Black and Sun

Poppy Sid died last night. My grandmother doesn’t know, and we all agree it’s best not to tell her. She has alzheimer’s - doesn’t know today from yesterday from 30 years ago - and she’s drugged to the hilt to manage the mood swings that inevitabily arise from sitting around in a nursing home all day bored and confused. Old age in this civilized society of ours is so fucked up.

But she lived a good life, and so did Poppy Sid.

Poppy wasn’t my “real” grandfather, but as a kid it didn’t much seem to matter. He and my grandmother were married just after I was born, and even though he had two granddaughters and a grandson of his own, he was my Poppy, who called me “Kiddo” and gave me money for my birthday and made sure that I always found the hidden motzah on Passover. He was a New York Jew, wise-guy know-it-all. As a kid, whenever I saw All In the Family on TV, I thought Archie Bunker was the same person as my Poppy Sid. The adult meaning of the show went right over my head, but the gruff-on-the-outside, soft-on-the-inside character struck me as familiar.

Poppy Sid was color blind, but always a snazzy dresser, said my grandmother, who obviously had a thing for tall men in plaid golf pants and pink sport jackets. He picked out shirts with epaulets for my father that he would never wear, along with “Rolexes” from China. On weekends he and his other in-the-know pals would troll the flea markets for deals. He once gave my dad a digital watch that played Happy Birthday and Christmas carols and other random melodies we couldn’t identify.

Poppy Sid liked his brisket well-done. Burnt really. Which was good, because my grandmother liked to overcook things. He introduced me to bagels. And motzah ball soup.

Poppy had a heart-attack once when I was visiting my grandmother. I think I was 8. He had to be taken to the hospital. Waiting in the hospital waiting room reminded me of the Madeline book in which Madeline is taken to the hospital when her appendix bursts. Poppy was okay, but my grandmother was shaken, and said something about not wanting to outlive another husband, which stuck in my brain until I was older and was able to understand what she must have been feeling. She doesn’t know it, but she has now outlived her second husband.

Poppy’s heart was a source of constant worry for my Nana. He wasn’t supposed to eat shrimp or other foods high in cholestorol. On the bathroom mirror there was a note that said “Sid - remember to take your pills - I love you - Claire,” written in my grandmother’s upward sloping handwriting. The note was still taped there the last time I visited the apartment, when we were taking away all of my grandmother’s belongings, just before Sid joined Nana in the nursing home.

As an adult I began to understand the distinction between a blood relation and what Sid was. Although he treated me as a granddaughter, I was really Nana’s granddaughter, and Missy, Stephi and Henry were his. More importantly, he was not my mother’s father, and their relationship was awkward. He was different in every way from my mother’s father, Joe, who apparently was a depressed, hen-pecked man who disappointed my grandmother by not turning out to be the successful businessman her father had been. Their marriage had been unhappy, my mother said, and my grandmother would have divorced Joe had he not been diagonsed with a brain tumor and died 6 months later. Sid, on the other hand, made her happy. In his brash, brazen New York Jew kind of way. He was a tall, handsom man, who knew everything, or so he’d have you think, and he made my grandmother laugh, right up to the end, even amidst the disorientation of alzheimers.

We visited just last month. For my grandmother’s birthday. But really I was more concerned about Sid. Unlike my grandmother, Sid’s mind was still very lucid, and he was painfully aware of his body’s decline. “I’m falling apart” he said saddly, as he struggled to stand from his chair. His hair had changed - turned into a sort of grey fuzz at the back of his head, what was left of it. And his grin had become just a little more skelatal - his teeth somehow too big for his thinning lips. But the fact that the grin was still there at all was something at least. Poppy Sid was still perfectly recognizable.

We wheeled him into my grandmother’s room so he could brighten her day. He said he needed to go to the bathroom, so we started to look around for an attendant, but he said he’d be fine on his own. Dennis tried to help him, but Sid shooed him away, always a prideful man. A moment later we heard a crash, and Sid was cursing, belowing “help me, goddammit somebody help me!” We ran into the bathroom and found him on the floor, head caught under the sink, pants down around his knees, his pinky finger broken, bent at an odd angle and bleeding. I didn’t know whether to try to help him up, or to avert my eyes to preserve his dignity. So I ran for a nurse. Nurse and aids cleaned him up, tsked him for attempting to use the toilet alone, and took him to the hospital. On the way out he asked my father to fix his watch - the strap had broken during his fall.

The next morning he was back at the nursing home, his finger fixed with 20 stitches and a little grogy from his cocktail of painkillers. He knew what he wanted to say, but his mouth wouldn’t work properly to get the words out, and his voice sounded funny. Which distressed him. “Listen to my voice,” he said. “This isn’t my voice.” We found my grandmother sitting in the dining room eating breakfast for a change, and wheeled Poppy in to see her. He looked dapper in his red shorts and striped polo shirt, but grumbled about how long they made him wait at the hospital the night before, the quality of care, the fact that nobody knows anything anymore and other petty annoyances that we couldn’t make out. Pretty much back to normal.

Then he brightened a bit and asked “so what are you driving these days?” Such a “Sid” thing to say. We talked about cars for a while. He approved of both Volkswagens and Saabs. My dad gave him back his repaired watch. And then we had to say goodbye to catch our planes.

“Be good, kiddo” he said as I kissed him goodbye.

I guess I couldn’t really ask for a better farewell. I’ll miss Poppy Sid. I don’t think anyone will ever call me “kiddo” again.

Saturday night. We’re back in Burlington. Driving down Route 7, headed to meet Merry Moses for coffee and music in Middlebury. Passing through road construction, the traffic slows, as one car after another veers to the left, going around something in the road. In the headlights, a ball of orange and white fur. A little animal was just hit. A little cat. Poor little cat…my heart in my throat. But as we drive by, I see her head lift. I bolt from the car. Heather, the rescuer of little furry animals. The cat whisperer.

I crouch over the frightened little creature. Her eyes are wide and staring, pupils dilated, and I know she’s probably beyond saving. Her little mouth opens and shuts in soundless meows. Her paws reach out, trying and trying to get up.

Have you ever seen a life prepare to leave a living body? I haven’t. It’s tragic beyond words. And beautiful, in a way. A sacred moment. But so, so sad. All the needless death in the world, you might think a cat in the road would go unnoticed. And often it does. But a life is a life is a life. And a wasted life is tragic. A soldier in Iraq, a kitten hit by a car… it isn’t predation or the natural order; it’s just stupid and sad.

Another car stops. And another. And suddenly a community has formed around the little animal. Dennis is on the cell phone trying to find a vet. I stroke the little cat. She’s going to die, someone says. Can someone take her to a vet? One woman lives an hour from here. The other has a car full of kids. We will, I say. She’s in shock, says one of the women, cover her up, she could die of shock. I take off my jacket and put it over her. A velvet shroud.

Briefly, the silent cries become more frequent, and I can’t help but notice the sharp, healthy little kitty teeth and white-pink gums. The pale gums mean shock, and that the end is near. Someone puts down newspaper, a piece of cardboard, an Ann Taylor bag, so we can pick her up and transport her to the vet. The little cat winces as we move her onto the makeshift gurney. Her paws have stopped reaching. It’s too late, one woman says. No, no there’s still a heartbeat says the other. Are you sure? Yes, there’s a heartbeat. I keep petting her, trying to keep the life from flowing out. I look up to see a police car pulling over. He’s sympathetic, just wants the humans out of the road. But when I look back down, a tiny red trickle of blood is seeping from her soft, pink nose. She’s gone, I say. And my eyes fill with tears. She’s gone.

We four hover over her for a moment more, as the police officer stands watch. I had an orange cat that got hit by a car when I was a little girl, I say. So did I, said one of the women. Somewhere there’s a little girl who’s looking for her cat. A very sad little girl.

Dennis and I carry the cat over to the grass, place her beneath a fir tree. The two women go back to their cars. We continue on to the Coffeehouse to meet Merry Moses and listen to Australian folk music.

We see a good show, Ian Campbell Smith, the so-called “Billy Bragg of Australia”…though Dennis is probably the only one in the audience who knows who Billy Bragg is. We tell Merry about the cat. And she is appropriately sad. And then the conversation turns to other things. Like a book Merry bought for Dennis, called “Marley, the Worst Dog In the World.” Marley is Dennis’ cat. Who has a reputation that precedes her. We have a good laugh. And attempt to go elsewhere for a beer, but give up after finding the Inn is closed. Our heart isn’t in it anyway. We’re emotionally drained after our little roadside experience. We turn around and head back to Burlington.

I tell Dennis about a series of dreams I’ve been having, in which I’m trying to save little dying animals. A piglet that looks up at me knowingly and swallows, fearful but resigned to its death on the butcher block, as I cradle it helplessly in my arms. A tiny squirrel run over by a car before I can rescue it from the road. In each dream I sense that I am somehow responsible for the suffering, despite my efforts to nurture and console. And now this little cat presents herself as the actualization of these strange dreams. Why? What does it mean?

I insist we stop when we get to the place in the road where the construction begins. I get out of the car and approach the fir tree, hoping that somehow she would have gotten up and walked away between then and now. But there she is, stiffer than we left her, and damp with dew. I pluck a branch from the fir tree and a couple hardy yellow flowers and place them in the crook of the little cat’s neck. So that whomever finds her will know that someone was there when she died, I tell Dennis. And then burst into tears. I am eight years old again, crying over my dead orange tabby cat. Dennis calls the animal shelter and leaves a message in case anyone is looking for a little orange cat.

Back at the B&B I take a bath and climb into bed. Dennis holds me tight in his arms as I continue to whimper, a heart full of ache, the little cat representing all the pent up loss my soul can hold. Loss of life and loss of love, loss of all that is precious and out of my control, gone forever, all that is unappreciated until it’s too late. I sniffle and blow my nose and feel grateful for the strong arms that hold me. And for the two healthy cats waiting for us to return home. And for the fact that we both still have humanity enough to be touched by the passing of life, however small.

We should give the cat a name, Dennis says. Because in the end she was ours.

Little Orange Cat.

Little OC it is, says Den.

Goodbye, Little Orange Cat. We knew you only briefly, but you gave four strangers pause, and when you left, we had four stories to tell.