Homage to Jelly

I took Pippy to the vet yesterday, December 29^th, 2015.  While I was checking in, the receptionist, with whom I have been friends for many years, told me an odd thing happened this week.  She said a Shreveport Police Officer called her on Monday.  She was tracing the rabies tag of a dog that had been hit, in downtown Shreveport.  She said she had moved the dog out of the road, and onto the side of the road.  It was Jelly.  I broke down, cried and made a scene, I am sure.  After almost a year, I finally know that my sweet little smushie face is dead. 

I have no idea how she ended up in downtown Shreveport.  Perhaps she was still with Paige.  Perhaps Paige is now homeless or living in her car.  Our homeless tend to hang out downtown.  Perhaps she gave her to someone, or she ran away.  I have no idea.  All I know, is it is finally over, and I can stop killing myself over all of this. 

For a year, I have cried over Jelly, grieved for her, constantly worried where she was or what had happened to her.  At night I tortured myself wondering if she was cold, or hungry?  Did she know I loved her?  That I cried for her at night?  Was she happy?  Now I know, the answer to some of those questions.  I am grateful to the Officer who’s tiny gesture, has meant the world to us.  It has given my peace.

Jelly would have turned 13 this spring.  You can read about our adventures in Meet Paige  and  Goodbye Paige. 

When I finally told the rest of my pack what had happened, Precious the second, suggest perhaps we should howl for her.  So that she might find her way back to us.  I know wolves do this in the wild.  They howl to other pack members, and sometimes for a lost or dead member.  Perhaps Precious found that memory in my mind.  So we began to howl a terrible and mournful cry, by the time we were done I felt Jelly settle near us.  After 2 years my baby was home, if nothing more than her spirit.

I had already lit my candle for her, burned my incense, and called for Holda to come and retrieve her spirit until I could properly cross her last night.  I felt her happy spirit near me all night, and when I lay down I could feel her spirit kissing me.  I called for Bifrost and on it we rode.  When we entered Holda’s Garden, all Jelly’s friends were there.  Boy-Boy aka Prince, Punka, Precious the first, and some of my living babies, Princess and Sophia, had made the trip with us as well.  She was warmly greeted by all who had loved her.  She was finally safe.  The last I saw of her, she was running off behind the Apple Grove to go and hunt for moles, one of her favorite activities in the whole world.  She was always a great huntress.  I returned to this plane, smiled, and told Jay that Jelly was safe and happy. 

I have lost three children this year, Rebecca, Prince, and now Jelly.  As I write this, it is the last day of Yule 2015.  We know that as Holda and Odin ride in the Wild Hunt, black dogs or hounds bay at their feet.  They are gathering up the dead.  Perhaps Prince is riding with the Hunt and called to Jelly.  Perhaps the whole reason he died, was so come this time of year, he could bring her home.  I have no idea, I am just speculating here. 

We always said that Prince and Jelly were married.  We had caught them making out many years ago, and they did love to go hunting together.  We even have “wedding” and “honeymoon” pictures of them together.  Who knows, perhaps it is just our stupid human mind trying to make sense of things.  Maybe Prince was lonely and wanted her to join him.  Maybe he was rescuing her from whatever living conditions she was in.  That’s probable something I will never know, and honestly don’t want to.  I would just make me madder.

We have no body to bury, no collar to put on my altar, so we have decided to bury one of Jelly’s outfits in Boy-Boy’s grave.  I have already made her an offering on my ancestor altar of this little red and white monkey that plays music.  It plays, “I like to move it, move it.”  She loved all toys, but in particular ones that sang or danced.  I have kept this little monkey hid all these years, so she would not find it and destroy it.  It seems like a fitting offering I think.

Ilsa

 

The last little bit

In April my friend Marie went into the local mental hospital, Brentwood.  She came to me one night and told me that her husband, Jack, had told her that after 14 years of marriage, he no longer loved her.  This sent her into a rage and she tried to kill herself.  Jack had stopped her.  Jack was going to put her in Brentwood so she might get better.  I asked her if she wanted me to help her pack.  She said, “Yes.”  I went across the street to help her pack. 

Marie would spend 10 days in Brentwood.  She was my best friend.  We spent almost every day together.  We had become friends no long before Momma Muriel died.  Her little wire hair Dachshund Buddy, would often wander across the street, threw my doggy door and into my bed.  I would call her and say, “You missing somebody?”  It was Marie who helped me get through many challenges in my life.  During those first few hard months after Momma Muriel died, I knew Marie would be coming over at 5 to drink a glass of wine with me.  I asked her to go to Novelle’s funeral with me, to make sure I didn’t spit in her coffin. 

Marie got mixed up in drugs. She came to me one day and told me she had a $200 a day meth habit, but that she had been clean for a few weeks.  I told her to stay clean or we would no longer be friends.  Slowly she would shut me out.  I knew she was back on drugs.

In April of 2014 I received a Facebook message from her.  I asked if she was done with drugs, and she told me she was.  She had been arrested and convicted on 3 felonies.  She had been clean for a year and a half.  Now clean to her was a relative term.  Marie was a drunk.  She would go threw a 5 liter box of wine in two days.  She stayed away from purple wines, because she drank so much it would turn her teeth purple.  She was also addicted to pain killers for her back and hip. 

Jack did pretty much everything for her.  Marie sat in her chair and drank most days.  Jack had bough her a car, and she had destroyed it.  She told me at one point, it had become a rolling meth lab.  We were both shocked when Jack told her he was no longer in love with her.  Jack was a great man of faith.  He told her he had been praying for two years, that he would fall back in love with her and it just never happened.  He would be willing to go to counseling, but was pretty sure he wanted a divorce.  After everything she had put him through, who could blame him. 

I was a wreck when Marie went to Brentwood.  I called her every day.  I had three or four panic attacks in that 10 day period.  I cried myself to sleep at night, more than once.  A week after Marie got home she was sitting at my kitchen table one night.  She began to tell me that she had breast cancer.  That they had found it with two blood test while she was at Brentwood.  They confirmed it with a mammography.  She then asked me how bad stage 3 was.  We were all pretty shaken up that night.  But something just did not sit well with me.  Her story did not seem plausible.  Why would they do all that at a psychiatric facility?  Could they?

I happened to have an appointment with my GYN the next morning.  I asked him some of these questions.  He told me there was no blood test for cancer.  And to have a mammography at a mental facility did not seem right.   Turns out it was all a lie.  When I confronted Jack with everything that had gone on, I asked him if she lied a lot.  Jack said, “Sometimes yes and sometimes no.” 

Everything came to a head the night Prince died, May 5^th, 2015.  I had taken Marie home from my house and confronted her there.  Buddy was still at my house.  Jay would drive over a bit later and bring Buddy home.  Prince wanted to ride with his dad.  We did not notice he was running after Jay.  I was outside, talking to Juno, when I heard Prince get hit on the road and scream.

We ran across the street.  He’s been hit, but he was not dead.  Marie had come out of her house, crying and asking what had happened.  Begging me to forgive her.   All of us took him back across the street to my house.  He was fading.  It would not be long.  Even if we floored it to the emergency vet, he would be dead by the time we arrived.  If he was going to die, let it be at home.  Juno and I lit some candles on my altar, burned some incense and called for the Gods and ancestors to come close.  We would need them now. 

Prince had been sick for about 6 weeks.  He had had what we thought was a heart attack one night.  I just woke up screaming and disorientated.  The next day the vet  diagnosed he with an enlarged heart. He was on medication, but he did not want to eat for us.  Every day was a struggle.  I wonder sometimes if Prince committed doggie suicide.  I wonder if he just didn’t want to live anymore.  Prince died in Jay’s arms an hour after being hit. This child who had been so abused and unwanted, passed in loving arms, and surrounded by his family.  We all took turns holding him.  We buried him the next day, next to Punka. 

Since his passing, we have built a little area I call “the grove.” around his and Punka’s graves, at Holda’s Well.  It is a small area covered in bricks, with seating places on either side.  Now I can sit with them alone, or with guests.  It is a great little peaceful spot, where I can listen and watch the birds and get internet reception on my tablet. 

I have not seen Marie since that night.  I do not blame her for Prince’s death.  I just want nothing to do with a liar.  I’ve had too many in my life.  Jay and I retain a good relationship with Jack and saw him recently. 

In June I had my year physical with my PCP.  I told him I was having terrible anxiety and several panic attacks a week.  He put me on Buspar and it has been a God send.  I have not felt this good since before Oma died when I was 6.  It took a few months to get me to feeling better.  August 6^th , I started writing again for the first time in many years.  I have written or edited almost every day since then. 

Ilsa

 

 

 

Queen of my double wide trailer

At Thanksgiving news came from my landlord that he intended to sell the little trailer I was renting.  I had a month to find a new place or to buy it from him.  I was a bit taken aback.  I phoned my parents who agreed to help.  Within two weeks my parents had found a repossessed 16 x 80, 2000 Skyline trailer for sale.  They put down the down payment and I signed the papers.  The trailer was put in my name so that if something ever happened between Jay and I, he could not suddenly kick me out of my own home. 

We began to look for a nice park to put our new trailer in.  That can be difficult as trailer parks are usually squished together, by park owners to make more money on lot rent.  They can also be denizens of human existence where drugs and crime run rampant.  We finally found a nice park, Peach Tree Hill Mobile Home part.  It was run by a police officer in the community of Ebarb.  The lots were spacious and what crime there was, was kept to a bare minimum.  There was also no problem with us building a pen for our dogs.  Hell the old boy running the place must have had 40 chickens in a coop attached to his barn. 

Our new home was moved in during the first week of December of 2003.  The house was in, but it was up to us to hook into the sewer system, the water line, and get a pole for the electricity.  Jay is kind of a jack of all trades.  On one of Jay’s days off he was busy under the house hooking into the sewer system.  That day there was a storm moving in and the wind was just a blowing.  Jay doesn’t like the wind, so he was just a cussing and a fussing at it.  I decided I need to take a break from him and let him cool down.  I told him I was going to go and haul the garbage off and that I would be back in a few minutes.  I told him he should take a break too.  I jumped in his dark blue Pontiac Grand Am and headed for the dump.

Now for those of you who live in the city and have curb side pickup, let me explain.  The dump is a country term for a place to take the garbage.  When I was a kid this meant driving down a dusty road and just throwing it out somewhere.  Then there are open landfill dumps where many people pick threw the garbage on a Sunday afternoon, looking for treasure.  A nice dump is one that has a big blue compacting bin with a fence around it, recycling options and a guard on duty during the hours it is open.  He is there for two reasons: to prevent people from picking thru the garbage and to stop people dropping off animals like garbage. 

Then you have what Sabine Parish had in the days that we lived there.  On the Sepulvedo Loop, not far from our house, there were three large open blue garbage bins.  People could just dive up anytime day or night and dump whatever they pleased there.  Often times what they dropped were unwanted animals.  Many times we drove up to find the dead bodies of dogs that had been used as bait dogs in dog fighting rings, or kittens with their eyes not open yet. Sabine Parish, in those days, had no animal control.  Family pets that were no longer wanted were simply dumped at these locations, with the hopes that they would fend for themselves.  Some survived, some did not.  I began to make the rounds at the dumps putting out food and water for these animals.  Once I moved to Sabine Parish I began working with their local human society. 

It was at the dump on the Sepulvedo Loop that Prince would enter our lives.  I had come to dump the garbage. I was not making my rounds that day.  It was just starting to thunder and mist.  I opened my door and then WHOOSH!  something had climbed over me.  I turned and looked in passenger seat and there was a half starved terrified little soul.  He was black and tan and looked to be half Chihuahua and half Dachshund, a Chi-Weenie.  I said, “Hello!?  Can I help you?” He was just shivering.  I did not know then that Prince was frightened of storms.  I told him that I worked with the Sabine Parish Humane Society and that I was there to help him.  I excused myself to throw the trash away, then got back in the car and drove to my house. 

I was so excited to have rescued a small dog.  I knew of several friends who were in want of a small dog.  I let Prince in the house while I finished doing something.  When I came in the house I was so excited to tell Jay what I had found. 

Jay is sitting in a chair in the kitchen and says, “Momma I think we have a problem.  I’m in love.”  There was Prince in Jay’s arms and giving him a hug.  Jay was smitten. 

“No,” I said, “I had already figured out who to adopt him too.” 

“Nope he’s mine now.”  And they hugged and that was that. 

I named him Prince because after I left Mike I told everyone I was going to treat myself like a queen because he never did.  My handle for a long time was HMQueenIlse, Her Majesty Queen Ilse.  A queen does not need a king to rule.  She can take care of herself.  Jay had become my King, and now we added a little Prince to our growing royal family. 

Prince had been thru hell.  When we found him he had 3 broken ribs, ringworm, 2 toes that had been dislocated and had healed crooked, and a BB permanently imbedded in his back.  The vet guessed he was a year and half old.  He was also a wreck emotionally.  While he loved Jay, he would let almost no other man touch him.  If a man with a baseball cap and a beard came around him, he would lose it.  It took us five years to be able to take him in public.  It wasn’t until the last few years of his life that he would even let a strange man touch him. 

So Prince, Precious, Pumpkin, Jay and I made a little family.  With our new home in place we went back to planning the wedding.  We intended to have two weddings, like normal people.  We did not plan to have three. 

Ilsa