High in the Clouds

High in the Clouds by Paul McCartney, Geoff Dunbar, and Phillip Ardagh
2005
Weight: 1.1 lbs
Method of Disposal: Donating

This book was alright.  I liked the premise enough--much like one of my favorite movies, A Land Before Time, but with a little FernGully and Wind and the Willows mixed in.  It seemed as if the authors wanted it to be a much longer or much shorter book, and they straddled that line.  I think it would have been much more successful as a longer book, but I know it can be hard to keep children invested if it is too long.  I am afraid because it is not long enough it cannot fulfill its potential and because it is too long most children will lose interest anyway.  Luckily, with someone like Paul McCartney helping to author it enough adults will likely be interested.

The reason I read this book was Linda Galpin, a woman I was only able to know a few short years before losing her to brain cancer.  I was newly married in her last year and had a lot going on in my life, and I did not talk on the phone with her for hours like I had previously.  She fostered a dog through PAWS and so I was fortunate to see her on the days she needed meds or food.  She would always bring me boxes of gifts, each with a handwritten note about the item she was giving me.  It was often something she had made or held onto for a long time.  After I married, she would bring my wife gifts too.  She said we had given her a gift.  We had taught her that, "love is love."

She loved dogs.  That is a big understatement.  Dogs meant the world to her.  She grew up with hounds and had retrievers as an adult.  She once had a shepherd too.  After meeting me, pit bulls topped her list despite never having one.   She loved New England and history.  She enjoyed photography and once even made stained glass--she gave me a piece which I still have.  We brought her to the farm once to see all the horses and all of our dogs, and she loved it.  She thought it was the coolest.  Her and Buttercup would drive around town "rocking out."  She smoked pot and would get a devilish grin if you caught her afterwards.

She got sick and had to move away to Connecticut.  We frequently wrote letters, but there was still little time for phone calls.  I just knew that, as much as I loved them, they would go on and on.  I wouldn't get all the things done I needed to.  I knew she was sick, but she was so vague and so off and on about it.  She was thinking about moving to one of the Carolinas when she started to feel better.  I had no idea she had a brain tumor or that we would lose her, suddenly, over night.  I feel like such a fool now, and it is one of my deepest, most shameful regrets that I did not talk to her more on the phone at the end of her life.  That I did not soak up her love, knowledge, and stories.  That I, ultimately, took her for granted even with all the clues. I would have seen it if I had listened closer.  I should have known.  I will miss her always.  I have no belief in an afterlife or God, but sometimes I cannot help but pray to her and ask her to, please, forgive me.  I think about her all the time.

The United States of Poetry

The United States of Poetry
Joshua Blum Bob Holman Mark Pellington
1996
Weight: 2.4 oz
Method of Disposal: Leaving Somewhere

I bought this book in the 90s and just now read it in 2016, but I am glad I saved it all this time.  I also think it is better it is released now rather than later.  It seems like there is less poetry out there.  I do, however, find it amusing that I am now married to someone who had a total mental collapse when she realized I was reading a book of poetry next to her.  She has some deep-seated disdain for poetry we need to overcome, apparently.

I picked up this book and read it last weekend, after we had to euthanize our beloved Chihuahua-Potato, Bayah.  I thought she would live for at least two decades and never imagined we would lose her in the 8-12 year old range.  She was rescued with her baby, Aires, from a puppy mill and brought to PAWS Atlanta around 4.5 years ago.  Harriet and her then boyfriend, Connor, took Bayah in as a foster.  She was seemingly young and feisty.

She was adopted out and about a year later she came back looking terrible.  She was overweight, had hair loss, and her teeth were completely rotten.  Harriet had moved back to England, and there was no room at the shelter.  Having started falling in love with the now single Harriet, I could not let anything happen to her foster pup and so I took Bayah home as my own foster.  I fell in love with her too.  And hard.  I tried to adopt her out, but when she came back a week later (she wasn't housebroken) I was so relieved to scoop her back up.  I finalized her adoption that day--April 18, 2013.  I was able to be her family for a little over three years.  That's it.

She was my little hot potato and my co-pilot. She was the dog I could take with me everywhere.  She was relaxed and loving and not at all worried about adult strangers.  Children were slightly alarming, but she would not hurt them, and I always made sure they were sweet with her too.  She fit perfectly in my arms.  She would not lay down or rest until she found a comfy bed to rest on but, if you put her in a bed, she would not budge again until you made her or until you took out some food.  She loved to eat more than anything else in the world and on her last night we gave her chocolate and chicken jerky, which she scarfed down as ferociously as ever.

She developed a head tilt and was diagnosed with vestibular disease, but three weeks went by, and she did not get better.  We got a third opinion.  We were told she had a brain tumor and our time with her was short and, even with the warning, there was not enough time spent together.  There never could be.  That's the thing about death.  No matter how much life allows you to prepare for it you cannot prepare for it.  It feels sudden or unexpected even when it is not.  If it doesn't feel that way then you have likely suffered terribly and for awhile.

That last night was the first time she flinched when someone went to hold her or when her canine best friend, Savannah, got near her.  She was in pain.  The tumor was putting pressure on her eye.  She had gone blind in that eye just a few weeks before. The only option was surgery, and she was not a candidate for surgery at her age and in her condition.  She left us before we left her, and our hearts broke into a million Bayah-sized pieces as we drove away from that hospital and home to a house that felt empty even though it was full of dogs.  I funnel my affections into her best friend and my other dogs, but nothing touches that place within me where the memory of her lives.  It is heavy and damp, soaked through with my sadness.  I know that as time goes on it will fill with positive memories and funny anecdotes, but right now I just miss my beloved little Chihuahua and the tongue that always hung out of her mouth as she sauntered along.  The low, sweet bark she let out when she got really excited and the warmth of her small body resting next to me.  I will love you forever, Bayah.