Benjamin
December 25, 1980 = November 12, 1997

WHEN A LIGHT GOES OUT

Benjamin was a special friend, he was the last of four dogs my wife and I shared, but she always left it up to me to make the final decision to put them to sleep. I did this with Ben and the others.

Ben was almost 17 when I said my final Good-Bye to him, one of the hardest days that still haunts me to this day, 18 years later. Because it had to be my decision, I asked the vet for his opinion and he agreed it was time to do it. Ben couldn't walk anymore, I carried him up and down the stairs of my Lexington apartment and I held him up while he used the bathroom. I could tell by the look on his face, it was time for him to go. It was in his eyes.

I was just going to post this on my wall today, but I felt Ben deserved his own story, because he was his own dog, had his own personality, different from the other three who had come before him. He got to share part of his life with two of them before they were put to sleep.

I moved to Lexington from Georgia on the spur of the moment and to this day, I can't tell you a logical reason why I did this. But I did and I brought Ben with me. I could tell his age was catching up to him and I did not want to leave him behind. He was loving and gentle and kind, he didn't seem to mind anything, as long as he was with me. When the divorce happened in  1989, Ben was nine years old and both my wife and I had rescued him at her sister's house in Owingsville on Christmas Day 1980. He was kept outside and it was freezing cold that day, sleet and rain mixed and I kept hearing this sound outside the window. I went outside and found Ben. The person who owned him said she couldn't take care of him, so I put him in the back seat of my car on a quilt and took him to Georgia. He was very sick, but the vet treated him and we took him home.

Over the years, he was as much a part of the household as anybody we knew, He became somebody I needed to take care of. I was miserable in my marriage, trying to live the life of a straight married man and it was destroying me, so when the divorce was final and I moved eight years later, I knew I had to take Ben with me.

He rode in the backseat of my little blue four-door car on the same quilt he rode on to Georgia, completing the cycle, if you will. I moved to Lexington in May 1997 to an upstairs apartment and I was content for the first time in my life. I had my own life and Ben had me, just me. I remember the times we shared custody of him and his going back and forth between the homes was wearing on him. I didn't want the new husband to take him from me like he had taken everything else.

Ben had been on a special diet for a while because of problems with his digestion, but the last week he was with me, I treated him to whatever he wanted = he would eat like there was no tomorrow and he threw up a couple of times because he ate so fast. When I made the final decision, I zoned out of my feelings and just went through the motions of existing. I held him in my arms when the vet came to the apartment and shaved his leg where the needle was to go in. I watched him do it and I held Ben as if I could will this not to happen, but I loved him too much, I wanted him to go to the Rainbow Bridge with his dignity intact. When it was over, I wrapped him in the old quilt, carried him downstairs and put him in the back seat of the vet's car. It had started to snow, the vet drove off and I screamed out loud until I couldn't scream anymore. The pain was unbelievable. I felt like I couldn't breathe, I couldn't move, grief swept over me like a physical being that invaded my heart and soul. Even though I had loved the other three pets I had before Ben = Nikki, Nugget, Chocks = there was something about Ben that stole my heart and soul from the moment I saw him.

A light went out of my life that day and my living has been in a dim world ever since. I fell into the rabbit hole that day and never completely crawled out. Eighteen years later, the grief and the tears and the sorrow and the longing for him is still raw and palpable.  Time doesn't heal a loss = you put the grief in a place in your heart and soul where you can take it out every now and then to cry and grieve and long for him all over again and I don't apologize for those feelings today.

I had saved the ashes of his older brother Nugget and I took them and Ben's ashes and drove to Jekyll Island, Georgia and scattered them into the ocean. I had never take Ben or Nugget to the beach before and with the ashes, they both became a part of the endless cycle of the universe, forever in the tides that come and go on that particular beach.

When people think of me now as the person with "all the cats", they don't realize I had to rescue them, had to save them, just like I saved Ben. You see, saving their lives brings me peace, regardless of how the inevitable end is going to play out. The greater the love, the greater the grief.

So, as my years wind down and tomorrow is never promised to me, I know that I love my babies now and I loved my four babies back them. I have lost Beanie, Maggie and Topper in the past six years but I will never forget any of them. Death ends the life you had with them, but death cannot erase the love I shared with them while they were with me. My one prayer is that when I go to the Other Side, that God will grant me the right to go across the Bridge to be with my babies who wait for me there.

The light that went out of my life when each one of them passed away, will once again be bright and I will be with them for Eternity.

Benjamin, my beloved baby, one day I will see you again and once again we can walk by the Chattahoochee River like we used to and sit by the riverside and listen to the water as it laps up against the river bank, never to be parted again.

The Chattahoochee River, behind my 

Atlanta apartment, 

where Ben and I used to walk.

Jekyll Island, the ocean where 

I scattered Ben and Nugget's ashes.

THE PEOPLE BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD

It seems like I have always been one of "the people by the side of the road". 

I know when I speak of my childhood and teenage years, people tell me I wasn't poor because I had a roof over my head and food on the table, but it always seemed that way to me. Poor people seemed to be "the forgotten people", just like today at the age of 70, the elderly seem to be the forgotten people, pushed to the side of the road by some members of a society that cannot tolerate us.

I have a full life, don't get me wrong, but it was a fight from the word "go". I have often been told also that my mother was a wonderful person and I realize that now, but living among a dysfunctional family changed me, made me an outsider, always trying to be one of the "regular people". I never made it to that status.

Now, I literally live by the side of the road in a doublewide trailer up a "holler", and at first it was very hard for me, adjusting to living in a trailer, because I had always lived in a house, but the two people who stepped forward when I was on the edge of being evicted from my house, Tom and Judy Byron, saved me and my babies at the last minute and for that I was eternally grateful. I have adjusted to where I live now, creating separate "nests" that are just for me, no one else would understand.

I am not the world's best housekeeper, if you come to my place, you would see a lot of clutter and a carpet that is way past being cleaned, but I live here as do my 9 babies and we really don't want anybody coming in to see us if they go out and broadcast to the world what they have seen. If I sense they will do that, then they are not invited in.

In general, I don't trust people, never have, probably never will. It's just the way it is, just the way I think.

Being mentally ill puts me in a position of always explaining to people why I am not  "consistent" in the way I think, the way I talk, the way I do things, the way I shop, the way I drive, ad infinitum. Well, you see, I'm never sure who I will be when I get up in the morning. What seems plausible to me at night when the world is dark and my living room is illuminated by the TV, the light over the sink and the light in the bathroom is that the world is a good place. It is my way of "being Blanche" from A Streetcar Named Desire = you know, putting colored scarves over the lamps in her room, to give her the illusion that all is right with the world.

But, when daylight breaks, I still feel like one of the people by the side of the road.

The people of privilege who dispense advice to the people who are not of privilege, are a dime a dozen, giving you a scenario you should live by when they know you can't afford to get to that level. But, I don't aspire to have material things = they clutter up the house and they clutter up my mind. I'm not sentimental about the past like a lot of people, I'm emotional in the present day, but old pictures that people pass around and show me doesn't effect me one way or the other = I can't relate to those people, even though I know who they are, I don't relate to them, our lives were and are so totally different.

Just my babies and me, enjoying what gets us through a day, whether it's a long nap for all of us or a treat for them and a treat for me.

Toot who likes to drink from the tap, rather than the water bowl = Darby Doodle who talks to me all the time, trying desperately to tell me something, but it usually is just for a head rub and for me to open the door that leads to the porch = Baby-Do (Boo) who curls up in the crook of my arm and goes to sleep and talks to me before he dozes off = Emma, the social eater, who loves to get close to her siblings during meal time = Pete who greets me every morning in the bathroom at the most inconvenient time and begs for me to reach down and acknowledge her, which I do and she trots off on her little legs with the white feet and is satisfied = Lucy Belle, who curls up on my chest as I cradle her in my arms and talk to her = Linus, who loves for me to hold him, purring wildly but when he's through with it, he's through = and Charlie (Brown) who loves to be stroked but will not let you touch her head, but she has learned to trust me and loves Darby endlessly.

We are the souls by the side of the road, who sit on the screened-in porch with the huge shade tree giving us comfort from the sun and who gather around the 9 paper plates on the kitchen floor when it is time for them to eat supper. We are satisfied that we have each other, content in the knowledge that we are not just the people by the side of the road in the doublewide, we are living, breathing souls who love each other when the darkest of days threatens to take the scarves off the lamps and expose the world to us for what it is. But, when the sun goes down, the TV goes on, the light over the kitchen sink is turned on, the  bathroom light is turned on and another day has passed. 

God has given us a chance to see tomorrow, whatever it may bring.