It is a amazing that when I see the cover of this book I think how important Jane Rule has been in my life. What is damning is to realize, now that I am going to be 83 soon. that I wrote about her last June 17.
Since that date, have become ever more sad, but unlike Rule I do have a sense of purpose. I know that statistically I am not long for this this world. I am not waiting to die but preparing to die. I have been printing lots and finding 8x10s in my files and putting them in some black plastic portfolios, 25 photographs per portfolio. I have 35 of these with themes like Argentina, Mexico I and II, Portraits I, II, III, IV, Family I and II and so on. The idea is that when I am gone my daughters will have the portfolios and will not have to luck through boxes.
Like Rule I wake up with a lot of pain and stiffness. It is particularly bad with my right arm and elbow. You must know that if you are right handed and you sit on a toilet what you do with that hand and arm is important.
While Rule had a writer’s block when she began her wonderful autobiography, I have no problem with my daily blog. On some days I write four of them.
Rule is not too candid about her partner in life. Because I was married to my Rosemary for 52 years I cannot escape her absent presence in this house. She is there in the empty passenger seat of my Chevrolet Cruze.
But what is giving me solace, but sadness at the same time, is my overly clingy male cat Niño. He stares at me and comes back quickly from his morning round to accompany her sister Niña and me on my bed, where after finishing my breakfast, I read my NYTimes and Vancouver Sun. Then I bed rot with them on me.
I have it as an almost certainty that Niño, who has lymphatic cancer of the intestines, knows he is dying. My vet who prescribed Niño a human cancer pill that I give him every day, says he may be on remission. Niño eats a lot but he is bony. And that stare of his, a stare full of intelligence, is what has given me a temporary will to stay alive as I have to take care of him until he goes.
I wonder what Jane Rule would say of my bed rotting? I think that she would command me to get going.
