A Goodbye of Sorts

December 30^th, 2016

This is my 101^st post.  Wow!  I can’t believe it, and in a way it is the end of this blog.  Oh sure I will post when the fancy strikes, or when I need to say something important, but for now I think this blog has worked it’s magic. 

Those of you who have been following along have no doubt noticed that I have only posted a few articles this year.  There is a reason for that, I have been working on my first novel and completed it in November.  We are now in the editing phase and I hope to self publish by this summer, Goddess willing.  Of course I will post when it is available.  It is called, “We are all a little broken.”  It is a really good book about two women’s struggle to overcome their abusive past and find their voice with the help of a loving family, as they come to terms with what their mother has done to them.  It is set here in Northwest Louisiana.  I think you will enjoy it.  I hope to start major work on the next book next week. 

As for me and Jay, we are well.  Jay is trying to get his sugar under control, it is out of wack again.  I told him I think it is the stress, and hustle and bustle of the holidays.  I think it will calm down after the first of the year.  His sugar had been doing really good, but I think he is frustrated.

Team Ilsa is currently in hiatus, every time I start back up, I get sick.  Team Plaisance never got off the ground.  But I am still busy, cleaning house, and doing my thing. 

Our food trailer, Garson duBayou, is doing great.  We are busy, and making good money.  Working lots of events and I have been helping out a lot.  In September we were in the local food truck rally.  We were ecstatic to take home second place, especially since it was our first year to enter. 

This fall I started putting in applications for work.  I have started with a state program called Louisiana Rehabilitation Services.  They help people who have mental and / or physical disabilities get and keep a job with the accommodations they need.  I have had my orientation, my intake interview, been sent to a specialist, and at the moment I am awaiting to hear back on whether or not they can help me.  I am hopeful, but I still fear that my past will come back to bite me.  We will see. 

In December of last year Juno left us.  She fell in love with a nice man on line and one night he drove down from New York and came to get her.  I have not told you this, because I didn’t know how the situation would end, and if she would come back to Kay.  So we waited.  Juno is happy and has yet to come home.  We wish her the best.  Kay remained in the house and in October we asked her to leave.  She did.  The house that was already falling apart, is now beyond what Jay and I want to deal with and we are in process of tearing it down and turn it into new and better things.  I will let you know how it turns out.

In late September we made the heart breaking decision to put Princess down.  You can read about all that went on here, in Homage to Princess.

In May I made the decision to go “No Communication,” with my mom.  You can read about that here in All her sins laid bare.  It has not been easy, and there are times that I miss her, or the idea of a mother, greatly.  I was not sure what would happen between me and Daddy.  It took seven months before I got a response from him, and it was only to ask for my change of address.  He didn’t want to start back a relationship with me.  On the phone messages he left when he said, he loved me and he wanted to visit with me, it was as if they were after thoughts.  As I always do with these types of major events and decisions in my life, I sought the council of those wiser then myself, as well as searched my own heart.  For what I wanted, and what I needed to do seemed to be a step too big to take.

I know threw now fault of his own, my mother uses my dad like a spy.  He told me so himself.  In those two and a half years that mom and I did not speak, about nine months in Daddy came back into my life.  We would go to dinner, and visit.  Just us two.  Dad told me he had to come home and give mom the report on what I wore, how I looked, how I seemed, what we talked about.  Everything I told him I might as well have been telling her.  I made the heart breaking decision to sever my ties with Daddy, for my own mental health, until she is either dead or he leaves her.  In my letter I spoke to him as if it was the last thing I would ever say to him.  It was one of the toughest things I have ever had to do.  My pain is still great and it is not easy to talk about.  Sometimes what we want is not good for us, and it is best for me to stay away.  Self care is an act of survival, not selfishness.

Your saying to yourself, ‘well maybe he wanted to send you a letter.’ No, it was a tax bill he wanted to send me.  My mother is crazy about mail.  So once I gave him my address, she would have it.  She will hound you with cards, and packages of gifts that you don’t want, and then tell you she has no money for food.  Once you open that flood gate you can’t go back.  We have done this before.  I would tell Dad, “I only want mail from you.”  I would get cards from her.  I would refuse them.  Finally I told him, it’s not your hand writing on the envelope or inside.  So he would address the envelope in a card she had picked out, and then sent from their home, not where he was working.  No thank you.  I have been through this song and dance before.  It is not worth the anxiety every time I go to the mail box.

And then this little tid bit to just make the wound all that much worse.  I was telling this story to a family member, who said, and I will paraphrase here, “Oh I remember when you and your Dad would go to dinner.  Your mom bitched about it the whole time.”  Ouch.  It was not my mom was pissed off my dad was spending $40 bucks to take me to lunch once a week, it was that he was spending time with me.  It was not that they didn’t have money.  I know in those years he paid over $20,000 just in taxes off the money he made.  I didn’t ask for gold, or diamonds, or for him to pay my bills.  I just asked for time.  Time she could not even begrudge me.  Another relationship she is jealous of.  Every time I think she has shown me how black her heart is, she shows her contempt for me all over again.  Is it because I am Beau’s child?  Because I look like him?  Does she remember me before the surgery?  I still have no idea why she wants to do me like this. 

When I think about her I am always reminded of a scene from Ever After.  Cinderella asks her step mother, “Was there ever a moment, even in its smallest, that you loved me?”  The step mother responds, “How can you love a pebble in your shoe?”  Loving her is exhausting and gets me nowhere.  I just end up chasing my tail.  Even a beaten dog, still tries to please it’s owner.  Until the day it finally has enough and turns around and bites the crap out of the one doing the beating.

So 2016 has been a year of change, of emotional growth in leaps and bounds, and of goals accomplished I did not believe were possible.  I hope the next year is just as good, but not so emotionally taxing. 

So this is our goodbye of sorts.  I want to tell all of you that I love you, and send you all bright blessings no matter where you are on this big, round, blue, spinning ball, that is drifting through space.  In the end this blog produced 160,000 words in a year and a half, and laid end to end is over 300 pages long.  I would love to turn it into an auto biography, but who would want to read something so boring and trivial.  “It’ll never play in Peoria,” as they would say in vaudeville. 

But beside what it produced in numbers of words and pages, telling you my story, the whole story and nothing but the truth of my life, created the biggest impact on me and those around me.  It made me give my own thoughts and feelings validation, and I saw so many things from another perspective, and was able to give forgiveness where it was deserved.  It gave me the courage to establish new relationships, try again at others, and let go of several toxic relationships.  I think the biggest person I finally forgave was myself.  I began to see myself as a survivor, a thriver, a writer, a mother, a wife, a daughter to two great men, and an incredible resilient human being who is broken yes, but still has so much to give. 

So from all of us here on my little hill, we wish you a blessed Yule, and a Happy New Year.  Bright blessings to you and those you love,

Our love,

Ilsa

Homage to Princess

November 16, 2016

It seems like she was just here.  Her beds are still here, so are her pictures.  I have video of her, and recordings of her voice.  It has been almost two months since she left us.  Princess Tator  Plaisance crossed threw the veil on September 20^th, 2016.  We were with her ever moment.  She was 12, ancient for a big dog.

I talked about her a bit in Momma Muriel, but now I want to talk about the end.

The last few years of her life were painful, I am sorry to say.  Baby aspirin helped ease the pain, but she had arthritis in her hips as well as hip dysplasia.  I am afraid pain was constant in her life.  In the last year or so, she would bark incessantly.  It wasn’t until the end we understood that she had very little control over her back legs.  She was barking to get our attention. I would go over, pull her a few feet off of her bed, to get her started, and then she would walk and do whatever she wanted.  Starting seemed to have been the hardest thing for her.

I watched helpless as her body failed her in the last few years.  Adding Boudreaux to the pack created an extra annoyance she didn’t need.  He was always biting at her to try to get her to play, wanting to run and romp, occasionally she has the energy to play back, but not often.  I would watch with great sorrow, pity, and compassion as she tried to lower her back just a few inches to get in and out of the dog door.  The last few months she would sit, stick her head out, and cry or bark.

We knew for a long time that this was her long goodbye.  I wanted to put her down a year ago.   She told me again and again that she wanted to go home.  She would sit at Prince’s grave.  She missed her pack, her friends.  Jay would not have it.  He wanted her to make it one more summer so we could take her to the lake. 

Princess loved to swim.  So much so we have kept a small swimming pool full for her, for many, many years.  I have seen her in that thing, when there was ½ inch of ice on it.  For the last 3 or 4 years we have taken her to the dog swimming area at Cypress Black Bayou Park, at least one day a year.  This special day is known as “swimmy day.”  It includes not only a lovely car ride, but a picnic as well.  We have in the past had burgers, fried chicken, but this year it was Chinese food. 

We all ate, then swam, and had the most lovely time.  Princess liked the shallow water.  Precious, who also loves the water and enjoys swimmy day, loves the deep.  So we try to find a happy balance sitting in the mud, where Princess could lay down if she wanted and then Precious, with her little Doxie legs could swim between me and Jay.  She likes to do laps. The sun was warm that day and the water was perfect.  It was a wonderful time, and when it came time to go Princess did not want to leave.  I know she knew it was her last swimmy day. 

Then Jay got sick, and in the hospital her cried and told me he wanted to put Princess down.  He wanted her to make it to Christmas.  I knew she had barely made it to swimmy day.  I talked him into a few days after Thanksgiving.  She didn’t make it.

Thankful Jay came back from a festival in September with a little money.  We were able to put some aside in case of emergency.  As always the emergency came. 

I came home from Druid one Saturday and she could not walk.  She could walk when I left.  Princess had suddenly become downed.  She could not walk.  She could not potty by herself.  We knew it was time.  She did not want to live like this. 

We feared we would not be able to put her down humanely.  That we would have to shoot her in the head.  We could not do that, not after all the years of service she had given us.  She was after all our baby.  We had raised her since she was 8 weeks old.  We had just enough money in the savings to take her to the dr.  We called for an appointment, on Tuesday afternoon.  Jay hoped that work would let him off so he could be there.  We were so happy they did.

So for two days we dug her grave.  Princess supervised the whole thing, lying in the dirt we were digging up.  Now in Louisiana, unless you have a large piece of machinery, digging is not easy.  First you have to get through the roots in the ground, this requires reciprocating saws and hedge trimmer, which are often so tangled you have to use a spoon and a brush to dig out a root just to cut it.  Then a layer of sand and finally clay, and once you hit it, the dig is over. 

Jay and I worked on it together for a long time Sunday, and when we went to bring Princess in the house, she did not want to go.  She fought us and tried to head to the truck.  She wanted it over with.  We had talked to her at length about what was going to happen to her, and how she wanted things.  But she was still pissed that it was not yet time.

The rest of the day was just for her.  She had so many experiences.  We took so many pictures, and tried to lay with her as much as possible.  We took her to Nana’s to say goodbye.  Drove into the Dairy Queen got her an ice cream cone.  We drove past Cross Lake at which she cried and wanted desperately to get out and go swim.  There was no place for us to do that for her, and in the condition she was in it would have been too hard to get her down into the swim area at Black Bayou.  So we gave her one last swim in her pool. 

Monday I lay on my belly and dug the rest of her grave.  Sophia and Boudreaux even helped.  I had to yell at Boudreaux to get out of the hole so I could work.  He just thought I was digging a nice whole to lay in.  It was very macabre.  That night she had a steak dinner with sweet potato, and a candle lit bath with her daddy.  She went to the Gods clean, full, and happy.

Princess who had been mad at us Sunday, was damn near despondent by Tuesday.  But when daddy came home and said, “Let’s go.”  You have never seen a girl so happy.  She was finally going home.  Daddy Jay had smoked her a pork bone and she got to lick on it on her way to the vet’s office.  The only time I saw her nervous was when she was in there.  She was shaking but happy.  They gave her a sedative, and then once she was asleep the pink juice.  We all wept. 

I had been strong the whole time, a cry here, a cry there.  I knew what had to be done.  I could fall apart later.  When I got in the truck I screamed and cried, till there was nothing left.  At the base of her grave is a quilt that Jay and I had made long ago.  It had been part of her bed, and now was so tore up it was beyond use.  Her pink pillow to lay her head on, her bone, and several chocolate chip cookies to take give to Heimdall on her journey over the bridge.  She is covered in the blanket that I made for her this spring.  I made is specifically for when she would pass over.

The last year or so it became a thing with us.  We would tell her to get in her bed, and then Jay or I would cover her up with whatever blanket she wanted.  She had two.  The one I had made, which is buried with her, and one made for me as a baby, which I kept.  I can’t even look at that blanket now without crying.

It is rare that we have had to put a child down because of age.  Punka, and now Princess.  We have cried ourselves silly.  We came home and howled for her.  I even recorded her barking, but it drives the kids nuts.  My pack did what they were supposed to do the night she died.  They barked, cried, and howled for her, even Boudreaux.  We woke up out of a dead sleep about 3 in the morning to the most blood curdling sound we had ever heard.  It was Boudreaux howling for her to come back to the pack.  He woke me the next morning and said, “I don’t think she’s coming back.”  We had to explain to him again about death. 

I cried and wailed for her for days.  I still have yet to put her picture on the ancestor altar, even though her collar is there.  My house seems bigger with her gone, bigger and emptier.  This little tiny soul, who had no idea she was so big, no idea why people were afraid of her.  I miss having to go get her out of the back bathroom when it thunders, or when Jay turns on the compressor, all things she was afraid of.  I miss covering her up at night.  I miss calling to her when I clean the pool out, that it is time for a swim.  I miss her funny face, and they way she would boof at me to do something, like I was not worth the whole bark.  I miss the way she rolled in the grass, and made these wonderful noises.  In a million ways every day I miss her. 

No words can sooth a mother’s heart who has lost a child, human or otherwise.  In my moments sometimes I forget.  Last night I though, where is she?  I haven’t seen her in a bit.  I waited a while to write this to you because I wanted to be able to get all the way through it, without breaking down.  I know she had a good life with us.  I know I was a good mother to her.  I know now she is safe, and happy, and no longer hurting.  She was a gift, and we are all richer for her having shared her life with us.  Rest well little one, rest well.

Ilsa

Momma Muriel's

Before we left Ebarb we acquired two more souls to our tribe.  A spunky, 1 ½ year old, little tan Chihuahua we named Sophia, after the Goddess of wisdom.  Sophia had been stolen by some kids living in the Zwolle projects.  They could not bring her inside, so they kept her tied up outside and feed her when they could.  A friend’s son had acquired her after that.  I begged him to let me have her.  He finally relented.  Jay was so excited to finally have a Chihuahua in his life again. 

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 21^st, 2008 Momma Muriel fell and cracked her pelvis.  She lasted 13 days in the hospital, passing her 81^st 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 4^th, 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