There have been a number of sad things that have happened lately. We have nearly emptied the house, the bits I want to take away are in the garage, the council have come expensively to remove the huge double bed, that we somehow managed to get downstairs and the sofa, both of which we left on the pavement. The last to go will be the two single beds we are sleeping in but we’ll keep them in case we are needed for more heavy shifting for the S&H and thus avoid a two hour drive to the heavy shifting and a two hour drive away from the heavy shifting.
Talking of which, the lions. Well there were a pair of carved stone very oriental-looking lions, that my father had bought from a very upmarket store that closed it’s not-in-London branch and sold off even the lions that flanked the entrance. So, believing that I would be fulfilling his wishes if they went down the family to my cousin’s son, I offered the lions and they accepted. You’d think giving things away would be easy, wouldn’t you? Each lion is shorter than me, but not much, and wider, but not much and heavier. Much much heavier. Much. I couldn’t shift either of them, even though I put my whole weight (after lunch and two chocolates) against them and shoved. So I got a shovel and levered and shoved. Then I used the shovel to shove the gravel that surrounded them and found…concrete. Several hot and sweaty hours in the front garden with the lions produced numerous neighbours, all with an opinion. We learned they were loved, we learned children liked them, we were told not to leave them, we were told they were important for the area, we were told where they came from and we were told of the evening when a group of revellers had pushed one of them over. Which explained the concrete. Well I had a go with a chisel, the OH had a longer go with a chisel and, all the time, passers-by offered lion anecdotes. Then we decamped and the OH borrowed a very serious hammer action electric chisel and screwdriver with more impressive bits than I’ve seen in many a long year. The manly electric gadget freed the first lion in half an hour from the wedge of concrete in front of it, preventing it being tipped backwards, after which I could shift it. This was good because the friend who was subcontracting the crane lorry had emphasised the necessity of freely moving lions set against the vast cost and delicate nature of a crane lorry. Crane lorries, apparently, are second only to cheese souffles in their propensity to sink into the ground on the slightest pretext, whereupon misery and vast costs will occur and everyone will be off their oats for a fortnight. The lions, I was told, must be freely moving, so it was with great delight that I, having waltzed around the gravel with the first lion, left the OH to tackle the second, while I went off to tackle my mother.
I returned to a couple of surprises. One was not that the OH had spent a large proportion of the intervening two hours watching TV accompanied by a can or two. One was the extent of the downward nature of the concrete anchor. Prior to my departure we had pondered the ability of the generally pissed off eighty year old to dig a pit round a lion and fill it with loosely mixed ready mix. The stuff the OH had encountered was of the consistency of Mount Everest, with extra rocks and to the depth of……well actually, unknown, we never got to the bottom of it. We were surprised at how very ticked off my mild mannered father had been. The other surprise had been that the neighbour who knew had waited a couple of hours before telling the OH that she had watched as the crane and workmen my father had hired had lifted the lion and upended one of those always-mixing concrete lorries into the pit that several of them had dug. So he was pissed off even unto money. Amazing. So we put back the gravel and the cousin will be getting A lion. If the new home owner wishes to hire a wrecking ball because he doesn’t like the other lion, that’s up to him, whoever he may be.
The sadness was not the lion. The sadness was the cat. The problem was not that he had a huge cyst on his face, not that he was missing my mother, not that he was 21 and had bad arthritis. The problem was that he was stone deaf and his memory had gone. I could feed him and five minutes later find him sitting on the stairs staring at the door waiting for the neighbour to come in and feed him and then I could walk up behind him and make him jump by stroking him. I rang the cats’ charity and they tried to find a home somewhere not on a main road for a deaf elderly cat with no traffic sense but no one could. The real difficulty lay in penning elderly cats, they said. So I took him to the vet and she was young, so she gave us the lecture and couldn’t find a vein and dragged it out for twenty minutes but in the end he just went to sleep in my arms while I wept buckets. My mother told me every day for four years, which is at least a thousand times, to put the cat down and in the end I couldn’t see a way out of doing it.
On the way home the OH was tired and impatient with the driver ahead who was going slowly. He voiced his exasperation but I had hardly said the driver ahead was going slowly in order not to hurt the rabbits playing on the grass verge, when he ran over one. With my new car. The following day Russell brought a bird in and tormented it and threw it around the hall before I got it off him but it was dead.
I told my mother next time I saw her. She was totally matter-of-fact and said she wished they could do it for people and that he’d been the nicest of the cats they had owned.
I’ve spent the last couple of days clearing out the loft. I have about three car loads to go to the dump, if the rain ever stops.
My mother, however is fine. They are going to take away her phone at night because she has now called the police three times, I have just learned. I think the care home is brilliant. They dealt with this three times and only happened to mention it in connection with something else because it came up in conversation. Why are carers paid so much less than MEPs, MPs and politicians off all persuasions? Why are carers paid less than footballers? Or people who can sing songs? Hmm?
The world has gone crazy and I feel so sad. Not only do I seem unable to prevent death, I’m causing it. It’s against everything I believe in but I really don’t think I had a choice. Last time I had to do the same was for my own cat who was nineteen and a half and had a rodent ulcer. She was going west mentally too, she used to come into a room and smile at us and I knew she didn’t have a clue who we were.
Treasure all the healthy living things. Change is the only constant.
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Hoping for happier times.
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