Kleenex

(This is Day One of a Project called "Five Days of Creative Recovery." It is meant as an antidote to Deep Unyielding Depression and various Sources Of Grief. For the next five days, I will do my best to post something creative. Out of words or whatever is possible. Feel free to join me however you'd like!)

Kleenex (working title)

When I was seventeen years old, my father and I flew to Winnipeg, Manitoba to say goodbye to my grandmother before she died. My grandmother was in her late eighties, and I think she had pneumonia.  I know she had nine children, two of them twins, one of them born almost dead. Her husband, Julias had died a good half decade earlier. When he died, I’d sewed Grandma a simple cloth bag out of quilted patchwork. She’d used it to keep her Kleenexes. At one point, my grandmother had insisted on starching my grandfather’s cloth diapers. And then somehow, she’d made the switch from handkerchiefs to Kleenex. Is that what death does to you?

As with most nursing homes, the hallways of Fred Douglas Lodge smelled of urine and antiseptic cleaning supplies. Crowds of half-asleep people in wheelchairs gathered around a large t.v. that played Singing in the Rain. And some poor man in the Lazy Boy cried out for Jesus.

Oh mighty Lord! Help me!

My grandmother spent most of her time in her room. She had a meticulous soap opera schedule to keep up with. When my father and I arrived, the t.v. was on mute. Grandma was lying in bed, a few squares of Kleenex arranged across her chest. We both kissed her and then I helped myself to stale bridge mix. She nodded as I ate. Since we lived so far away, whenever we went to Winnipeg, my father dedicated most of his time to sitting with my grandmother. To make up for all the months he wasn’t there. All his other siblings came at least once a week. If ever anyone missed a visit, Grandma would not be impressed.

Every time I visited Grandma, I felt quite guilty because I had long ago lapsed as her personal correspondent. Between the ages of eight and ten, I’d devoted myself to sending my grandparents letters every single day.

Dear Grandma and Grandpa, How are you? I am fine.

Then I’d go on and on about my violin lessons, swim meets and sleepovers. Back then I was quite a comedian and would often include a few good jokes.

What goes ha ha ha, plop?

Somebody laughing their head off.

Ha. Plop. I feel like I have not said the word “plop” in quite some time.

I used to decorate the envelopes with Mr. Sketch Smelly markers. Then I got busy with my extensive academic, musical and athletic ambitions. The letters simply stopped.

They were the joy of my grandparents’ lives, and then they were over.

“What happened to all the beautiful letters you used to write?” my grandmother sobbed one summer as I kissed her goodbye. Thirteen years old, and now I was a big disappointment. Grandma also complained that my hair wasn’t as lovely and curly as it used to be. So many burdens.

I think I am eleven here. Still sporting the curls, as I try desperately to be photogenic.

But as people are dying, you are supposed to get over such things. On her death bed, every time my grandma had to blow her nose, she ripped off a tiny square of Kleenex. Instead of using the whole thing, she would separate the two-ply pieces in half and then rip them into tiny squares. Four squares for each flimsy half. Days to live and Kleenex still seemed worth saving.

I remember staring at the ripped up Kleenexes. In my seventeen year old head, I thought, “Wow. Life is so tragic. So profound.” I was super deep and wise. Perhaps not, but I was definitely sincere. I felt bewildered that all the people at Fred Douglas Lodge would die, and eventually everyone would forget that they’d bothered to squander Kleenexes all the way to the end. I had this clear thought, that writing was the only real chance for redemption. Otherwise what was the point.

My grandmother died the weekend after we left. It was Easter Sunday. Nobody ever told me whether or not during her final days, she’d branched out and let herself splurge on the whole piece of Kleenex.

The End.

Be Creative.
I love how tidy my bookshelves are. I don't have a bookshelf anymore.
I Let Go, by Erica J. Schmidt (2-3 bucks on Amazon)

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Twitter: @mypelvicfloor

Yours Til Ekam Inhales     
Castles in the Basement
What People Really Need
The Closer I am to Fine

 

Simon Girard (1979-2015)

When I found out Simon killed himself, my face and hands and legs started to shake. I sat down, laughed for a second or two, and then wondered if what I felt was relief. And I thought, “Fuck, Simon. Alcoholic writer kills himself. Could you not have thought of anything more original?”

Simon Girard (1979-2015)
35 years old

This is the first time anyone I’ve fucked has died. It makes for quite the head trip, and I feel very odd.

In the beginning, I was supposed to help Simon translate his book about squirrels and homeless people into English. The first time I visited his apartment, I spent two hours teaching myself how to hula hoop. I invited Simon to the Granola Party I was having that Saturday. At Granola parties, you eat granola, take a quiz about what sort of cereal personality you are and then maybe share some performance art related to this discovery. Simon was concerned that he didn’t have anything to bring to the party because he was really broke. I said to come anyways. He arrived at my door with the hula hoop as his contribution.
As it turns out, granola is not the best buffer for vodka and I didn’t have an excellent alcohol tolerance to begin with. Since my boundaries were not that excellent either, Simon and I ended up naked on the blue biodegradable yoga mat in the spare bedroom. While I was drunk at the granola party, I told Simon that we should write a book of letters together. It could be bilingual. He could write in French, and I’d write back in English.

Within three days, Simon had started the book with a letter about how I’d ejaculated on his face on the blue biodegradable yoga mat. The letter ended with a relatively terrible poem that compared my vagina to a tornado, my phosphorescent ass cheeks to crescent moons and concluded with my tornado vagina making him “wet like the morning.”

I couldn’t remember ejaculating and in the following letter I claimed it didn’t count because I was so drunk. Simon said that it had to count or else he would have to erase all his writing from the last fifteen years.

When I met Simon, he had already published two books. “Dawson Kid,” his first published book was the ninth novel he’d ever finished. It was about a nude dancer named Rose Bourassa who takes up boxing. The day I went to visit him and learned how to houla hoop, Simon gave me a copy of his second novel “Tuer Lamarre.” He signed it and wrote a little note about how we never know what will happen next. Tuer Lamarre was the story of a young child who got molested by her neighbour. It was way too depressing and I didn’t get very far on it. Simon said he didn’t blame me and not to bother persevering. I think maybe Dawson Kid is a better read. He has other books now too.

Me and Simon’s book was called “The Little Savage and the Hermit.” I was the little savage because I threw reckless granola parties and Simon was the hermit because he spent most of his days drinking, writing and running up and down the stairs of his apartment building on Sherbrooke Street.

The process of writing “The Little Savage and the Hermit” involved a great deal of fighting, drunk sex, name calling and vomit. But it was the first time in my life that I felt like a real writer. I got to write whatever I wanted, however I wanted. Although Simon called me a stupid fucking cunt several times, he was a sincere and unapologetic fan of my writing. This made up for something.

The last time I saw Simon we were “working on our book.” “Working on our book” was usually a euphemism for drinking rather early in the day, fighting about commas or other mundane issues, getting drunk, and then having reckless, oblivious sex. We did this for months after we’d broken up. “Never again,” I’d say to myself each time I’d wake up in the morning, a couple of times with vomit on my pillow.

I think I finally cut myself off around May 2011.  A couple of weeks into June, I went to a wedding where I met the Boatman. Now there was definitely no more black-out sex allowed. But Simon and I still had to finish the book.

One morning in July, I went to his apartment at 11:30 a.m. I was sort of wearing a hot dress because I had just had an interview for some contract. At 11:38, Simon started making a White Russian.

“I want one too,” I said.

“Only if you take off your bra.”

“Not fair,” I said. He shook his head and brought his drink to the computer. I took it and stole a sip. Then he slid his hand under the neck of my dress and started pulling at my bra straps.

“I’m leaving,” I said.

I marched out. When I got to my bike, I realized I’d forgotten my seat. Simon took forever to buzz me back in. When I finally got back up to his apartment he was lying naked on his mattress on the floor. The bike seat was draped over his erection. On the top of his right thigh next to his groin, he had a really weird red, blue and green face sort of tattoo that looked a little bit like a clown. His dick was hard as wood. I grabbed the bike seat and left.

Simon’s funeral is next Saturday just outside of Montreal. I don’t think I will go.

Probably Simon would prefer that the last time I saw him, he was lying naked on his bed with a hard-as-wood erection, instead of dead in a coffin.

I moved to Halifax and over email, Simon and I wrote Part Two and Three of the Little Savage and the Hermit. We never revised either part and they are both a bit embarrassing. Part One is a bit embarrassing too, though it was almost going to be published at one point. Oh well. I might be able to find something to salvage.

My days with Simon make me think of that Machiavelli quote, “man should either be caressed or else crushed.” Anything in between and the person you injure will be driven to seek revenge. Over and over again, Simon and I went back and forth between caressing and crushing each other. Our reasons to retaliate ran out a long time ago.

“I forgive you, I’m sorry, I love you, I thank you.” Simon heard about this somewhere, and in our third book, he wrote to me to say he’d been repeating it over and over again, addressing his own ego and the people around him. “For the last week, I’ve been feeling a state of peace I’ve never known,” he said. “And I also feel dead. It’s fantastic.” Unfortunately, most of Simon’s fantastic remedies were short lived. The one thing Simon did remain entirely committed to was writing. Writing was his ultimate redemption. He always said that if you could write something good, it would make up for all the shittiest, dead-inside moments of existence. But for him, even  the writing process was laced with copious amounts of alcohol and self-destruction. I've been re-reading his letters, and his subjects mainly range from wild and compulsive sexual adventures to futility, death and way too much alcohol. Behind his exuberant, over-the-top persona, and his compulsion to find something to laugh about everything, Simon was profoundly depressed. He made tons of jokes about the two times he almost jumped off Jacques-Cartier Bridge in his twenties. Over the past decade, I imagine that he walked through many days, bewildered at the fact that he wasn’t yet dead.

 

Simon used to say that on his tombstone, he wanted the words, "HEYYYYYYYY! I'M NOT REALLY DEAD!" or else, "Monday morning...  the hell with it, I'm not getting up."

“I forgive you, I’m sorry, I love you, I thank you.” Last week I googled, “My ex killed himself. What should I do?” On one of the forums, some woman wrote, “He came into your life for a reason.” Then there was something about finding meaning in the whole ordeal. Although there’s a reason everything happens, I’m not a big fan of “everything happens for a reason” discourse. I don’t think Simon was either. He attributed not killing himself  those other two times to a couple of chance fluctuations of his mind.

 

That said, whether or not you write books with them, and whether or not they kill themselves, all of your exes leave you something you’ll keep forever. Simon and I were dicks to each other. Probably we were the worst combination in the world. But that was me and Simon. The Little Savage and the Hermit. “Classic shitty relationship, carried out by geniuses.”

The book is done.

The hermit’s dead.

Dear Simon,

I forgive you, I’m sorry, I love you, I thank you.
And I wish you were still around.
Love, Erica.

The End.

My deepest sympathies to his friends, loved ones, family and parents.

Simon's Obituary and funeral details

In Simon's memory, the family would appreciate donations made to Centre de prevention de suicide de Haut-Richelieu (Haut-Richelieu Suicide Prevention Centre)

Simon's Books:

Dawson Kid (Boréal, 2007)
Tuer Lamarre (Leméac, 2009)
Michel Bourget, sauver les vies (400 coups, 2011)
Les Écureuils sont des sans-abris (Coups de tête, 2011)

Article from La Presse: Écrire à tout prix (La Presse, 2012)

"Je vole vers l'astre qui est encore tout éteint et m'attend pour s'enflammer." (Simon)

Simon Says
The Granola Party Cereal Personality Quiz
What a Beautiful Face

  
 

Lizzie

One night while my friend Lizzie was sleeping, a bookshelf fell on top of her, and she died. The bookshelf hung on top of her bed. When it fell down, Lizzie couldn’t breathe and she couldn’t escape. 

A few months after Lizzie died, her sister came over to my last shitty apartment in Montreal.  She brought a book and a lamp and a photo.  The lamp was blue and was given to Lizzie by the people with intellectual disabilities that Lizzie once worked with in France.  Lizzie used to work for people with disabilities until arthritis attacked the joints in her spine and she got a disability too.  Sometimes I worry about this happening to me. Like the lamp, the book Lizzie’s sister brought is also blue.  I’d lent it to Lizzie for some English course she had to take. Volume I of the Norton Anthology of English Literature.  From Beowulf to King Lear to Gulliver’s Travels. It stopped before “A Vindication of Rights for Women.”  They started vindicating women’s rights in the next volume.  The book was pretty heavy.  I hope it wasn’t one of the books that fell on her.  I wouldn’t be able to bear it.

In the photo, you can see that Lizzie is wearing a light turquoise button-up shirt with a collar.  She has pink cheeks and brown eyes.  Her eyes are just a little bit bigger than eyes you might call bird-like.  Lizzie used to complain about her nose being too big.  I guess it is a little big in proportion to the rest of her face.  You can’t see it in the picture, but at the back of her head, I know that her hair is scuffed and falling out from the friction between her head and her wheelchair.  You can’t see her wheelchair either. Sometimes Lizzie could stand up by holding onto her wheelchair or her walker.  Or a table, or a bookshelf. 

Maybe Lizzie is happy in the picture – I think they took it on her fiftieth birthday party. But to me, she looks worried and kind of uncomfortable.  Sometimes that happens when people smile with their teeth and the photographer takes too long to take the picture.

The professor that Lizzie and I had during our second year at Concordia was adamant that we shouldn’t write about what we knew or else we’d be in trouble.  He made Lizzie cry once.  She’d written a story about a little girl who’d found her grandmother’s vibrator and her mother, the grandma’s daughter-in-law, felt awkward.  The story wasn’t terrible, but it read as though it had been written by someone who didn’t own a vibrator.  A little inhibited.  But Professor Fraser Richman attacked Lizzie who sat in her wheelchair at the back of the class full of twenty year olds, and Lizzie cried.

“Where do you want to go with your writing?  Is it just an outlet to express your feelings?”  asked Professor Fraser Richman. Lizzie’s eyes fluttered and she didn’t know what to say.  She was a pretty inhibited person.  In class, Professor Fraser Richman used to make us play games to help us to know our characters.  One of them was called “If you were a fruit, what would be?”  We’d go around the table and make up questions like “if you were a drink,” “if you were a car,” “if you were a kitchen appliance... what wouldya be?”  And everyone would have to answer for their character.  A martini, A coke, Earl Grey Tea.  A Volvo, a taxi, a Mercedes.  A toaster, a microwave oven, a hand blender.  The Magic Bullet.  Lizzie could never come up with anything.

“Gee,” she’d say, her eyes blinking rapidly, her cheeks and forehead blotching red. She’d push her glasses up her nose.  “A car?  Gee, I don’t know.  You’ll have to come back to me. Sorry.”  My knees hurt whenever I watched her.  Just say something, I thought, it doesn’t matter. I always sat in class with my legs coerced around the arms of my chair, frozen into an excruciating lotus position.  If you were a tree, a country, a dessert…  What would you be?   Lizzie never knew.

“Think too much and you’ll be in trouble,” Professor Fraser Richman warned us.  We were doomed before we even started.  When Professor Fraser Richman stacks up all his published novels, they stand taller than he does.  The summer after our class ended, I set out to read the complete works of Fraser Richman.  I got bored after the first chapter of – I don’t remember what the book was called.  The trouble with stacks of books is that they can topple over and kill you.  3-2-1, and you’re dead.  The suckers and the fuckers.  Professor Fraser Richman used to warn us about swearing in our stories.  We risked drawing too much attention to ourselves.  The writer is supposed to be silent, yet brilliant.  Like God.  He also said that writing about dreams (you know, the kind you have when you’re sleeping), though they may strike the right chord, was somewhat of a copout since real writers succeeded at weaving the subconscious into the narrative inexplicitly.  Well, shit fuck Jesus Christ, I think I’m in trouble.

I Cop Out

by E. J. Bodhisattva

A few nights ago, I had a dream that I was in a movie about Lizzie.  The woman cast as Lizzie was tall and thin with dark red nail polish and shiny, perfectly smooth straightened black hair that went down to the middle of her back.  Together we rode up the elevator to where the filming would take place.  When the doors opened on the sixth floor, Lizzie walked in.

“Lizzie,” I said.  “You’re here.”

“I think I fit the part better.”  She wasn’t wearing her glasses.  I told the shiny black haired actress that we wouldn’t be needing her anymore.  She got off the elevator on the ninth floor.  Lizzie and I rode to the top.  Lizzie wore a pink blazer.  Her face was less blotchy than usual and her small brown eyes which normally darted back and forth, remained still.
“You’re here,” I said again.

“Yes,” she replied, her voice unwavering and wise.  On the top floor, there was a beach of red sand like in Prince Edward Island.  A little girl was playing in the sand with a bright red vibrator.  I knew that it belonged to her grandmother.
“My grandma’s dead,” the little girl said, pointing to the ocean.  Upon the waves, an old sinewy silver-haired woman lay on a lime green surf board paddling with her arms.  “That’s her.  She’s dead.”

“Me too, I am dead,” Lizzie replied.  Further up the sand dunes, a man in a navy blue Speedo sold blueberries under a yellow tent.  In each corner of the tent there was a video camera.  Beside the tent stood an empty motorized wheelchair.

“I’m hungry,” said the little girl.

“I’m dead,” said Lizzie.

I took the vibrator from the little girl and led her by the hand to the blueberry stand. Lizzie followed us.  As the little girl and I examined the cartons of fruit, Lizzie sat down in the wheelchair.

“It will be sandy,” the little girl exclaimed.  I tasted a blueberry.  It tasted blue and juicy, but it was neither sweet nor sour.

“I hate water,” the little girl declared.  I bought a pint of blueberries and turned around to walk back to the ocean.  Lizzie was already ten metres ahead of us.  She drove the wheelchair over the sand and all the way into the water, until she disappeared underneath the surfing dead grandmother. 

“I hate the water,” the little girl repeated.  “I’m not going swimming.”  I slid through the sand without lifting my feet.  “I wanna go home,” the little girl whined.  She grabbed the vibrator from my hand, ran to the edge of the water and threw it out to sea.  It landed just beyond her surfing dead grandmother.  By the time the little girl came back, an elevator had risen from the sand. “I like elevators,” she said. We entered and descended.

The End.

This is the lamp.
The other day when the sun came up, I yanked it out of the wall and sparks flew.
The Boatman said that we can probably repair it, although we are typically quite terrible of dealing with that sort of thing.

Follow the Boatman on TUMBLR: verysatisfied.tumblr.com, and feel free to share his drawings.

 



The Boatman came back from art camp where he helped the worms draw deeper lines into the clay sand.

Actually, they are miniature shrimp.

I like to say that at art camp, the Boatman got an infection from the worms. But the infection didn't come from the worms. It didn't come from the miniature shrimp either. The infection is going away. The Boatman will be fine. 

Exuberant Bodhisattva on Facebook
Twitter: @mypelvicfloor
I Let Go, self-help book by Erica J. Schmidt 

Rumplestiltskin

Still Me 

Soul Fucking

 

Life and Death are of Supreme Importance

Here are some of my thoughts about Life and Death:

I should send out invitations to my funeral. Get people to RSVP just so I can get a feel for the friendship level. And for how many party sandwiches I should bill to Metro Transit and the other people in the world who have stolen my time.

People should send out birth announcements with boxes for friends to check off whether or not they approve of the passing on of genetic material.

I do approve.

I don’t approve.

When I die, I want a specific cause of death stated in my obituary with elaborate details regarding how this cause came upon me, and for how long. No ambiguities.

One of the most annoying things to me is obituaries that are vague about the cause of death. So all obituaries annoy me.

Died peacefully,

Died suddenly,

Died accidentally.

What does that mean? Everyone is dying to know how they died.

When I die, I want my cause of death to be elaborately and specifically described in my obituary. No holding back. If it was a long illness, say what the illness was. If it was an accident, say what kind of accident. 

And if I am hospitalized for some mysterious cause, please include regular updates of my condition on my Facebook feed.

I wouldn’t want to leave my friends hanging.

Also, in case of an accident, I want them to know the details so they can avoid the hardship for themselves.

And if it is an illness, I want to give them all the warning signs. That way they can ponder and obsess over their own symptoms.

I’m a really good friend. I hope you come to my funeral. In your RSVP, please indicate whether or not you have food restrictions. I will accommodate you as long as I feel that your digestion problems are legitimate, and not just some neurotic ploy to cut out carbs and other caloric indulgences. A funeral is no time to hold back.

Metro Transit no longer owes me funeral party sandwiches because they replaced the April bus pass that I lost on April 1^st, despite the fact that I never put my name on it. That was nice of them. I even gave them a homemade chakra card. Probably this is the first chakra card they ever received.

That’s the end of my current thoughts on Life and Death. 



This is the chakra card for Metro Transit. It is not likely I'll be remembered for my photography skills.



Or for my dorky photo shoot with kale.

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Follow the Boatman on Tumblr: verysatisfied

I Let Go

Internet Diagnosis of the Week
 Prozac Made Me A Better Person
Not Separate From All That Is

 

This is the chakra card for Metro Transit. It is not likely I'll be remembered for my photography skills.

No One Could Have Given More: In Loving Memory of John T. Smith

I just attended the funeral of a lovely man named John Smith.  Despite his extremely common name, John was an extraordinary person who I met while I was teaching and practicing at the local yoga shala. He died quite unexpectedly at age 59, of a brief and sudden illness.   

The church where the funeral was held was absolutely packed.  John clearly touched many many people.  

When they played the hymns, you could hardly hear anyone singing because everyone was crying. 

At the yoga studio, John practiced in the far left-hand corner, next to the window.  In warm, or at least reasonably uncatastrophic weather, he took his bike, which he also took on treks across a number of countries, along with his dear wife.  Whenever I subbed Mysore, I would arrive on my own bike at the very last minute.

“You don’t know what quarter to six means, do you?” he’d joke.  Then he would watch in feigned annoyance as I struggled to unlock the door.  John greeted everyone with a bright face and sincere interest.  

No one was spared from the teasing, but I don’t think anyone wanted to be. One day as I unrolled my mat in the Mysore room, John turned to me and pointed to the name that was printed on my yoga mat.

“Good thing your name’s there!” he said with a big smile. “Otherwise we wouldn’t know who you were!”
 
I started to say something back, but then Seth the instructor said, “Sssshh!” from across the room.  Over the years, it seemed that John caused many of us to be “Ssshhed” many times.  Probably none of us minded. 
 
Besides being a yogi and avid cyclist, John was a dedicated practitioner of karate and tai chi.  In the evenings, he would often do more than one karate class.  Some mornings, he would hobble in, favouring one side of his body or the other.
 
“You alright, John?” I’d ask.

“Oh yah,” he’d say.  “Just a little sore.”  Some years back, John had had hip replacements in both hips.  This never seemed to hold him back.  It was refreshing to see John practice.  He was delighted at what he was able to do, while maintaining true equanimity when faced with his limitations.  Due to his enthusiastic cycling and karate endeavours, his teacher Seth used to recommend that he do an intense psoas stretch before beginning his practice. 

Once, Seth had been away for a while and I noticed that John hadn’t done the psoas stretch for a couple of days. 

“So how about the psoas stretch?” I asked.

“Oh yah, better do that,” he said.  He grabbed a chair, bent one knee and slid his foot and shin against the wall.  For thirty seconds on each side he clutched the chair, grimacing in pure agony.  Then he stood up and continued his practice.  When others spoke of their struggles with various postures, John would shake his head, smile and say, “I don’t care.  I can do Baddha Konasana.”  No matter what he was talking about, there was always that twinkle in his eye, as though he was witnessing some sort of miracle. 
 

Baddha Konasana: John took great pride and delight in being able to do the pose, despite two hip replacements!

Every once in awhile, his replacement hips would pop out of place, usually in Trikonasana (triangle pose).

“Oh well,” he’d say.  “They’re not mine.  Can’t feel a thing.”

Listening to the tributes at the funeral, it seemed as though John was not someone who held back or did things moderately.  He gave everything had to every endeavour he took on:  family, friendships, yoga, work, karate, travel, cooking, chutney and jam...  For lack of a less cheesy sentence, it was very sad, but also very inspirational.

As a friend put it at the reception, “It makes you want to try harder.” 

Once John brought me a little jar of strawberry jam and it was absolutely delicious.   He was always trading chutneys and curry with other yoga practitioners.  I think that John was able to thoroughly demonstrate that where love and generosity are involved, there’s no need to hold back.  I hope to be able to truly remember this. 

Although I don’t know John’s family, I wanted to give them a card to express my gratitude for John’s presence in my life, and to offer my condolences.  It took me a long time to choose the card.  In the end I picked out  one with a picture of a silhouetted person on a sunsetted beach and her golden retriever.  Below the picture were the words, “No one could have possibly given...”

Inside the card was the word, “More.”

I thought that this message really captured John.  This morning before the funeral, as I was filling out the card, I turned it over and looked at the back.  There were the words, “Pet condolence greetings.”  The card company had created a line of Pet Sympathy Greeting Cards, to console people who had lost their dogs, and cats, and goldfish and guinea pigs.  I had purchased a pet sympathy card in memory of my friend John, a vibrant and remarkable human being.  Shoot. 

At first I thought that I wouldn’t use the card, and that I would just write something in the funeral home’s online guest book.  Then I realized that the words were actually right.  And John always took immense pleasure in catching and making fun of me in one of my typical socially awkward mishaps. 

So I thought I’d give John that satisfaction and I filled out the condolences card meant for the death of a pet.

Dear John, I do believe that nobody could have given more than you. I wish that I could see you one more time.  Though this is not to be, I will do my best to try harder and to give more.  I will think of you during my practice, and during my days.

Love, Erica.

 

Dog Friend in Gokarna, February 2016