About the same time, I was visiting with some friends who
were also in the Humane Society when I meet the sweetest little black and tan
girl. She was about 4 weeks old at that
time. They had found her and a brother
at a dumpster outside of Fisher, Louisiana.
Oh she was so tiny back then! I
kept coming over to visit this little one I was just sure was going to be a
Dachshund. My follower rescuers told me
they were going to put her down because they thought she was anti-social. I said “Give her to me. Let my pack work with her.” We convinced Jay and I took her home at 8
weeks old. We named her Princess. Our royal court was now complete. She told me that she had seen her mother
killed in front of her and did not want to live. It took a while of being with my fur children,
but she eventually came around. As to
her breed, well a year and a half after getting her, we finally came to the
conclusion she was in fact half Rottweiler and half Lab.. Laugh all you want. She still thinks she’s a Dachshund. I’ve never really had to worry about her
getting on the counters and she will hide from bigger dogs.
Princess is very special.
I don’t know that she is anti-social, but I have often said that if she
was human she would be autistic. She
does really well, but she has her limits.
When there are too many people in the house, or it is too loud she will
go and hide. And of course she also does
this with fireworks and thunderstorms.
So the seven of us, Jay, me, Precious, Pumpkin, Prince, Sophia
and Princess all prepared to get ready to move.
We had to find someone who could move our little trailer before the
winter and the wet weather came. If we
waited too long it would be too wet to move us, and we would have to wait till
spring. I immediately began to make
phone calls and finally found someone to move our trailer to Momma Muriel’s
property. In the mid part of October
2005 we left Ebarb, our painful history behind and headed home.
We all stayed with Momma Muriel while we got everything
hooked up, all of us but Princess. She
went to live with my parents until we had everything hooked up. She was just too big with all of us in such a
small house. It took me a few weeks of
work to learn the dance to get back into our house. First we had to dig the test pits to find out
if we needed a septic system, to get the 911 number, to get the water turned
on, to get the electricity turned on, and to finally get the septic system,
which my parents paid for. Nowhere was
all this written down. I only found this
out by trial and error, and lots and lots of phone calls. My goal was to have the lights on in the
house by Halloween, but I didn’t make it. It took us about 3 weeks to get everything
turned on. We got in our house about the
second week in November.
Jay and I were overjoyed to be somewhere we were wanted. Ebarb was a very closed community. They are very distrustful of outsiders. If you were not related or at least Catholic,
they did not want you. We made very few
friends while we lived there. It was a
hard community to get into. I had made
one good friend down there. We were
tight until one day, while I was asleep on her couch, her husband decided he
wanted to fondle me. When I told her she
said, “Oh he’s just drunk. He doesn’t
know what he’s doing.” Needless to say I
was glad to be away from him.
We had two and a half wonderful years out here with Momma
Muriel. She would often ask me what I
wanted when she died, her jewelry, stuff in her house, her land. I told her, “I just want more time with you,
and I would really like this piece of land so we don’t have to move after you
are gone.” She lived her life, we lived
ours and we met in the middle often for breakfast or dinner.
From the time that Momma Muriel went on dialysis she knew
that she was living on borrowed time. She had her will, her do not resuscitate
(DNR) order, and her power of attorney all in order. She had even written her
own obituary. We had several close calls
in the short time we were together, a few months before her death she had
developed a bleeding ulcer. As I drove
her to the hospital we talked at length about how she wanted her funeral, what
to dress her in, where to bury her, and who she wanted to do her service. I am very grateful I had that conversation
with her, because when the time came I knew what to do and where everything
was.
She and I talked
about death frequently. She would have
a bad day and say, “Ah! I ain’t worth
killing! You ought to just take me out
back and shoot me! I’m going to get off
this old dialysis and just die!”
I would tell her, “Before you do that, give me a couple of
weeks to plan you a going away party.
We’ll have a big crawfish boil and invite all your family to say
goodbye. Then you get off dialysis and
we know that you will have two weeks to live.”
She’d get this kind of pissed look on her face and say, “Oh
hell Ilsa I was only kidding!” and she would
go right back to what she had been doing before.
Momma Muriel knew that I was pagan and she didn’t care. She
still loved me anyways and never tried to convert me. I talked with her at
length about what I thought would happen to her when she died. I told her that in many cases I had heard of
people dreaming or seeing their dead relatives just prior to their death. I believe it is the dead’s way of helping us
prepare for the next life. I also told
her that when she died she would probable see a light. In the light were all of her family, and that
she was to go towards it. I told her heaven is a bigger place then we think
of. I feel that each religion has their
own version of the heavens and they all touch.
That travel between each was possible and I would see her again. I then told her my belief that after she had
been in the heavens for some time, and she was ready, she would be given the
opportunity to return to earth, to be reincarnated.
One day we had just come back from grocery shopping and were
going in the house. She began to tell me
that the night before she had dreamed her Mom and her sister were in the bed
with her, talking to her. I knew she
never dreamed of her dead family members.
I knew it was an omen. They were
preparing her.
Three weeks later on June 21st, 2008 Momma Muriel
fell and cracked her pelvis. She lasted
13 days in the hospital, passing her 81st birthday while there. After she went in the hospital she became
septic and developed a bowl obstruction.
She had surgery, but her body was just to week from all of that and her
failed kidneys to continue. The Dr’s
told us that if she lived she would have to spend the rest of her life in a
nursing home. I knew that she would hate
that. Her independence was everything to her.
It always had been. She died on Friday July 4th, 2008
at noon. We like to say she went out
with a bang.
I got the call to come to the hospital. That she was close to death and they were
calling the family in to say goodbye. I
floored it. I drove as fast as I
could. As I rode in the elevator up to
her room, I knew she was dead. When I
arrived she had died about 5 minutes before.
It was like all the air was sucked out of me. But I knew I had to retain my composure, I
had to be strong for Jay. He had arrived
just in time. She had turned towards
him, smiled, winked at him and then peacefully passed away. His face was the last thing she ever
saw. Jay thinks she stayed alive until
he could get there.
They ushered us out of the room so that they could
disconnect her from her IV’s and other tubes.
While they did that I tried desperately to reach her priest to come to
the hospital. Turns out he was outside
mowing and did not come back in until that evening. The hospital called the chaplain on duty to
come and pray with us: Jay and I, my parents, and Jay’s parents. As we prayed I begin to hear my name being
called loudly in my head.
“Ilsa! Ilsa! Turn around!
What the hell is going on??” I
knew the voice, it was Momma Muriel. I
smiled politely, prayed with them and then after a few minutes of everyone
saying their goodbyes I asked for Jay and I to be alone with her body. Jay was confused but by now had learned to
follow my lead in these things. I closed the door and turned to look in the
corner of the room where I felt there was energy. With my third eye I could see her energy in
dazzling ribbons of white and gold.
“Ilsa! What the hell
is going on?” she said
“Momma Muriel, I’m sorry, you are dead.”
“Oh well why the hell didn’t anyone tell me that?” she said
I explained that she should see a light in just a bit, and
when she did she should go towards it. I told her I would stay with her until
she did. It took a few minutes but I
soon felt a portal open and she went through it. I collapsed into tears and
refused to leave her body. I didn’t want
anyone to mess with her or be mean to her.
We had basically been her care takes and advocates for the last 3
years. It’s hard to give up that
role. Jay convinced me I must be hungry
and to come to have something to eat with him.
Momma Muriel would not want me lose my strength. I agreed and left her body.
Forgive me as I do not remember everything that happened
that weekend. She died on a Friday and
we had her wake on a Monday. I don’t
remember if her presence stayed with me or not. I called several of my pagan
friends to come to the wake and be with me for comfort. I do know that once I got to her wake she
began talking just as loud as she did in the hospital. It was a constant stream of, “Oh I haven’t
seen her in years. And what the hell is
she doing here. Or Oh I never could
stand her.” I finally had to walk into
the bathroom and tell her that she was going to have to shut up and let me do
this, or I was not going to make it thru.
That there would be time for a mental breakdown later. I remember going back in the little room
where her body was and receiving guests while holding my friends hands and just
shaking. We buried her on a Tuesday in accordance with
her wishes and the customs of her church.
It was one of the worst days of my life.
I kind of lost it after Momma Muriel died. One of the only people who had ever given me
unconditional love, and was my best friend was gone. I felt I had lost Oma all over again. I don’t remember much of that time. I stayed in bed a lot. I felt I had lost my reason for being, my
compass in life. She remains one of the
coolest people I have ever known.
Ilsa
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