My dead, undifferentiated

Dewdrop and Rosebud, white mice, were buried under the canna lilies in the gritty drip-line bed behind the house at 1824 Byrnes Drive, in McLean, Va.

Ginger, Mary’s dog, was struck by a car or a truck outside a hotel on the Blue Ridge Parkway while our family was moving from Virginia to Texas.

Bootsie, the black and white dog, died in our front yard at 305 E. ValVerde in Crystal City, TX. Joe and I thought she had been poisoned because there was froth at her muzzle, but she was an old lady dog.

One of Fuzzy Phantom's kittens died under my bicycle when it tipped over while nobody was around to see, and that was my fault for failing to engage my kickstand properly, and everyone hated me that day, and told me so.

Granny Lynch died at New Year’s in Rhode Island. I had measles and no one told me. Mom just disappeared from my world, which was a bed in the larger of the two rooms in the secondary house behind our main house. It used to be servants quarters, I imagine. And behind it was a one-room house that may have been for migrant field hands. Our place wasn't old enough to have housed slaves. She was in Rhode Island at the funeral, but they didn’t tell me, because Dad’s baby brother, Melvin, died of measles as a toddler, and he feared measles. He slathered Vick’s Vaporub on my ankles and made me wear two pairs of socks. There was a mustard plaster at one point, too. And vinegar on brown paper. Mostly I remember being ordered not to pick my nose. And then I was fine, but Granny was dead and I had not been told. I misunderstood not being told. I thought it was because I was too wicked to be included. I think about my poor mom, rushing to be with her and arriving too late. She didn’t get to know her mother as an old woman. She ventured into her own old age as a pioneer.

Friskie, formerly George, died while I was in college.

Fuzzy Phantom died in the driveway.

John the Dog died. His wife, Szadu, died.

Nana, Michael’s grandmother, died when Ben was little, with congestive heart failure.

Jim Storey died in 1985 of melanoma. I went to see him a few days before and he gripped my hand and urgently tried to say something. His eyes were big and wet. He said, “You got you, you got you.” I don’t know what he meant but I do know what he meant. It meant he liked me. That I should never leave Michael.

Ouida Belle Fleming Loyall, Dad's mother, died in 1987. She was 99. He couldn’t stand her because she made stuff up. He went there out of duty, and to show off his charming children and his pretty wife. Ouida Belle lied about the past, he said. Mom said she was ornery and that would help her live a long time. I saw that they had a fight every time he visited her.

Dad died suddenly in 1988 of a hemorrhagic stroke. I saw him all over the place for months — in the street, in grocery stores, driving cars.

My half-sister Beverly Jones died in 1989 at age 59. Just fell over dead.

Bamma Cora Storey died in 1990 at Paragould. She was 90.

Frankie the Camp Cat was hit by a car. Michael found him.

Phoebe the Bitch Cat was hit by a car and had convulsions and died.

Otus the Head Cat drowned in 1992, and it was my fault. He had been having seizures, and we gave him half a baby aspirin a day so his hind legs would work. He had spent his whole life as an indoor-outdoor cat, and I thought it was mean not to let him go outside. So when he begged, I let him out. I was busy doing other things and lost track of him. Ben came home and immediately wondered where he was. We searched outdoors, calling. It was terrible. It was my fault. 

Norma Storey died in my arms in 1995. She had cancers.

Her father, Granddad RR Ivy, died a month later. He was 93.

Frodo and Gizmo died in the same year. They were brothers. Gizmo had cancer. Frodo died a straightforward mammalian death.

Jim’s brother Uncle Bob (Robert Henry Storey) died in 2003. He was 74. He donated his body to science. The day he turned 33, he called Jim’s house drunk and Michael picked up the phone. Bob told Michael he was now “as old as Jesus.” He had been a wildman in his youth and adulthood, but then got sober. At his funeral, one shabbily dressed person after another stood up to talk about how kind he had been to them in small ways. One man said Bob had saved his life and saved his marriage. They were all crying. They all loved him.

Uncle Layton died in Florida.

Uncle Horace died at Hoxie.

Pharaoh died in convulsions while Mom was trying to get him to the vet. He had feline leukemia, but she had taken good care of him for two years. I can’t thank her enough for that. I feel bad that she went through the trauma of his death alone. How he thrashed in the box on the way to the vet.

Someone set glue traps for mice at the arts center and a little mouse was caught. It was squealing in the AC closet and everybody said, “Try to ignore it.” I did not yet know that it is possible to free mice from these terrible traps using oil. I thought I could ease it off, but it was screaming when I picked it up. This dainty, mouse-gray, little creature, screaming. I tugged but the hind feet wouldn't come off, and then its foot tore off. I put it in a garbage bag, put the bag in a trash can and hit it with a brick until the screaming ended. I apologized over and over.

Mercury died. That was devastating. He died a peaceful mammalian death, but we were crushed. The floors were empty. I made a ceramic cat to sit on the floor, so I had something to look at. I made it with its tongue sticking out, as though gakking.

Alyson Hoge let me practice fishing at her house. I caught two catfish. At home the second one croaked and protested — in air — for what felt longer than 30 minutes while I tortured the first one trying to kill it the way everyone had instructed me, using a nail through the head to a board. It was horrific. It was murder. I could not eat them. 
God.

We were sitting in our chairs watching TV when I noticed Mackey was panting. Michael thought he was just tired, but he was panting. I looked that up online and they said it was a terrible thing. I raced him through the night to the emergency clinic in North Little Rock. They said he was in total kidney failure and was dying. I stood with him while they put him to sleep. I begged him to find me again. I don’t know why I said that, but I hope that he can and does.

Mom died in February 2018, surrounded by family members and having been given last rites. She does not linger anywhere. She slipped away into freedom, and I am glad for her. She was released from the prison of her rigid body and what seemed to be a mechanical dementia, like there were obstacles in the way of her mind which was still clear in many ways. She remembered recent events. I don't think she had Alzheimer’s. I wonder if it was her parathyroid? 

Wood rats invaded the basement and we set traps. Twice in one day they maimed and trapped a rat without killing it, and I had to take those writhing, ruined animals outside, in garbage bags, and pound them with bricks. Michael wasn’t around for the first one, but he was for the second one, and he offered to do it, but I had already done the godawful that day and figured I would be less disturbed repeating the deed with my sullied mind than he would be having to do it on a fresh mind.

Michael, Oct. 7, 2018. 

So huge, so hopeless to conceive. 
All of that other dying, and the world went on as it does. But with Michael, the world changed.