Yesterday, Jakob and I buried our 14-year old dog Benny—Jakob had him for four years, I had him for six—below the garden, under the willows. It was the fitting end to a gentle death at the vet’s: a sedative to go to sleep, then a lethal injection. I’m glad we physically dug the hole, laid him in it, gently covered his face with a sheet, and filled the hole. I’ve buried some of my animal friends before, and cremated others, but this felt especially right.
Today, I went to the Catholic mass for a sweet neighbor named Teresita Montoya. Her death at 66 could have been avoided. She didn’t know how to take care of herself or how to navigate the medical industrial complex, and she died of a heart attack from an avoidable infection. But it’s her funeral I want to talk about.
Over the course of my 30 years in El Valle I’ve been to many masses at the local church: funerals, christenings, confirmations, feast days, Christmas posadas. The latter are the only ones I enjoy, a festive recreation of the birth of Christ with carols and good cheer. But frankly, if I never have to attend another mass I’ll be happy.
This one, for Teresita, at the church in Peñasco, was especially depressing. I doubt the priest had a personal relationship with her. No one from the family spoke, no one delivered a eulogy (I did find out her daughter spoke at the rosary). It could have been a mass for anyone.
Twelve years ago I delivered the eulogy for my buen vecino, Tomás. He’d been the mayordomo of the El Valle church many times over the years, the priest was his longtime friend, and I got to tell stories about this wonderful but complicated man who accepted my family as the good neighbors we wanted to be when we moved here, only the second fulltime Anglo family in El Valle. Then we went to the camposanto and more people told stories and we laughed and cried and laid him to rest.
After Teresita’s mass, we went to the El Valle camposanto—at least they buried her here—where again, no one other than the priest and the funeral director spoke. They lowered her into the ground while the rest of us milled around whispering with friends and acquaintances we often see only at funerals. Teresita’s husband, my friend Nelson (they were still married but lived in separate houses and got along great) told me that the funeral cost him over $8,000: travel from the Burque hospital to the funeral home in Taos, care of her body, conferences with the staff, a fancy casket, printed handout cards, etc., etc. It made me think about Mark, whose care by the same funeral parlor cost around $2,000 because we cremated him and had a wake, not a funeral, where we talked about him—a lot.
I wish we could deal with our human deaths like we did with Benny: humanely, simply, personally. This blog will probably seem sacrilegious to many of those who were at the mass today, who are comforted by the ritual of the Catholic Church. For me, I found comfort in the gentle treatment of the vet, the ride home with the body, the quiet scene under the willows, and the time spent with my son. Hey guys, that’s what I want when the time comes.
Thursday, July 15, 2021
Tuesday, July 13, 2021
Ya Basta!
I slept from 8:30 to 10:30 am, after getting up at 6, my usual time. Then later in the afternoon, I slept from 3:00 to 4:30 pm. I never sleep during the day unless I’ve got the flu or am felled by vertigo, which I’ve suffered for 40 years. I have to draw the conclusion that I am a wreck.
Why am I a wreck? Let me count the ways.
Number one: Things started off with a late night conversation with my friend whose son has been a meth and heroin addict for 20 years. Several months ago he fell off a ladder and ended up in the hospital in Burque with a severe infection from the injury that threated to turn to sepsis. I suppose his addiction was sustained by all the pain medication they gave him, but he developed other complications and several days ago escaped the hospital and ended up in the driveway of my friend, incoherent and suffering. Nobody knows how he got there. My friend’s ex-wife drove up from Burque to try to get him back to the hospital but he eluded them both for several days until they managed to get him back down to her house. What happens next is anyone’s guess. My friend, who is 80 years old, cannot do this anymore.
Number two: Later that night my 14-year old (that’s a guess) dog Benny was in crisis. He’s been in slow decline for many months now, losing control of his rear legs, becoming confused and disoriented as he stands stranded in a corner, unable to find his way out. So my son Jakob—who asked me to take Benny on six years ago because the demands of his job and young daughter denied Benny his full attention—finally told me on a disastrous camping trip when Benny fell in the river and wandered aimlessly around camp, that it was time to let him go, via the vet. I reluctantly agreed and made an appointment, although doubt still lingered until last night at 2 am when I woke up to Benny’s cries and came downstairs to find him unable to get up as poop landed on the floor (he’s been pooping on the floor for weeks). I got him up, let him outside, and hurriedly put on shoes and coat and headlamp to follow him around so he didn’t get lost. Getting him back in the house seemed to thwart his desire for free range, but I’d already been through that scenario with another demented dog who disappeared into the night, never to be seen again. So yes, we’re going to the vet.
Number three:
When I finally made it back to bed I took a pill to alleviate my anxiety not only about Benny but about the fact that I had an appointment with a dentist the next day to have a tooth pulled. This was because many months before I’d had a permanent bridge fall out and couldn’t get my dentist, or the specialist he referred me to, to re-adhere the bridge because one of the anchor teeth was deteriorating. Then my beloved dentist quit, due to a disastrous year of Covid-19, and I was on my own. I ended up in one of those huge dental practices with multiple receptionists, dental assistants, dental hygienists, regular dentists, dental specialist, etc., etc. The dentist I saw told me I had to get the deteriorating tooth pulled, might have to get a root canal and crown on the other anchor tooth, then get implants, or just make due with a partial denture. All of this would cost anywhere from $3,000 to $4,000. But their dentist who pulled teeth only came to the practice once a month so they referred me to another dentist, who I was supposed to see the morning after Benny’s breakdown. I was terrified. So I cancelled.
Number four: After I cancelled the dentist appointment, went back to bed, and got up at 10:30, I called my friend who was in the hospital with an infection in a toe that has previously been amputated. She suffers from neuropathy, which causes a lack of blood flow to her feet, and had lost a previous toe as well. When I reached her on her cell phone, she was in intense pain waiting for a vascular treatment to help the blood flow to heal her latest amputation. The doctors insisted on giving her a pain med that she couldn’t tolerate and refused to give her what she wanted. I called her partner, who intervened, and got her what she needed.
Number five: I have to go to the funeral of my friend who died of a heart attack in the hospital after everyone thought she was getting better. It was a bizarre, quick illness in which an infection caused her heart to stop once, but she rallied, the infection was treated, and then one morning, she died. Married but living separately from one of my good neighbors, they cared for each other as friends rather than husband and wife, and also cared for their grandson, whose mother essentially gave him up. She brought me warm, homemade tortillas, gave me extra food from the food pantry, invited me to her grandson’s birthday parties, and was always kind and gentle. My neighbor grieves her loss and the loss of his grandson, who was returned to his mother by the “state.”
The background to all of this is the pack of hounds that live across the road from me, which I will expand upon in a subsequent blog post. Suffice it to say, for seven months now they have been barking and howling their heads off anytime anyone travels down the road by foot or vehicle, or just out of frustration at being confined in kennels with no room for exercise for what they’re going to be trained to do: tree bears. Everyone in the village complains about the noise but don’t say anything to the young man who’s raising them. Everyone, that is, except me, who finally called him out for a face to face about us and those poor dogs. I’ll fill in the details of that conversation and what, if anything, resulted. Stay tuned.
Why am I a wreck? Let me count the ways.
Number one: Things started off with a late night conversation with my friend whose son has been a meth and heroin addict for 20 years. Several months ago he fell off a ladder and ended up in the hospital in Burque with a severe infection from the injury that threated to turn to sepsis. I suppose his addiction was sustained by all the pain medication they gave him, but he developed other complications and several days ago escaped the hospital and ended up in the driveway of my friend, incoherent and suffering. Nobody knows how he got there. My friend’s ex-wife drove up from Burque to try to get him back to the hospital but he eluded them both for several days until they managed to get him back down to her house. What happens next is anyone’s guess. My friend, who is 80 years old, cannot do this anymore.
Number two: Later that night my 14-year old (that’s a guess) dog Benny was in crisis. He’s been in slow decline for many months now, losing control of his rear legs, becoming confused and disoriented as he stands stranded in a corner, unable to find his way out. So my son Jakob—who asked me to take Benny on six years ago because the demands of his job and young daughter denied Benny his full attention—finally told me on a disastrous camping trip when Benny fell in the river and wandered aimlessly around camp, that it was time to let him go, via the vet. I reluctantly agreed and made an appointment, although doubt still lingered until last night at 2 am when I woke up to Benny’s cries and came downstairs to find him unable to get up as poop landed on the floor (he’s been pooping on the floor for weeks). I got him up, let him outside, and hurriedly put on shoes and coat and headlamp to follow him around so he didn’t get lost. Getting him back in the house seemed to thwart his desire for free range, but I’d already been through that scenario with another demented dog who disappeared into the night, never to be seen again. So yes, we’re going to the vet.
Number four: After I cancelled the dentist appointment, went back to bed, and got up at 10:30, I called my friend who was in the hospital with an infection in a toe that has previously been amputated. She suffers from neuropathy, which causes a lack of blood flow to her feet, and had lost a previous toe as well. When I reached her on her cell phone, she was in intense pain waiting for a vascular treatment to help the blood flow to heal her latest amputation. The doctors insisted on giving her a pain med that she couldn’t tolerate and refused to give her what she wanted. I called her partner, who intervened, and got her what she needed.
Number five: I have to go to the funeral of my friend who died of a heart attack in the hospital after everyone thought she was getting better. It was a bizarre, quick illness in which an infection caused her heart to stop once, but she rallied, the infection was treated, and then one morning, she died. Married but living separately from one of my good neighbors, they cared for each other as friends rather than husband and wife, and also cared for their grandson, whose mother essentially gave him up. She brought me warm, homemade tortillas, gave me extra food from the food pantry, invited me to her grandson’s birthday parties, and was always kind and gentle. My neighbor grieves her loss and the loss of his grandson, who was returned to his mother by the “state.”
The background to all of this is the pack of hounds that live across the road from me, which I will expand upon in a subsequent blog post. Suffice it to say, for seven months now they have been barking and howling their heads off anytime anyone travels down the road by foot or vehicle, or just out of frustration at being confined in kennels with no room for exercise for what they’re going to be trained to do: tree bears. Everyone in the village complains about the noise but don’t say anything to the young man who’s raising them. Everyone, that is, except me, who finally called him out for a face to face about us and those poor dogs. I’ll fill in the details of that conversation and what, if anything, resulted. Stay tuned.
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