Death

All posts tagged Death

The Tail of a Cat

Published February 12, 2013 by Malia

Shortly before I turned 5, my family moved from Denver to a little town in southern Illinois.  We took a long two cats, Gracie and Marshmallow, some gerbils, and some fish.  Not long  after we settled in, the neighbor’s cat came around to visit with her kittens.  She did this everyday for a couple of days.  It was late fall, and the weather was turning cool.  Mom couldn’t stand it, and she started leaving out food.  Pretty soon, the mamma cat stopped coming, and only one little kitten remained.  Somehow mom and I convinced my dad that we needed to take the kitten in.  So, into our lives came a third cat, which in my 5 year old wisdom I named, Andrew George Mittens the Third.  Andrew came about because at the time I was convinced that “Andrew” was simply the greatest boy name in the world.  George was attached because our cat Gracie was named after Gracie Allen, so I thought it was appropriate to name the boy cat after George Burns.  Mittens was because he had little white paws that emerged from his tabby coat.   I didn’t quite comprehend the fact that “the Third” referred to line of descendants.  I just thought it fit since he was the third cat we had at the time.    Anyway, Andrew, George, and the Third rarely got mentioned, and he came to be known as Mittens.

Mittens quickly grew from being a tiny pathetic kitten, into a bit of a behemoth.  He remained this for as long as he was in my life.

The first year I was in 4-H, I decided to spend the year preparing my cat to be judged at the county fair.  Owning him was as close to owning livestock as I was gonna get.  When I took him to the fair, I had to take him up to a panel of judges which included a veterinarian.  Things didn’t exactly go smoothly.  Mittens decided it was a good time to hiss and be generally unsociable.  My mom ended up coming and holding him in place.  The vet was terrified of him.  I think the fact that I wasn’t scared of something she was, is what got me a blue ribbon.

We discovered, one day by chance, that Mittens could be called by the sound of hysterical crying.  We were watching an episode of Little House on the Prairie, and Mittens was nowhere around.  In the episode, Nellie Olson started fake hysterical crying.  Out of nowhere, Mittens lumbered in desperate to check on mom and I.  He was certain something was wrong.  He never failed to come when I was crying.

When I turned 9, I had a really bad case of pneumonia.  It actually hit a few weeks before my 9th birthday, and lasted until the middle of February.  I missed the better part of 3.5 months of 3rd grade.   The night I was at my worst, was the day we had gone to the doctor.  The doctor prescribed me meds, and told my mom that if I got worse, I had to be admitted to the hospital.  That night, mom sat on my bed and pleaded with God.  To say we were poor would be an understatement, and there was no way we could’ve afforded a hospital trip.  All that night mom prayed, and like he had from when I started getting sick, Mittens sat attentively on the foot of my bed.  I did start to slowly get better after that night, and didn’t have to go to the hospital.  Two weeks later when we went to the doctor for a check-up, he was in shock.  He told my mom that he had thoroughly anticipated that I would be in the hospital the night of my last visit.  He also told her that he had expected that I would die in the hospital.

Mittens lived with us, and saw me almost all the way through my teenage years.  He was fat, and precious, and crabby, and wonderful.

When I was a freshman in college, I was living several hundred miles away from home, and things at home took a bad turn.  My parents moved, and they couldn’t take Mittens with them.  So, he went to live with a neighbor.  He was really old at that point, and not in the greatest health.  I never got to say good-bye, but I think (or at least I hope) that he somehow knew that we loved him and didn’t leave him willingly.

I’m sure he’s gone on to kitty heaven by now, but I hope he knows how marvelous and how precious and how important he was in my life.

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Dark and Troubled Times

Published December 17, 2012 by Malia

I’ve been putting my thoughts together about going into the ditch in SD.  There’s actually quite a bit more that happened after I wrote my last post, but I’ve had so much going on I haven’t gotten it put up on here yet.  However, in the midst of all my drama, there was this whole nightmare that took place in Connecticut.

This is definitely one of those times that I’m glad I don’t have kids.  I can’t imagine what the parents who’ve lost their babies are going through, and I can’t imagine what it must be like to have a child and try to decide how to attempt to keep your child safe.  I’m not sure if the world has just been progressively getting more scary, or if it was always so scary and it’s just getting harder to hide how scary it is.  If there’s one thing I learned from Finding Nemo, it’s that you can’t protect your kids from everything, and to promise them that you will is just lying to them.  However, I don’t blame parents for wanting to protect their kids.  There’s something wrong with someone if they don’t want to protect their kids.

Anyway, I’m still grouping my thoughts, but for now my prayers are with all the families who lost their children, all the families who are directly involved in that nightmare, all those who lost friends, and all those kids who had part of their innocence so senselessly ripped away.

The Empire and the Mouse

Published October 30, 2012 by Malia

So, as I’m sure many of you know, Disney bought Lucasfilm.  Disney now owns the rights to Star Wars and Indiana Jones.  They also now own ILM & Skywalker Sound.  In the announcement, they stated that Star Wars Episode VII will be released in 2015 (and VII & IX in the years that follow), and there will be more feature films and tv projects in the future.

I have mixed feelings about this.

It’ll be interesting to see what the Star Wars universe ends up looking like in the hands of new people.  Lucas has spent decades trying to perfect his vision of the universe.  Maybe someone else can make it exist the way he wants.

Probably my biggest feeling of uneasiness about this whole thing is the thought that there might be a reboot of both Star Wars & Indiana Jones.  They can redo Episodes 1-3 of Star Wars and it wouldn’t really bother me, but I don’t want to see someone else playing Han Solo or Indiana Jones (Jr. or Sr.).

Overall, it will be interesting to see what becomes of Lucasfilm.

Now, I’m not ignoring what’s going on with the giant storm on the East Coast.  It’s devastating.  The images I’ve been seeing are heartbreaking.  I’m thankful that those I know who have been in the middle of this storm seem to be okay.  My heart goes out to the families who’ve lost members and homes.

Random Saturday Musings

Published October 6, 2012 by Malia

Tonight, I’m not really in a”random” or a “musings” frame of mind.  Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been in a bit of a slump.  I didn’t really feel like sharing everything that was going on.  The whole point of this blog is to be open and honest about what’s going on in my life.  The good stuff, the fat stuff, and the just plain hard stuff.

Almost three weeks ago, I found myself visiting Student Health.  I’d been feeling really unwell, and I figured I might as well find out what was wrong.  I was examined and tested, and I finally got some answers this week.

Turns out, I’ve got Type 2 Diabetes & PCOS.  I was expecting the PCOS.  I wasn’t expecting the diabetes.

I’m still processing this diagnosis.  Overall, I’m hardly surprised, but it’s still a struggle.  My emotions feel like they’re a yo-yo.  One minute I’m super focused and totally prepared to face this, and the next, all I can think of are the people I’ve known who’ve lost limbs, and eventually their life to type 2.  I find that I go from sad to driven to scared to acceptance to denial to happy surprisingly quickly.  Like I said, yo-yo.

So, now I won’t just be writing about trying to lose weight, but I’ll be documenting dealing with this new adventure.

 

Whosday

Published September 25, 2012 by Malia

Okay, so I think I’ve decided that Tuesdays are going to be my day to geek out over books and movie and tv.  Hence calling it “Whosday.”  (This is mostly a tip of the hat to my enduring love of Doctor Who.)

I’ve just started reading the Matched book series.  I finished the first book, and am a little ways into the second.  It’s an interesting series.  Much like The Hunger Games, the main character, Cassia, is a girl living in a dystopian society.  Basically, Cassia signs up to be “matched” (have an arranged marriage decided by the government based on statistics) and she accidentally gets matched to two guys she knows.  Being matched to someone you know is a rarity, and being matched to more than one person just doesn’t happen.  There’s a war going on, but you don’t really get into that until you’re closer to the end of the first book.  The story is quite interesting, but the writing is a little difficult to read.  It feels like it needed one more rewrite before getting published, but I can’t really complain because I’m not the one who wrote it and making money off of it.

I’ve really been enjoying watching Go On.  It’s this show on NBC about this guy who’s wife dies, and he has to join a grief support group.  It’s an interesting take on death and grief.  I think what I like about it is the fact that they’re dealing with an incredibly uncomfortable subject.  I grew up surrounded by death and regularly attending funerals(granted it was other people’s losses, not my own, the fun of being a pastor’s kid), so it was something I grew up knowing about and talking about.  I remember what a shock to my system it was when I discovered how many of my peers had never attended a funeral.  I even had friends around whom I couldn’t even mention anything to do with death or funerals.  The show is funny and sweet, and just a little strange.  Plus, it’s really nice to see Matthew Perry on t.v. again (he was always my favorite on Friends).

Photoshop

Published August 14, 2012 by Malia

This is the story of how I spent most of my afternoon at Nebraska Furniture Mart (NFM) and ended up buying a nice new camera for 11% of its actual cost.

I wrote yesterday about mom and I going to the zoo.  I’m not a great photographer, but that doesn’t stop me from loving photography, which is why I made sure I had my camera with me.

My beautiful, lovely camera!

We had been through the aquarium and the butterfly pavilion, and my camera was working fine.  We went and watched an IMAX film (if you have a zoo membership, you get into the IMAX for free), and then headed for the cat complex.  When we were inside the building, I got my camera out, and turned it on.  I noticed two blue streaks in the upper left hand corner of my display.  I’d never had anything show up like this, so I turned the camera off, waited, and turned it back on.  Blue smudge streaks were still there.  The camera still worked, but I was concerned that this might be a sign of future problems.

Today, the blue smudges were still there, so I finally called NFM customer service to speak with them about it.  There were two reasons for this.

A: I head back to ND on Sunday, and I’m running out of time to take care of things here at home.  If the blue smudge streaks were a omen of something truly going wrong with my camera, I wanted to be able to take care of it right away, instead of having to wait months before being able to get to NFM.

B:  Two years ago I purchased this camera from the NFM clearance.  It was the exact same camera as the top of the line they had out on the sales floor, it had just been a display camera and due to that they couldn’t sell it as new.  It was in great condition, and had so much more to offer than my little Coolpix I had bought back in 2004.  When I purchased this one in 2010, I got a 3-year accidental warranty policy.  I know some people say warranties are a rip-off, but I really liked the idea that if something bad happened, they’d fix it or replace it.  Besides, when I divided the warranty price out over the three years, it was a pretty cheap price to pay for a repair or replacement.

So, I called and after explaining the situation and giving my information, the guy I spoke with told me that I had to options.  They could either mail me a check for what I originally spent on the camera, or issue me store credit so that I could come in and pick out a replacement.  I asked if it would be possible to just get my camera fixed, and to my surprise, I was told that since what I paid was  under their limit (which if it had been new when I bought it, instead of a floor model, it would’ve been over their limit), they wouldn’t repair it.  I decided to go with the option of getting a new camera, which meant dad and I headed off on an adventure to NFM.

We got to NFM, and the lady at customer service was incredibly helpful, and everything went really smooth.  Once the paperwork was filled out, I went in search of my new camera.  First, I headed to clearance, and there I found this…

Nikon S9300

Like the one I purchased two years ago, this one is the most recent version of Coolpix, and it had also been a floor model.  After checking the information and playing around with the current one on display, I decided this was the camera.  It was meant to be.  Plus, since it was a former display camera, the price was really low, and with the store credit, it was going to cost me less that $40 out of my own pocket to get.  While finishing up buying it, the customer service rep, took it out of the box, so I could make sure it was okay.  Since the battery was dead, I couldn’t turn it on, but it appeared to be okay.

When we got home, I got ready to play with my new toy.  I was really excited.  I pulled the battery from my other camera and put it in the new one (they both use the same battery, it’s really handy).  I turned on the camera, and it clicked on, but then gave me an error message about the dial mode not being in position, and turned itself off.   I tried it again, and got the same message.  This time I looked closer, and discovered that the plate on top had gotten out of position, and the dial was sitting slightly cockeyed.  Dismayed, I tried, and dad tried, to get the plate to click back in, but it was stubborn.  So, back to NFM we went.

I was really worried that they’d not want to work with me since I was having so much camera drama, and that the customer service people would be really rude.  My worries were completely pointless.  A different lady helped us, and when she saw what the problem was, she assured us it wasn’t a problem, and said I could go find a different camera and we’d redo the process from earlier.  I found another camera that was the exact same one I wanted that was also in clearance, but they wanted fifty dollars more for it.  I just didn’t have the extra, so I settled on another Nikon, that was really nice, but not as great as the one I’d picked.  I told myself that my other camera was still in pretty good condition, and apart from those blue smudge streaks, it was still a nice camera that took good pictures.  Going back to customer service, I was surprised when the really nice lady showed me that she’d managed to get the plate down, and the camera was working perfectly.  Overjoyed, I let dad take the lesser camera back, and I set about finishing up at customer service.  The rep told me that it was a really nice camera, and she had a Canon that she loved, but she really liked this one too.  She then started talking about how she’d taken her camera with her to her granddaughter’s funeral, and she’d gotten some pictures that she was sure her son and his wife would want some day, but their hearts needed time to heal.  At this point dad returned, and overhearing what she was saying (but not who had passed away), he asked if she’d lost someone.  To this she replied that she’d lost her 3-day old granddaughter.  She said that she would’ve liked for her to live to be over a hundred, but Jesus had needed her.  She started talking about how good God is, and how much He loved us all.  I was in shock.  She was so sweet, and so genuine.  I could tell she wasn’t just saying these things because they sounded good.  She really believed it.  I’m a Christian, and I was just blown away by how much peace this woman had about what had happened.

All in all, it was a pretty amazing afternoon.  I got a beautiful new camera, and it’s a Nikon.  (I grew up in a Nikon loving household.  I don’t have anything against Canon, or other brands, but I really love my Nikons.)  On top of this, I saw someone totally living their faith and standing strong in it.

Also, most amazing customer service I have ever experienced!  I dealt with five different people this afternoon, and they were all consistently friendly, courteous, and just plain awesome!

The End of Summer Movie Watching

Published August 12, 2012 by Malia

Next Saturday will be my last day here at home before I make the trek back north.  It’s kind of hard to believe that in a week summer will be over and the school year will be starting up.  It’s been a good summer.  I’ve gotten to hang out with friends and family, gained a “niece,” and relaxed.  It’s been a hard summer, too.  Grampa’s death was a not too subtle reminder that I come from a fairly small family, and almost all of them are quite a bit older than me.  Being reminded how mortal we all are is never much fun.

I also got to see a fair share of movies this summer.  Here, in no particular order, are what I saw and what I thought.

The Avengers

If you haven’t seen this, you should.  Actually, you need to go and watch all the films that lead up to Avengers (Hulk, The Incredible Hulk, Ironman, Captain America, Ironman 2, & Thor) and then go watch it.  I should mention that even though Ironman 2 came out before Captain America, I actually found Ironman 2 to be much better once I had the Captain America storyline.  There’s so much in Ironman 2 that draws on the Captain America storyline.  This film was fun, well done, and really amazing in both 3D and 2D.  I’ve seen it a couple of times, and I can’t wait to see it again.

Men In Black III

The Men in Black (MIB) franchise has had a special place in my heart ever since I was sitting in a bus for a band trip to D.C. and saw the first MIB film on a little tiny t.v.  While the second one was not great (really, my favorite part was Frank the Pug singing “I Will Survive), I still have good memories associated with it.  Ten years later, along came MIB3, and I was equal parts exited and terrified.  My terror was pointless.  The film is excellent, and had all the charm and sweetness that it should have.  Frank the Pug was pretty much the only missing element (he’s there, but not like I would have liked).

Brave

This was Disney’s newest addition to their Princess collection.  This princess was much more Mulan than Cinderella.  She’s not happy just sitting back waiting for a man.  This film was filled with girl power messages, but it also had much to say regarding family and responsibility for the choices we make.  So much fun, and so beautifully done.

Snow White and the Huntsman

I think people were quick to dismiss this film because of a general dislike of Kristen Stewart.  That’s too bad.  This was a really good movie.  It was so dark and creepy, just the way a fairy tale ought to be.  Sure, some liberties were taken with the Snow White story, but none that were unacceptable.

The Three Stooges

I never watched the Stooges growing up, so I went into this one unsure of what to expect.  It was well done, but overall, I just couldn’t get into it.  I’m not the biggest fan of physical comedy, and that was what this film relied on.  It had its moments, but I have zero desire to see it again.

Ice Age 4

Sid, Manny, and Diego.  Need I say more?  This newest installment was much better than the forgettable third one, and as good as the first.  The second installment is still my favorite, but this one was fun and made me laugh.

Hope Springs

Let me star with the good.  This film is basically Meryl Streep, Tommy Lee Jones, and Steve Carell.  Occasionally, you see another person, but overall, those three people carry the entire film.  They succeeded at proving they’re awesome actors, and they all did amazing.  However…here’s the bad.  The first quarter of the movie is really bittersweet and funny.  Then the rest of the film is a downer and all about sex.  Seriously.  I have no idea how this film did not get an R rating.  Sure, there’s no real foul language, but the dialogue is surprisingly graphic, and what Jones and Streep do onscreen outside of the therapists office is beyond squirm worthy.  The film does end on a positive and realistic note, but it feels like it takes hours to get there.

Overall, not a bad summer for movies.  I’m still hoping to catch Dark Knight Rises and Paranorman before I leave next Sunday.

The Little Things

Published August 6, 2012 by Malia

I had an interesting conversation today.  I was spent the afternoon with my best friend and her beautiful baby, while her husband met with his guy’s group.  After the group finished, my friend and her hubby gave me a ride home.  During the ride, my friend was sitting in the front while her husband drove, and I was in the back with the baby.  My friend said something to me about my being the baby’s aunt.  This prompted her hubby to ask me if it was odd (not exact wording, but I’m forgetting the word he used) for me to be baby’s aunt when I’m not biologically related to baby.  I told him, no,because there is the possibility that this is my only shot at being an aunty.

I’m an only child, and single as single can be.  It was so special to me when my friend called  last fall to tell me that I was going to be an aunt.  She has a few more brother’s and sister’s than I do, so it’s not like baby girl would be without aunts and uncles.  Still, to be an honorary aunt means so very much to me.

Now, a baby is no little thing, but this conversation got me to thinking about the things in my life that I cherish that other’s might scoff at.  Things like Grampa’s golf marker.

A few weeks ago, my grandfather passed away.  It was a bittersweet passing.  He’d been in such bad shape, and had fought for each day for so long, it was a comfort to know that he wasn’t miserable anymore.  We had the funeral, and the following day we (mom and I) went through some of Grampa’s things that my aunt hadn’t dealt with yet.  (My aunt is seriously amazing.  She’s been an absolute rock throughout this whole ordeal.  I wish people could know how amazing she is.)  Anyway, while going through stuff, I found this:

 

(It reads, “Here Lies Roy”)

 

Considering  I found this the day immediately following the funeral and burial, this is incredibly morbid.  It’s also incredibly funny.  I know if Grampa were here he would find this incredibly funny.  It was almost like Grampa left this to remind me of his great sense of humor and incredible optimism.

The little things.  Finding contentment in the life you’ve got, even when you can’t do or have that which you want.