I haven’t been blogging lately because the last few weeks have been sad and stressful. I could break things up into individual posts but then it would seem weird to mix happy knitting posts between them. So here we go:
At the end of June I painted the upstairs floor. The paint fumes made Thebes very sick and caused him cramping, headaches and hallucinations. He moved into our shed and slept on the floor for three weeks. Our friend Evelyn gave him some air masks for chemical sensitivity that he would wear as he darted into the kitchen on food runs.
During this time Taos started getting smoke from the Wallow Fire in AZ. That was pretty bad but then the Las Conchas Fire happened in Los Alamos which broke the record for the largest wildfire in NM history.
The smoke was very bad and possibly radioactive (Los Alamos Lab being a secretive nuke lab after all). Our eyes and throats were burning and we were edgy so Thebes and I loaded up the car, grabbed Sieben and went to Durango for a week. The cats did fine on their own and were lovey when we got back. Though we were worried about the fire the trip turned out to be fun and I plan to blog about it soon. We got back shortly after July 4th.
One downside of the trip was that I got extremely sick one day-vomiting in the car sick. I traced that to a gluten intolerance. Apparently a lot of women with Endometriosis have issues with gluten-but that’s another blog post for another day.
Shortly after we got back a young Taos man named Turner took his own life at the Rio Grand Gorge Bridge. He was 28. We didn’t know him personally but since Taos is a small town we have several friends who knew him that were saddened and shook up.
The week after that Abbey’s daughter’s boyfriend Floyd Jr. shot himself. He was a young man as well-only 22. The night he died Thebes and I drove Abbey’s daughter Samantha, nicknamed Chezzie, to be with Abbey and Daniel. She had tragically seen Floyd shoot himself. Floyd Jr. was the son of our friend Floyd Sr.
Sam was of course traumatized by this and five days after Floyd’s death she decided to take her own life at the Gorge Bridge. She was just 19.
Here’s Abbey with Samantha and Floyd Jr. this past March:
This spring Chezzie helped build our greenhouse and I got to know her better. She was a funny, smart, pretty young woman. Her memorial was last week and since Thebes is a reverend Abbey and Daniel asked him to do the service.
Here’s Chezzie putting in insulation in the greenhouse:
The Gorge Bridge gets roughly four or five suicides per year. Thebes and I have lived here ten years but this is the first time we knew someone that jumped. We put up flowers for her at the bridge.
Two days later my friend Bliss miscarried her baby. I had just finished making a funny baby gift (another blog post for another day) when I got the news. She has wanted children for awhile and I was so happy for her (and regular readers know I rarely get happy over babies).
The day after that our cat Keefi died. Coyotes or neighborhood dogs got her. Sieben knows what happened. Thebes and I got caught up in town over memorial details and didn’t get back until late. He was whimpering in a very weird way and Granola was sticking right by him when we got home. She was just under a year old.
This is one of the last photos I took of her:
In some ways it still feels like I’m processing Prana’s death. Keefi’s passing just makes it hurt all over again. We talked about getting another kitten but two kitty deaths in one year is just too hard.
There’s been so much sadness and stress and death that it’s hard to even process it all. Today I thought about Keefi a lot. Granola is typically a very happy kitty but he has been so sad lately it just makes me tear up. They were such little friends:
This week I took a long walk in the woods with Seiben. I cried some and prayed some. Is there a meaning to all of this? Or is it just weird chance? Thebes calls it a death vibration; a friend called it a loss vibration. Either way there is a pattern of sadness and stress that has woven it’s way through this summer. I am hoping and praying (and at times begging) that this fall will be mellow and provide some relief to all of us hurting right now.
