trap, but days of no communication on their part, and feeling like a dentist trying to pull out all their teeth with each call I make, I don’t trust them anymore.  They led me to believe they cared, but after four days of phone calls on my part, they finally told me the only time they saw him was the night he disappeared.  The location was in the opposite direction of his escape, and the fact that I had to produce a photo so they knew what he even looked like, leaves me doubting he was ever spotted at all.

I walked the area around the clinic…I don’t even know where I would begin looking each morning and night.  It’s an area of miles and miles of businesses and offices without places for refuge.  He had a good home and was loved.  Now he has nothing.  Taken in a car to a place many miles away, I have little hope he will ever make his way back home…but I do hope.  It’s all I have now.  The garage door’s cracked open and his heating pad bed is still plugged in, and I wait.  And I’m crying again.

Travis