When a person dies, there is an innate understanding of the loss. You have lost a parent, spouse, a child, sibling, and you tell someone, “Yeah, my dad died last night.”

And the person you’re telling understands, empathizes: “Yes, losing a parent is very hard. I am so sorry.”

But with an animal? Relationships with animals are so individual, not always easy to understand or empathize with.

In January 2009, I euthanized my cat Lucy. She was 3. She had feline leukemia, and I did everything I could – everything medically possible – to get that cat well. In the end, putting her down was not only the humane choice, it was the only choice. The leukemia destroys red blood cells, which carry oxygen, and, at the end, Lucy had so little red blood cells, she couldn’t walk. She’d try, but she’d simply fall over.

Lucy in 2008. Sick but not symptomatic.

There was nothing anyone could do.

I like to think – and I suspect this is actually true – that she was trying to tell me to let her go. The day I put her down, I’d picked her, tried nuzzling her, and she bit me on the cheek. Not hard. But she did indeed bite me. That was so foreign to her behavior that I interpreted it as, “Pay attention. I’m sick. You’re responsible for me. Do something.”

So I took her to the vet one last time – just to be sure. He and I sat on the floor, watched her try to get to her feet, watched her stagger then fall to her side, fighting for breath.

“It’s time,” he told me. “We’ve tried everything, Maureen. There’s nothing else left.”

I nodded. I knew that.

He explained how he’d put her down, how he’d first give her a sedative to put her to sleep and then a medication to stop her heart, but I’d been with other pets when they’d been euthanized. I knew what he’d do, so I told him it was okay, I understood.

Then he left the exam room. I held Lucy while he was gone and kept her on my lap, when he came back with the tech, when swabbed her foreleg. Lucy fought him. As depleted, as exhausted as she was, she fought that needle.

She was a cat that had survived being dumped in a garbage can when she wasn’t even a week old. She survived my clumsy attempts to bottle feed her, to wipe her bottom with a warm towel so she’d defecate. And she survived the leukemia. For three years. And a surgery for left lobe lung torsion, which is so unusual, so rare, the vets that operated her wrote about  it.

She was quite a cat.

The vet got the needle in her foreleg, gave her the sedative; she fell asleep in my arms. And then he gave her whatever it was that stopped her heart.

When she died – and granted I am a spiritual woman, I believe in God, an afterlife – I swear I could feel her leave, and I was filled with an enormous sense of peace. I think Lucy was in pain most of her life, and I think death was a relief.

So I never once questioned that what I had done for Lucy – my putting her down – was the right thing, the humane thing.

And still… For three months, the grief I felt was so intense that I couldn’t even mention her name without crying.

I think about that now. What was there about that cat that caused such an enormous amount of grief?

I think, in part, it was her life, how hard it had been, and she was such a small, dainty cat. When she died, she weighed five pounds. She was a short-haired tortoise shell with green eyes, pink paws. Finnicky eater. Delicate, tiny cat.

And when I pulled her out of the bottom of a garbage can out in Grants, New Mexico on a cold November morning, she still had her eyes closed, her ears flat on her head, and she had what can only be described as half a rat’s tail. She was black at that point. Not particularly pretty – in fact, almost ugly. But she needed help. And I gave it. I took her home, kept her alive with kitten formula, blankets, and over-heated formula. I carried her everywhere, held her close against my heart, trying to simulate what I thought would be the actions of a mother cat.

She needed me.

And when the leukemia was diagnosed, I had the option of putting her down then. Most people would have. I couldn’t. I researched the disease, found that with palliative care some cats could live for quite a while. I took the gamble. And for three years, I gave her as good a life as she could have had.

And when all hope had been exhausted, I put her down. And I think the grief that I felt – the grief that left me unable to breathe, unable to even hear her name without crying – I think that grief was for the life she could have had, should have had. It was grief that her life had started as cruelly as it had. Grief that life and circumstances can be so unfair. To animals. To people, as well.

And now I am saying good-bye to another animal. A dog this time. Beaker. An Australian Shepherd mix with no tail and two blue eyes. Like Lucy, her life started out hard.

Her first owner – never met the man – didn’t want Beaker, didn’t want her sister Triscuit, so he loaded them into the back of his pick-up truck and dumped them on the side of the road, where a rescue organization found them, put them up for adoption, and I took them.

Beaker. Probably about 2007.

I took them when I hadn’t yet moved into my house, so they stayed in foster care. Hard but not insurmountable.

Then I got a call from the foster mom: Beaker was in the hospital with Parvo. She wasn’t expected to make it. Parvo is a killer. The foster mom told me not to hope. I can’t help who I am, I hoped.

And Beaker made it.

I brought her and her sister Triscuit home, tried to settle in to the housebreaking and bonding, but then they both got sick: diarrhea, vomiting, coughing, thick green mucous bubbling out their noses, choking their airways.

They had distemper. A highly contagious, frequently fatal disease. Generally, dogs get distemper if they haven’t been vaccinated, but both Beaker and Triscuit had been vaccinated when the rescue organization picked them up from the side of the road. Best guess was that first owner hadn’t bothered to vaccinate, and that both the Parvo and the distemper had been incubating and the vaccines weren’t enough to keep them well.

This time Beaker and Triscuit both ended up in the hospital. The vet was clear; she didn’t mince words.

“We can’t cure distemper,” she said. “All we can do is hit them with antibiotics with the hope that we can prevent secondary bacterial infections. And if you don’t want to go down that road, euthanasia is something you might want to consider.”

They were four months old. Euthanasia wasn’t an option. I wanted to give them the chance to fight. The vet said okay but cautioned me not to get my hopes up, reminding me that distemper is deadly. Yeah, and maybe I didn’t get my hopes up, but I definitely hoped for the best, hoped they’d pull through. And they did. But not completely unscathed.

Because distemper is so contagious, neither dog was socialized properly. Beaker rolled with it. She was friendly and gentle and low key. Triscuit was anxious – she still is – couldn’t relax around strangers and needed medication whenever it stormed.

The other problem – and I don’t know this for sure, I’m only guessing – is that it left Beaker with residual neurological problems. Nothing dramatic. The problems were subtle. She just was never as bright or as alert to her surroundings as most dogs. I could train her to sit, to lie down, to shake, but if you put a blanket on her head (a test for canine intelligence), she wouldn’t take it off. Instead, she’d look put upon: “Why do you want to humiliate me like this? Covering me up with a blanket? What did I ever do to you?”

Then when Beaker was about three, she started getting sebaceous cysts; these warty, oversized growths that would spring up on her back, swell to maybe two-inches and then pop and drain. The option for cysts is to operate, surgically remove them; however, they will come back. I opted not to keep putting her through surgery and let the cysts come and go, so Beaker ended up with cysts all her life. They were unsightly and kind of smelly, and I always felt kind of bad, kind of guilty that I wasn’t removing them even though putting a dog through surgery every six months to remove what looked like warts and what weren’t a health risk didn’t seem appropriate.

Still… Animals are entrusted to us. We (or at least I) want to provide for them as well as we can, want their lives calm and happy and stress free.

But life (fate?) has a mind of its own, and in 2008, Beaker had an FCE, which can be best understood as a spinal stroke.

She’d been outside playing with Triscuit and another dog I rescued – Rocky. I called them in. Triscuit and Rocky came bounding across the yard; Beaker brought up the rear, dragging her right hind leg behind her. Her paw was curled, dragging across the ground – what they call ‘knuckling.’ And then her leg gave out and she fell.

I knew something was quite wrong. I loaded her into the car and raced to the emergency vet closest to my house. The lab tech came rushing out, looked at Beaker, said that she must have fallen into a hole and twisted her leg.

Okay. I’ve had no medical training; however, a dog who has twisted its leg will put no weight on it; the dog will not drag the foot. It was clear to me that Beaker had severe weakness or paralysis and because of the tech’s initial exam, I had no faith in the vet’s office, so even though the vet then came out and said he suspected that Beaker had an FCE, I wouldn’t let him treat her. Instead I drove 15 miles across town to bring her to a vet I did trust.

Beaker stayed two days in the hospital and then I took her to two months’ worth of physical therapy. She started with hydrotherapy – easier to use the leg when it weighed next to nothing.

And then for a while, Beaker seemed okay. She was getting older. Arthritis seemed to be setting in, and it was harder for her to get up. And she started doing odd things, like staring at walls, like walking into corners, like barking at her echo.

Still, those odd things didn’t seem odd. Not for Beaker. After all, wasn’t she the dog who kept blankets on her head? Who responded always as if people were simply trying to humiliate her?

Yet, on Friday January 27, when she lay panting on her side in a puddle of urine, I knew she was ill. I thought I would be putting her down that day. I brought her to the vet, who told me her lungs, her heart – all her vital organs sounded good. I couldn’t put her down not knowing what was wrong with her.

I thought – because she was having so much trouble standing and walking – that I was seeing sequelae from the FCE. I thought she’d bounce back, and she did for five or ten minutes at a time.

Finally, on February 2, I drove her to see an animal neurologist in Santa Fe. He told me she was a complicated case because the inability to walk suggested something muscular skeletal, while the staring at walls suggested something neurological. Something more ominous.

He gave me a reasonable game plan and asked that I leave Beaker with him with the understanding that he’d give her an MRI and that I could pick her up on Friday.

That wasn’t to be.

As I was pulling into the driveway – some 45 miles south of Santa Fe – he called to tell me that Beaker had an intracranial brain tumor that was affecting the thalamus. Because the tumor was in the center of the brain, surgery was not possible, but I could do chemo, which, best case scenario, would buy Beaker another few months. Or I could do radiation, which, best case scenario, would buy Beaker another year.

She was 12 years old. The life span for a dog her size is 12-15 years. She was old. She had arthritis, and whatever was going on with her inability to walk was separate from the brain tumor.

“No,” I told the vet. “I’m not putting her through radiation or chemo.”

Then he asked if I wanted him to wake her up (she had been anesthetized), so I could get her in the morning to bring her back home to be euthanized. I asked if she was completely out. He told me ‘yes,’ and I told him ‘no, let her go. I’ve already told her good-bye.’

And here I am back where I was with Lucy – grieving the loss of an animal. The loss of a dog, who I used to refer to as a “Velcro dog.” She followed me everywhere, including into the bathroom. I would be sitting on the toilet and she’d be outside the door, trying to open it, sliding her paw beneath it, pulling at it.

When I worked outside the home and Beaker would be home all day with Triscuit and Rocky, I’d make them “food puzzles.” I’d put treats inside of boxes and then boxes inside of other boxes, so she would have something to do while I was gone.

If I went to McDonald’s or Burger King, I’d take her with me, buy a “Happy Meal” just for her, although Beaker always preferred sweets and would have been happier had I just bought her a chocolate shake.

In fact, Beaker was so fond of sweets, I’d sometimes call her by my daughter’s name – completely by mistake – because my daughter has always had an incredible sweet tooth.

The difference between saying good-bye to Beaker and saying good-bye to Lucy is that Beaker had a longer, richer life. Grieving for Beaker is already different. I can talk about her without crying, which is not to say I don’t miss her. I do. And I’ll probably miss her for a while. She’d been a good, loving companion for 12 years.

My only regret is that I wish I’d been there when she died because I’d like to have offered her comfort if I could have. I would have liked to have said one final good-bye, but waking her up just to bring her home so I could have said that final good-bye seemed cruel. I couldn’t do that.

I loved her the way owners love their pets, and I will miss her. She was important to me. And now she’s gone.

Like Lucy.

Like Tasma.

Like Heffalump.

And I’d like to think – so I will – that they are all up there together somewhere – healthy and young. Playing. And running.

And maybe – just maybe – waiting until I’m up there with them.

My mother at 16 in front of the Foley's house on the westside of Bay City.

It’s 1957. I’m 5, my sister Anne is 7, and my mother is pregnant with my sister Lisa. My father’s not working. He spends a lot of time not working. It’s because of the drinking. He loses interest, quits, or gets fired. And when he’s not working, we don’t have any money and end up living with my mother’s parents – the Foleys, or my father’s parents – the Cookes.

That year, we are living with the Foleys in a two-story, green frame house on the westside of Bay City, on a corner lot.

My Grandma Foley is very proud of that lot. She may live on the westside, the wrong side of town, but at least she has that corner lot. The Cookes may have that ‘la-dee-dah’ house on Center, on the east side of town, with all those beautiful wood floors, but she has that corner lot.

To my 5-year-old eye, my grandmother looks awfully round with a massive bosom that hangs to her waist and too much gray hair. Unlike my Grandma Cooke, my Grandma Foley’s hair is short, clipped about level with her ears, and she just seems old (she was maybe 58). Maybe it’s because of all the complaining she does – what my father calls ‘belly aching.’

My Grandma Foley belly aches about the furnace – it’s never hot enough in the house, even at 80; the price of coal; the cost of feeding her daughter, son-in-law, and two kids.

And she belly aches about the Cookes:

“With all the money they have,” she tells my mother, “you’d think they’d have a son that works, that knows how to support his family.”

“With all the money they have,” she says, “you’d think they’d take you in and not expect us to do it.”

“With all the money they have,” she says, “you’d think they’d have the sense to get Lanny out of Doylestown and away from that crazy doctor.”

She, my mother, and I are sitting in the kitchen at a table made of tin — white with black trim and four mismatched, tin chairs. They are smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee, which my grandma serves in dainty, china cups complete with matching saucers. Because I am so young, and pretty much invisible to adult eyes, I am allowed to sit there, listening to them talk, to my grandma belly ache.

Most of her belly aching I’ve already heard, but this is the first time I’ve ever heard of Lanny. My ears perk up.

My mother glances at me, and I do my best to remain invisible.

Evidently, I’m successful because she turns her attention back to my grandmother.

“From what I’ve heard, Mother, Dr. Rosen is supposed to be the best.”

My grandma harrumphs. “If he was any good, Lanny wouldn’t still be in that hospital.”

My mother sighs, rubs the bridge of her nose. “It’s not like he’s got pneumonia, Mother.”

“I know what he’s got, Patty Anne.”

“Who’s Lanny?” I ask.

“He’s your father’s brother,” my mother says. “Your uncle. And you’re going to get to meet him tonight.”

“They’re meeting him?” my grandmother asks.

To my 5-year-old ear, she sounds horrified. My Uncle Lanny is beginning to sound pretty interesting.

“Yes,” my mother says. “They’re his nieces, and they’re going to meet him.”

“Is that even safe?” my grandmother asks, just as I’m asking why he’s in the hospital.

My mother answers me and not my grandma: “Because your Uncle Lanny is sick and needs doctors to take care of him.”

“Did he get his tonsils out?”

“Not that kind of sick,” my mother tells me. “Your Uncle Lanny has a problem with his head.”

“Did he fall out the window?” I ask.

My mother shakes her head ‘no.’

“So go ahead, Pat,” my grandma says. “Explain schizophrenia to a 5-year-old.”

“What’s that?” I ask.

“It means he’s crazy,” my grandmother says.

Crazy is the Wild Man From Borneo in The Little Rascals, who runs around yelling, ”Yum, yum, eat ‘em up.”

I don’t want to meet a crazy man, and I let my mother know that.

“See, Pat,” my grandma says, “even a 5-year-old’s got better sense than you.”

She shakes her head. “You and the Cookes.”

“Reeni,” my mother tells me, “your Uncle Lanny is not ‘crazy,’ his head is sick, so he needs doctors to take care of him. He won’t hurt you, and I promise, he won’t scare you.”

My mother’s promise held true.

My Uncle Lanny came that evening, accompanied by his doctor. Anne and I were sleeping; my mother woke us, took us downstairs where a man, who didn’t look crazy, who just looked sad and was awfully quiet, sat on the couch next to my father.

My mother introduced Anne then me, and then sent us back to bed.

That was my Uncle Lanny — hospitalized with schizophrenia at 19, who never got better, never regained function. He died, still hospitalized, of a massive heart attack brought on by the meds used to treat his illness.

He was 40.

For the purposes of this blog, I will forego the rampant racism and acceptable discrimination of the era; I will also forego the acceptability of smoking anywhere and everywhere, including hospitals, and the use of ether as an anesthesia. Instead, for the purposes of this blog, I will focus on what’s truly important:

Cars and by extension roads and road trips.

First, my kids, who were born in 1982 and 1986, both have a fondness for the Muscle Cars of the 1970s. When I think Muscle Cars, I think of the Charger, the Challenger, the GTO not the Chevy Chevelle and certainly not the Chevy Nova. Growing up – and I would have been in my late teens at that point – the Nova was only one step up from the Vega, which was Chevy’s answer to Ford’s Pinto, except, unlike the Pinto, it didn’t blow up on impact.

Forgive me, I’ve digressed for a minute. I was discussing the cars from the late 50s and early 60s; more precisely, the use of those cars for road trips.

I am not sure when the Interstate system that connects Michigan to Illinois was completed. For all I know, there were modern highways crisscrossing both states in 1958; however, we never used them. If we traveled anywhere with my Great Aunt Moni, who would have been born in the 1890s, we couldn’t go any faster than 35mph, or she’d scream that we were all going to die and if God had meant for anyone to travel so fast, He’d have given us wings. And if we had my Grandpa Foley in the car, and should it be summer – and we only took summer road trips because otherwise the roads would be icy, we’d spin off the road, land in a ditch, where we’d stay undiscovered until Spring, at which time we’d all be dead – but if Grandpa Foley would be in the car and not sound asleep because of all the whiskey and beer he liked to drink, then he would start screaming that the wind was making his hair move (he had very little hair and required a constant, unmoving comb-over to give him even the illusion of hair), and we would all have to roll up the windows, so his hair wouldn’t move.

Growing up, death was a constant companion. There were the shards of glass that could enter your bloodstream, travel through your capillaries to your veins to your heart and kill you dead. There were the fish bones that you might swallow that would pierce, what my family called your voice box, travel through to the other side where the bloodstream was, enter the capillaries, and bingo, before you knew it, that fish bone would pierce your heart, and you’d be dead as a doornail. And as dangerous as glass and fishbones could be, cars were even worse.

Cars were little more than death traps. As I’ve already mentioned, they went much too fast, meaning they would somehow fly off the road, flip in the air, land on the roof, and we’d all die. And the radiators were always about to go bad, causing steam to rise from the hood, which meant the cars were about to explode, and we’d all die. Same with the tires. Back in the 50s and early 60s, there were no steel-belted radials, at least not that my family had. We had tube tires, which meant to my family, that blowouts were inevitable, which meant to my family, that whoever was driving would instantly lose control of the car – especially if it was traveling anywhere over 35mph – and it would run off the road, which would cause it to flip again and again and again, land on its roof, and if that didn’t kill us all dead, then the car exploding, which cars in the 50s were wont to do, at least according to my family, would do us in.

Because, in my family, cars and traveling posed such danger and because we may or may not have had the Interstate system connecting Michigan and Illinois, traveling between those two states was always quite the event. Starting the night before.

In 1963 the year my sister Peggy was born - when travel was still fraught with danger - my mother sent my sister Anne and I, by train, from the Chicago area to Bay City for the summer and sent my stepsisters Irene and Mary Jean and my stepbrother Bob to Pennsylvania, so she and my stepfather could bond with Peggy. My cousin Barb, who was a year older than I was and a year younger than Anne and who was the daughter of my Uncle Roy and Aunt Mary, came to Bay City, as well.

Not an exact match. My uncle and aunt's car was turquoise.

And the plan was for my Uncle Roy and Aunt Mary to pick all of us up at the end of the summer – in a 1958 Ford station wagon, complete with fake wood and a “way back,” where all of us wanted to sit – and drive us back to Illinois.

In 1963, in my family, only the men drove because only the men could be expected to deal the dangers of driving – those tires that were going to blow and the shoddy radiators about to erupt. It took a man to keep the car on the road, to keep it from flying through the air should we go too fast, to keep it from flipping end over end, then exploding, killing us all.

So, of course, it was my Uncle Roy, who would drive, and it was my Aunt Mary, who would prepare us all for the dangers of driving. Starting the night before. Because we had such a big day ahead of us and because we were living no later than 7am, Anne, Barb, and I were required to go to bed when it was still light out – we were 13, 12, and 11, at the time. The next morning, when it was still dark, Uncle Roy woke us up, told us breakfast was waiting.

We went downstairs to my Grandma’s kitchen, found toast and cereal left out for us. But no Aunt Mary. She was still sleeping. My grandma, on the other hand, stood off towards the sink, wringing her hands, watching the three of us eat. No doubt there was some danger with the toast. Perhaps she worried that we might swallow the wrong, inhale a crumb into our lungs, where it would somehow enter that magical bloodstream, and pierce our heart. Killing us dead.

In the meantime, Uncle Roy came into the kitchen, announcing the car was packed, then barked at us to finish our breakfast – we didn’t have all day – use the bathroom, and get in the car.

Still no Aunt Mary.

Yet, my Uncle Roy – to me – was kind of scary, so I did exactly what he said. Got dressed in record time, used the bathroom, then got into the car, and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

The sun came up.

Anne and Barb got in the car. No Aunt Mary. No Uncle Roy.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” I said.

“You should have gone before,” my sister said.

“I did.”

“You better not go again. Uncle Roy’ll leave without you.”

“Where is he?”

“Getting my mom up,” my cousin said.

“Well, I have to go to the bathroom and if Aunt Mary’s not even up.”

My sister gave me a huge, dramatic sigh. “Then you better run.”

So I got out of the car, ran into the house, up the stairs, and used the bathroom. Then I ran out of the room, down the stairs, out of the house, and back into the car.

Still no Aunt Mary.

Finally, out came my Uncle Roy, who opened the door, let us know that Aunt Mary was packing our lunches, and did any of need to use the bathroom again.

This time, Anne, Barb, and I all used the bathroom again, all got back into the car together, fighting who got the window seat. Being the littlest, I always lost.

And then we waited. And waited. And waited.

Finally, my Grandma Foley came out of the house, still wringing her hands, and this time crying. She told us all to get out of the car, one last time, so she could hug us. She hugged each of crying about how big we are all getting, told us Mary was just about ready.

“Do any of you need to use the bathroom one last time?” she asked.

All three of us said, “No.”

It was a ‘no,’ that would haunt every last one of us.

My grandma left; Anne, Barb, and I sat in the car, talking about the summer, and finally – a little before 10:00 – out came my Aunt Mary carrying a paper bag filled with sandwiches, potato chips, and a thermos of water. My Uncle Roy, scowling and mumbling at her, was right behind. And bringing up the rear were my Grandma and Grandpa Foley. My grandma was still crying, still wringing her hands, and my grandpa was giving Uncle Roy advice on the best route, the fastest way to get out of Michigan and into Illinois.

My Uncle Roy ignored him and got in the car. My Aunt Mary, now also crying, got in the car, promising “Mother” and “Daddy” that she’d be safe, that she’d see them at Christmas.

And finally, three hours late, we were on the road: my Uncle Roy furious that he’d had to wait, my Aunt Mary weepy that he was so furious.

An hour later, I announced I needed to pee; Anne announced she was hungry, and my cousin Barb announced she had a bloody nose.

To me, my Uncle Roy said I should have thought about that before we left; to Anne, he said she’d have to wait until we stopped, and to Barb, he said, “Tilt your head back and pinch your nose.”

Well, Barb kept bleeding; Anne stayed hungry, and I still needed to pee.

Around noon, my Aunt Mary told us all to look for a picnic stop, where we could eat. I found one – complete with outhouse. My Uncle Roy said it was in the sun. Then Anne found one, my uncle said there were too many Mexicans. Barb said nothing, she was still trying to get her nose to stop bleeding.

“I really have to go to the bathroom,” I said.

“Roy,” my aunt said, “why don’t we stop at a gas station?”

“We don’t need gas.”

“Then a picnic spot?”

“Find one,” he snapped.

My aunt, artificially cheery, told us all to keep looking. By now, it was close to 1. Even Barb with her bloody nose was hungry.

We passed picnic spots with outhouses, picnic spots in the shade, picnic spots devoid of any people, let alone Mexicans. Uncle Roy just kept driving.

“Roy,” my aunt said. “I’m sure the girls are hungry.”

“I want to at least get out of Michigan, Mary.”

Bay City is on the east side of Michigan at the south end of Lake Huron. We’d been driving three hours and maybe – maybe – managed to go 100 miles.  There was no way any of us would make it to Illinois without stopping first.

Barb started to cry – blood now pouring out her nose, down her shirt. Anne, who rarely argued with adults, said nothing, and I, who had a tendency to get car sick, announced I was going to throw up.

My uncle told me to roll down the window, but I, being the youngest, had lost ‘dibbies on the window seat’ and couldn’t roll down a window. Barb’s nose was bleeding so badly, she refused to move, and Anne, probably with displaced anger at my uncle, told me I wasn’t carsick, that I hadn’t gotten carsick since I was 4, and I was nothing but a liar.

My Aunt Mary told Anne not to call me names, and then, just to prove that I was so carsick, I threw up, and although I tried throwing up on the floor, it splashed on Barb and the back of Uncle Roy’s seat.

Now Barb was screaming that she had throw-up on her; Uncle Roy was yelling for us to roll down the windows, that the smell was nauseating, and my aunt was screaming that she’d told Roy to stop and what was wrong with him anyway.

To which he screamed that if she were ever ready on time, none of this would have happened.

I threw up again.

“For God’s sake, Roy,” my aunt screamed.

He pulled the car onto the shoulder. In the sun. No outhouse. No table. But no Mexicans.

I scrambled out of the car, still throwing up and still needing to pee. My aunt told Anne to go with me and find some bushes and told Barb to get her out of the car, so she could clean the blood and vomit off her clothes.

Behind some scraggly, little bush, I peed, all the while Anne telling me how I made the car stink.

“You aren’t supposed to say ‘stink,’” I reminded her. (My mother had an entire list of words we weren’t supposed to say, including stink and poo and fart or blew one or anything that referred to farting at all.

Anne rolled her eyes at me, “Okay. You made the car smell really bad.”

Barb, in the same blood-stained shirt but which was now wet, came looking for us to let us know that there was a picnic table just up the road, and we were stopping for lunch.

It was now somewhere close to 3.

We ate our lunch – baloney sandwiches with ketchup on white bread – in record time, my uncle yelling at us not to drink the water, he didn’t want to have to stop again.

Well, the universe has a way of not always giving people what they want.

We did have to stop. On the western edge of Michigan because it was now past 10. Barb and Anne were snoring; I was still sick, but thankfully not throwing up, and my Aunt Mary, who had started in on my uncle at 8, wouldn’t let up on him that it wasn’t safe to drive at night, that we’d hit a deer, and didn’t he know how the Connelly’s hit a deer last year and how their daughter, that sweet sweet girl, died?

“She died of pneumonia, Mary.”

“I’m still saying, Roy. They hit a deer. Is that what you want? To hit a deer with Pat’s girls in the car? How are you going to explain that?”

And, so finally after two hours of that kind of logic, my uncle found a motel. We spent the night, and the whole thing started over in the morning with two exceptions: 1) Barb got a clean, blood-free shirt, and 2) I got a window seat.

Total time to go approximately 450 miles? 24 hours.

But – and this probably only because there was a man driving – the Ford’s tires didn’t blow; the radiator held, and the car didn’t once flip, and none of us died.

Thanks to Wikimedia Commons for the photo.

I want all of us as joyful as Sasha is here. Living in the moment, wagging our tails so fast, you can't even see them.

Since I first learned to read, I have wanted to live my life as if in a book – at first, a picture book. I wanted a brother Dick, a sister Jane, and I’d be Sally. I’d have a dog named Spot and a cat named Puff, and because I went to Catholic school, my Dick, Jane, and Sally, likewise, were Catholic,  which then meant I wanted a crucifix in every room, along with a wall-mounted, Holy Water dispenser, in which I could dip my index finger and make the Sign of the Cross every time I entered a room.

I wanted, needed to be Sally; I wanted, needed to wear nothing but ruffled dresses and spend my days “Seeing Dick run. Seeing Jane run.” And, later as the book got more difficult, I wanted, needed to dip my white, white dog into bluing and have a comical, blue dog running through my life.

Unfortunately, we had a weimaraner and two beagles, none of which was white and none of which would have been willing to be dipped into “bluing” even had I known what “bluing” was. Even more unfortunate, my mother steadfastly refused to keep me in dresses, especially ruffled dresses, because I’d rip them. And, most unfortunate of all, she also refused to put crucifixes and Holy Water dispensers in every room, no matter how I begged, no matter how I explained that as Catholics we needed them.

She was sending us to Hell. I knew it.

Then came Nancy Drew, and I desperately wanted and needed “chums” named Bess and George and drive a shiny, blue roadster and solve crimes – put the world back in order. I never did have a “chum.” Somehow, growing up in late 50s and early 60s, there weren’t a lot of “chums” running around, and there were even fewer “shiny blue roadsters.”

I still wanted them.

Yet, later – I must have been somewhere around 11 – and my mother would send my sisters and me to spend Saturdays at the YMCA, where we got to swim and then watch an afternoon movie, I wanted – and thought I needed – to live my life as a movie.

I wanted grand adventures, like in King Solomon’s Mines although I never really understood why all the women in those grand adventure movies had such a propensity for falling. They’d run a few steps and one of their ankles would give out, and our hero would have to carry them to safety. I knew if I had a grand adventure, I wouldn’t be wasting my time falling.

Along with the grand adventures, I wanted a White Christmas, A Miracle on 34th Street, and I wanted it to be A Wonderful Life.

In short, I wanted the holiday season to heal all rifts, make the world right, bring peace into my life, and restore good will.

I still want that. And still, at some level, expect that other people, other families have that. In my head, I see the people down the street, across town, sitting down with family and loved ones to a turkey dinner, with all the works, heads bent, holding hands, as they give thanks for one another and all the other blessings in their lives.

That desire for a Norman Rockwell/Currier and Ives/Frank Capra-directed Christmas has way too strong hold on me. And, really at my age, I ought to know better. I ought to be able to give it up and accept life for what it is:

Families squabbling, not talking, refusing to listen, holding onto hurts and grudges, and clinging to the past.

You’d think that at my age, none of that would bother me anymore.

You’d be wrong.

I am not always capable of empathizing, and until I got sick at the beginning of November with Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis, I’m not sure that I was truly empathizing with Jonathan having schizoaffective disorder. I was definitely sympathizing, and I empathized to the degree I could, but I was limited: I’d never been psychotic, generally had some level of emotional equilibrium, and was rarely irrational or paranoid. I hadn’t been given to unpredictable emotional outbursts in years.

I felt, given my background, that psychologically I was fairly healthy, thanks, in part, to nearly 40 years of therapy on and off, and, in part, to a mind that was capable of discussing and modifying my own conflicted emotions. In short, I was capable of “working through” most of my own emotional baggage.

But then…

On October 18, I had to go and find out that my TSH level indicated I was hypothyroid, and I was then prescribed, and gladly took, Levothyroxine.

The drug made me crazy. And I mean that exactly how it sounds. What had begun as relatively minor symptoms of hypothyroidism — a weight gain of 10 pounds over a year and difficulty staying asleep — turned me into a woman, who couldn’t remember why she had gone into the pantry, the laundry room, or the bedroom. Worse, it turned me into a woman, who remembered things that hadn’t happened, remembered bringing books with me into the bathroom, putting out the dogs, and most dangerously, putting Jonathan’s meds away, which I hadn’t done. As a result, twice I misplaced Jonathan’s meds. Not safe.

When the brain's not working, nothing's working.

I had to turn over the control of Jonathan’s meds to one of the caregivers, who hadn’t lost her mind.

Worst of all, at least from my perspective, the drug made me paranoid, which I’ve never been, and it made me consider suicide for the first time in my life.

What exacerbated the whole situation was my primary doc’s nurse kept telling me that levothyroxine was an easily tolerated drug, and that it took 6 to 8 weeks for it to actually get into my system, and to stay on it. The urgent care doc told me the same thing. The drug was easily tolerated, and I needed to give my body a chance to adjust to it.

The way I looked at it, if I killed myself, there’d be no way for my body to adjust to anything, on November 7, I went off the levothyroxine. Against medical advice. Technically, by now – the middle of December – the drug should be completely out of my body. Perhaps, it is. I don’t know.

I have, however, read that if a person with hypothyroidism is given too low a dose of levothyroixine, or another thyroid drug, it can make the hypothyroidism worse; it can exacerbate symptoms because it can cause the thyroid to stop producing the same amount of hormone it had been producing, and, as a result, the person has even less of the necessary thyroid hormone, and s/he is made worse, at least temporarily.

The problem is I was made so much worse by the drug (or perhaps the dose) that I couldn’t stay on it for 6 to 8 weeks. My mind couldn’t walk me through my emotions; it couldn’t tell me how fluid emotions are, and how they’d change and how I’d feel better. Eventually. My mind couldn’t even tell me to call my therapist or a suicide hot line.

Luckily, somehow there was enough of my mind left to tell me that I might be having a reaction to the drug, so I went off it.

And although I now feel better than I did, I still don’t feel good, and I still don’t feel as well as I had before taking the levothyroxine. I still have mood fluctuations that I can’t seem to control, and my thinking is pretty unreliable.

An example: I keep Jonathan’s meds in a locked safe, and every night before I go to bed, I put out the meds he needs for the next day.

Last Monday, about 9:00 in the evening, I was settling down for the night, so I went to the safe, tapped in the PIN on the keypad, and the safe wouldn’t open.

I tried again. Still it wouldn’t open. Then I wondered if I could have forgotten the PIN. I knew I hadn’t, so I tried once more, kept getting an error message.

So – my thinking intact – I called a locksmith, explained the problem, explained that Jonathan couldn’t be without his meds and that I needed someone to come out and get into this safe. The guy on the phone said, sure no problem; it would cost $38, but the safe would be broken and unfixable. “Fine,” I told him.

A few minutes later, someone from an 800 number calls – too late to be a creditor, so I pick up. It’s the locksmith; he apologizes profusely, but he no longer has anybody in the Albuquerque area. Unknown to me, I’d called a dispatch center somewhere outside New Mexico.

So, okay. By nature, I am resilient, a problem solver. I call another locksmith. First thing I ask if this is a local company and do they service the Albuquerque. They do. I explain the problem; the guy on the other end apologizes profusely, tells me his company doesn’t work on safes and very few companies do and that I should call yet another locksmith.

Before I can call yet another locksmith, Jonathan texts me about some of the friends he’s been contacting on Facebook. I text back that I’m having a breakdown – meaning I’m about to lose it, meaning I’m about to have the Screaming Mimi’s. Jonathan thinks I mean I’m about to have the kind of breakdown I’d told him about regarding the levothyroxine. Understandably, he’s concerned; he texts me to get in touch my therapist. Remember, he texts me, you told me to make sure to remind you.

It’s not that kind of breakdown, I text back, I can’t get into the safe where the meds are. And he lets me to know to screw it, that he’s already manic, and in the middle of rapid cycling, and who cares about the meds.

I don’t know that at the time, he no longer is anywhere near the phone.

So I now call yet another locksmith, who tells me that yes, the company works on safes, but that if he sends someone out, it will cost me $200, and the safe will be destroyed.

I am silent. I don’t have $200.

He asks me what kind of safe it is and what kind of error message I’d received, so I tell him. He tells me that probably the keypad simply needs new batteries, and all I need to do is remove the keypad and replace the batteries.

Okay. I am cheered. I thank him and thank him. I am damn near gushing. I know how to change batteries.  That I know how to do, for sure.

What I don’t know how to do is remove the keypad.

I call the guy back. He tells me about the little tiny screw at the base of the keypad. I go find a little tiny screwdriver for the little tiny screw. I remove that little tiny screw, put it somewhere safe, which means I have now lost that screw because I can’t remember where that safe place was, but at any rate, I have managed to remove the screw.

Now, I try to remove the keypad. I tug, pull, turn it one way, then the other: It won’t come off.

I call the guy back; he tells me that he doesn’t work very frequently on the type of safe I have, but he’s pretty sure I either need to turn it to the left or to the right or pull it straight off.

I go back to the safe. I am exhausted by now and close to tears. By now, it’s 9:30, and all I really want to do is crash out in front of the TV, but Jonathan’s meds are in the safe, and Jonathan needs them.

So, I turn the keypad to the left, to the right, and then just pull it straight off. I am elated. Now all I need are four AA batteries.

I can’t find them. I text Anne, one of Jonathan’s caregivers; she tells me that there are AA batteries in the casita – where Jonathan is. I text him that Anne said there were AA batteries next to the sink, and could he please bring them to me.

He doesn’t answer.

I text him that I need four AA batteries.

He still doesn’t answer.

I text him that I need his help. Could he please help me?

Still no answer.

I text Anne that Jonathan won’t bring me the batteries. She responds by suggesting that Jonathan is asleep. I text back that he’s not asleep. He’d just texted me 15 minutes ago. He doesn’t care, I text her. He doesn’t care that I need help.

I text his psychiatrist, tell her about the problem with the safe and how Jonathan won’t help me. She texts me that maybe he fell asleep.

Now, I’m pissed.

Anne texts me that she can bring batteries to me tomorrow. That’s not the point. I text her, “No. If Jonathan doesn’t care enough to bring me the batteries, so I can get into the safe, then I’m not giving him his meds.”

His psychiatrist texts me not to worry about the safe, that she can reorder all his drugs in the morning. I text her what I’ve just texted Anne.

Even as I’m texting both the psychiatrist and Anne, I’m thinking that I can’t not give meds to someone with schizoaffective disorder. At some level of my brain, I know this, but at some other level of my brain, I’m going straight to Jonathan isn’t willing to help me, Jonathan doesn’t love me, Jonathan hates me.

I decide at 9:45 – and I’m already in my pajamas – that I’m going to check into a motel and get my head straight, and that it’s good that I’m already in my pajamas because I won’t need a suitcase. Then I think it’s bad that I’m in my pajamas because then people will look at me funny. Like I’m crazy or something. In my pajamas with no suitcase.

In addition, it’s 15 degrees out, and the roads are icy. I text my friend Pat, tell her I’m going to check into a motel for the night.

In the meantime, another one of Jonathan’s caregivers Jenna calls me. I start sobbing, and in between crying, I keep apologizing for crying and telling her I just want to feel normal again. She tells me it’s okay and suggests that Jonathan may be asleep.

Why does everyone keep telling me that?

I text Jonathan, let him know I’m going to leave for a while. I text my friend Pat again, tell her I’ll just for a drive. In my pajamas when it’s 15 degrees out, and the roads are icy.

She texts back ALL IN CAPS, to please, please be careful. It’s icy.

I start crying again, decide I’ll go over to the casita myself and find the goddamn batteries. I can’t find my shoes, so I slip on a pair of Jonathan’s. (I wear a woman’s size 5 1/2; Jonathan wears a men’s 11.) The shoes flop off my feet as I stomp and slide all the way over to the casita. I pull the door open with a bang, hoping that I wake him up, if he is indeed asleep.

I stomp into the kitchen.

“Hey, baby,” he yells from the TV room.

When I don’t answer, he asks what’s wrong. I don’t answer, just keep rummaging through the drawers. Then he starts getting mad: “What’d I do?” he asks. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

Finally, I find the batteries.

“I needed 4 fucking batteries, Jonathan,” I finally say. “That’s all. Just four fucking batteries, and you couldn’t bring them to me?”

And I leave the casita, banging the door behind me, go back to the safe, change out the batteries. The safe still doesn’t work.

I call the locksmith back. If he comes out in the morning, he’ll charge only $88, but the safe will still be destroyed.

I tell him I’ll call in the morning.

Then Jonathan starts texting me: “Sure, Maureen, go ahead and leave. I’ll see you in court.”

He thinks my leaving means I’m divorcing him.

I go to bed, crying. My head isn’t working; my emotions are out of whack, and this – all of this, whatever ‘this’ is – is just too hard.

When I see the endocrinologist the next day – the doctor I thought would be able to help me get a handle on the Hashimoto’s – I start crying when she asks me how I am. She excuses herself, tells me she needs to check on another client, and will be right back.

When she returns, she tells me that my thyroid levels would not be causing the emotional and cognitive problems I’m having, and, although she is willing to prescribe a minute amount of Armour, a natural thyroid medication that can work at getting my Free T3s up, which may, indeed, make me feel better, she doesn’t want me taking it until I start working with an holistic psychiatrist, who doesn’t take insurance, so I wouldn’t be able to afford her anyway, and besides I don’t think I need her.

In my opinion, I have a physical problem that is causing the emotional and cognitive problems and not the other way around.

I leave her office and sob all the way home.

The upside of all this?

It has given a much greater appreciation for what Jonathan – and anyone with a severe mental illness – must experience:

First, I cannot “snap out of this.” What worked in the past – deep breathing, meditation, exercise – no longer works. The thyroid problem leaves me short of breath and although my yoga instructor has shown me how to get my breath more deeply into my belly, it is very difficult to do. Almost impossible. What I call ‘catching my breath’ rarely happens. I seem incapable of doing that any longer.

How does that correlate to what Jonathan and others who have a serious mental illness? I can’t count the times Jonathan has been told, either directly or indirectly, that he needed to “snap out of it,” or “man up,” or how much better he’d be if he’d just get up and get moving.

Yes, exercise helps. Absolutely. But when you’re sick and your mind isn’t working like others,’ it is nearly impossible to get up and get moving. It requires incredible effort.

And Jonathan, and others with a severe mental illness, will never be capable of “snapping out of it,” anymore than a person with cancer can “snap out of it.” Mental illness is just that – an illness. It affects the brain – the cognition, the emotion, even the ability to regulate one’s body temperature.

I’m not suggesting that I – or people who are actually mentally ill – should be allowed to behave inappropriately, as I was doing with the safe and as I did on Saturday when I knocked all my papers to the floor because the insurance company got my policy information wrong, but I am saying – and perhaps requesting – that people who are not mentally ill deal with those who are with compassion and with the understanding that those who suffer from severe mental illness – schizophrenia, schizoaffective or bipolar disorder – may actually be facing greater challenges than anyone realizes.

In addition, those with a severe mental illness are frequently dismissed by the medical profession, just as I was dismissed by my endocrinologist. It takes more than a medical degree for a person to be able to empathize with emotional distress. It’s been my experience that most people are uncomfortable with emotional pain – theirs and others. They want that pain to go away. Quickly. They want it controlled.

And sometimes the person in emotional pain, as I was when I saw my doctor, can’t make it go away, can’t get it under control.

I understand from what I’ve most recently been reading that the amygdala, in the brain helps us control our emotions, and the hippocampus helps us remember. Based on how I’m responding to the Hashimoto’s, I’m guessing – and I’m not an M.D. so this is strictly a guess – that the hormonal levels in a person’s body help keep the brain, including the amygdala and hippocampus healthy. When the hormones get out of whack – and my lab reports show they are out of whack – the brain doesn’t work right, and the person has what appears to be irrational fluctuations in emotion and can’t remember much of anything.

So, to put a positive spin on where I’ve been physically and emotionally since about mid-October, I have learned, through experience, greater empathy for Jonathan and for any others suffering from a severe mental illness.

If what they suffer is even half of what I have endured – and I’m pretty sure what they’ve suffered is at least double that of what I’ve endured – then I can assure you, first hand, that mental illness pretty much sucks.

So here’s to all of you who may be suffering a mental illness (or any untreated illness that is messing with your emotions and cognition):

I get it. I really truly get it.

Thank you to DiscoverySchool for the clipart.