A Gathering of Autumn Thoughts

As I sit here listening to the rain with baby Buster on my lap, I can’t help but think back to one year ago and all the events that have transpired. Or, rather, all the crap that happened. It was a tumultuous year. The kittens were captured between September and October – and they were horrid to clean up and work with. It was raining a year ago just as it is now, but Buster had yet to be caught. He stood defiant in the downpour, hissing at me yet not able to squeeze into his safety area which was a culvert running under the neighbor’s driveway that became a rushing river. Poor Buster was soaked and I was absolutely distraught.



Layne had his health issues and we were in the middle of two lawsuits to get the disability he had paid into all his working life. Everything was unsettled in October, November was to bring a cancer scare with him, and December a ten hour mediation in Sacramento with four trial lawyers and me. But it is October 22nd that I will always remember. I was at work and checked my voicemail at my break. Robin had called and she sounded weak. We talked not infrequently, only a few weeks before, but she was in and out of the hospital so much that it was hard to touch base. The sound of her voice worried me, so I called back right away.

Robin gave me this ceramic shoe filled with cookies in Jr. High -
I still have the note she gave me inside

It was the call I was dreading – the “there is nothing more they can do” call. We knew it was coming, and it is cliché to say that it was still a shock, but it is the truth. Robin said they gave her eight to twelve weeks. I asked her if we could visit and when said yes I immediately contacted Ada and Tina and we all went down the following week. We spent 3 days with her, including Halloween. She loved Halloween and would dress her fake skeleton up every year. This year her brother Doug dressed him up as Sherlock Holmes and added in the ambience of an eerie smoke machine.

On December 1, 2009 we lost Robin. Even more so – I lost Robin. They gave her eight to twelve weeks; she really only had four left in her to give us.

This is a heart shaped crochet rag basket that she made for me a few years ago

Of the kittens three died, two were adopted out and I still have three - and they are a joy.  We laugh at their spastic antics daily.  We eventually did come to settlement agreements with our private disability and with SSDI.  The chaos and tumult calmed down dramatically after June of this year.  But Robin is gone. Of the two dates I think October 22nd is the more difficult. I still have her voice, including that fateful message. I saved her last five voicemails and recorded them on an mp3 player because I am not ready to let go. They go from October 31st back to April. She goes from weak to strong every time I play them back. Maybe someday I will be able to let them go - but not this October 22nd.