Standing In The Shower Thinking

 Mornings, Saturday mornings especially, are my favorite time of day after pitch darkness. Fresh news to listen to and read, a cacophony of birdsong--almost a gentle fury--drowns out even the highway noise at 5 a.m., and the sense that Willow and I are alone in the world. It all makes for the perfect start to many days. 

This morning Willow had me up after 3. After crating her last night and ignoring her protestations of lockdown, her anxiety turned way, way down. By this morning the only remnants of the drugging are the intermittent shaking of her head--making her ears flap loudly on the sides of her head, and the more than occasional obsession with her bottom. She has been to the vet 2x in the last two weeks, so I am certain she doesn't have mites in her ears or some urinary tract infection, but I am fairly certain we are going back to the vet this week to make sure the behaviors aren't evidence of illness. 

I gave Willow a treat at about 3:15 a. m., when I woke to her whimpering from her locked crate. She threw up 6x between the vet and me putting her in her crate. When I went to let her out, it was apparent that her stomach had settled, and I surmise it was anxiety, unchecked until crated, that caused her stomach upset. 

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I managed, after an hour or more, to get her out of her repeated paw punching for more food, and I drifted off to sleep until 6:15. 

She is fully recovered and has decided being outside this morning is too cold 🥶❄️❄️ 🥶 outside to warrant more than doing her business. This, given the season, won't last long, but I will luxuriate in the cessation of the repeated standing up and sitting down and the door opening and closing more than a heart valve. 

So, after treats for Willow and coffee, I went to the shower--my best place to think. The other day, while searching for some documents to provide to Abby for her last year of school, I stumbled across the notebook in which Jenny had written her suicide note back in February of 2021. At the same time, she was writing an obit for herself. I don't think I ever looked at these docs closely, if at all. I knew they existed, she announced at the time that is what they were--only to deny it ardently for the rest of her life. She called me overreacting, assured me she


was only talking about leaving, not killing herself. I was so in thrall to her gaslighting that I questioned my sanity, going so far as asking Leiney--who was the hero of that morning--whether I was misremembering. She assured me that I wasn't. The obit and suicide note--which I finally skimmed today--both make it eminently clear. She wrote in the obit that while she had cancer, what had killed her was depression--she just couldn't go on. In her letter to the kids was additional confirmation. 

What sticks out to me most is the toughness, hope and strength of Leiney. She was the pinnacle of caring and rationality, trying to comfort Jenny and help her understand that she wasn't being rational. Leiney was 18. 18. If I were as well adjusted as Leiney, well that is impossible so never mind. My admiration for this kid who suffered the impact of a dying mother turning her back on her children and thrived despite this, graduating with high honors from the UW, is unbounded. I love her to pieces.  

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

She keeps it simple—

what was there, she keeps;

what wasn’t, she reached for.

No long story about it.

Just a life built piece by piece,

solid enough to stand on.

She loved her mother—

you can feel it

in the reaching that never quite stopped,

in the way she learned to stand

even when nothing answered back.

You see it now

in how she moves through a day—

clear-eyed,

not waiting for anything to fix itself.

She made something steady

out of something that wavered.

That’s the whole of it

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