Sunday, February 4, 2007

We Interrupt This Program...

I’m sorry. My series on death—and life—has been interrupted by life—and death… I’ll get back to it as time and mind permit. Right now, it’s my day off, and I am in the process of sitting on my butt, single-handedly consuming a bottle of cheap champagne, and attempting to digest the events of the last seven days. The better to pack up and go on to next week… Come along with me on my Voyage of Assimilation.

I have such sweet online friends. Robin sent me an email expressing sympathy and "checking in" on me. Thank you, my friend… (I hope I have your leave to share the text of your message.)

"I know your house feels sad and quiet," she wrote. But the problem is, it shouldn’t. And it doesn’t…not really. After all, we still have six cats and a dog. The band is still playing. And it’s a lovely song. It’s just…different. Some important instruments—the trumpets? the violins?—are missing. We simply need time…to adjust to the beauty of our life’s new music.

On the weirdness of life—My husband took our sweet kitty to the local vet on Thursday morning. Though I voiced philosophical doubts about not letting nature take its course, and not honoring "The Universe" by letting him die naturally, the husband was not in favor of allowing our dear old companion to die by inches. In the end, it was not too difficult to talk me out of the empiricals. I said goodbye (twice) Thursday morning; then Dad took our boy to the vet and held him while he drifted into his final sleep.

The weird part? Back in December, I had ordered tickets to a Bill Engvall comedy performance and presented them to the husband as his Christmas gift. Performance date? February 1, 2007. Ugh! So, let me get this straight. I’m supposed to kill my cat, and then go out for an evening of laughter and merriment. I don’t think so…

We SO wanted to give those tickets away. We tried calling one of the girls who works for me. Cel phone. Voice mail. My favorite technology nullifies yet another opportunity for human interaction…this time, a gesture of (desperate) generosity.

Ooookaaaayyy… Let’s drag ourselves downtown, get some dinner, then go to the box office and give back the tickets. At dinner, who should show up and be seated right next to us but another of our employees? The one who had no idea who Bill Engvall was, and was not the least bit appreciative of the offer of the tickets. No help there.

Right. We’ll GO to the show. After all, we own the tickets. If we should become overwhelmed by sadness or the inappropriateness of our having a good time on such a tragic day, we can always get up and leave…

So we went. We laughed. It was hilarious. I don’t know why we didn’t just…short out. Crying all day, laughing fit to pee all evening. Sometimes life is just too bizarre

10 comments:

  1. I told our pastor today that if I get to preach this summer, the sermon is already finished.  "Life is complicated," I'd say.  And then we could all meditate on that for 20 minutes.

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  2. PS: I believe that the instrument you are looking for is: piccolo.

    At least, that's what I saw and heard in your entries.

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  3. I think ending a tragic day laughing is perfect. Maybe, just maybe, the Universe gave you exactly what you needed.

    Hmm...I wonder, could I require everyone attend a comedy club instead of doing a memorial or some such when I die. I'd much rather know people were having a good time at my expense then sitting around morose.

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  4. Life is not always  a circle sometimes it is an image made by a sprograph.

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  5. oops I meant life is sometimes life an image made by  a spirograph

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  6. Oh, Lisa.  Life is just wierd and strange.  How we go from one extreme to another never ceases to get to me.  The laughter had to be a gift though, a leavening for the loss.

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  7. Lisa, I'm sorry to hear about your kitty.  From the sound of it, you were meant to go to that comedy club and give yourselves a break.  First the tears, then the laughter ... that's just how life is, how it's meant to be.   Tina

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  8. Laughing is such an emotional outlet....even for grief.  Why else would we often laugh at completely inappropriate times?   It's an outlet for stress.  I think you did just the right thing.

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  9. Laughter is the best medicine. I know there are some funny stories about the cats. I still kind of miss your Marvel of the many stripes and blue green eyes.

    Jackie

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  10. This may sound horrible, but my brothers and I ended up having to leave the church on the night of the visitation, years ago, when my dad died.  We'd been lining up for pictures, and we began to joke around about it, like he would have joked around...and then we were bent over with laughter, and had to get out of there.  It was good for us, though, and not disrespectful.  Laughter, like tears, is a tremendous release...

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