Niño 9 May 2026

They saw me coming at my local vet. Even though Niño has lymphatic cancer of the intestines and is 15 years old and was just fine with me giving him a human cancer pill every other day I was told that he needed to have his teeth cleaned. For the procedure he was put to sleep. He is now on his way to perhaps dying in a month or two. He refuses to eat much and is very thin. He lies with me on the bed all day and is very lovable. He and his sister Niña give me the human warmth I had with Rosemary when she was alive. Rosemary and I got the two cats at our SPCA 7 years ago. They are a direct connection to Rosemary.

Six minutes before Rosemary died she asked, “Am I dying?” I was not able to answer. And now with the eventual death of Niño death has been in my mind even though I have many distractions like the garden, my blogs, my photography and my plant scans.

A great majority of my school friends, family, writers I worked with, etc are all dead.

My friend Alan Jacques on 9 July of last year texted me in the morning. He wrote, "Dying is untidy. Alex, thank you for being my friend." He had terrible Parkinson's and he died via MAID on that afternoon. My longtime friend (we met in 1977) saxophonist Gavin Walker died at about the same time. 

I believe that the death of a cat is foreboding preparation for one’s own death. With the world situation as it is now, I cannot forget what my architect friend Abraham Rogatnick (85) told me three months before he died, “I am not long for this world and I am glad.”

Epicurus lightly wrote that there is no pain in the actual moment of death and so one must not fear it. I do not quite agree. The Herbert Spencer and Charles Darwin concept of the survival of the fittest is important. Darwin said that we humans do our best to keep our own personal species going. We want our genes to continue. Because of this it is perhaps impossible to think about not being alive, not feeling, not seeing and not thinking. It is against our genes.

I try to think about not being alive and I cannot do it. It is plainly evident why the English speaking Ástor Piazzola who was raised as a kid in New York City wrote his lovely composition Oblivion. There is not translation into Spanish. The closest is “olvido” or “to forget”. It is interesting to me that in English nothingness is a close synonym to oblivion. Nada is not nothingness.

While I will not reveal my religious beliefs I can assert that both Rosemary and I believed we would never meet again. Epicurus was wrong, dying is not to be feared. What is to be feared is the anticipation of it. My constant memories of my Rosemary will be gone. Just before dying, the thought of  that is painful.