Catching the Echoes - An observation About Love, Loss and Memory

I have owned Burmese cats for years, starting in 1980.  They are a lively, affectionate, intuitive and very smart breed.  Burmese originated in and around Thailand and Myanmar, and spent centuries hanging around people - generally in temples.

Merlin and Morgan

My first two Burmese cats were a pair of brothers named Merlin and Morgan. They were supposed to live to their mid-twenties. Or so I thought. I did wake up when they were fifteen and realized that they were old, but they were with me, they were fairly healthy, though the one boy's kidneys were iffy, and we would all continue as we were, unchanging. Or so I thought.  The first one died in my arms of a heart attack on August 28, 1996.  I was stunned.  His brother died one month later to the day of kidney failure secondary to a severe hantavirus that his old body survived, but which threw him into a decline. I hadn't wanted him to go, but I had realized that I was fighting against his best good, and I told him that I wouldn't insist on his living and would let him go if that was what he wanted.  It was.

Merlin

There is no 'back to the drawing board' when love has touched you.  Whether you believe in forever or not, the very fact that your life has intersected and run together with another's has changed you. You are not the person you were before you came to love the one who has departed. You have an altered perspective, you have a part of you that grew in response to that other one. You have a way you would respond to the other's voice, jokes, antics, love. You can't go back to what you were before you loved the other.

But life does go on, and grief must be dealt with and resolved in one way or another. I didn't expect to 'replace' my boys, but I needed to have pets in their places, so Boomer and BJ came to me. Boomer is a Burmese. BJ's father was a Burmese (a particularly nice one!), so though he's a Bombay and black, he looks, through the face, like my first Burmese. That is when I encountered the echoes. 

Dad

I started catching hints, sometimes faint, sometimes very strong, of my old boys.  A way one of the kittens reacted to being stroked. A way of tilting the head.  Finding one curled up on a pillow and raising its head to blink at me in a familiar way.  The sound of a voice.  It was not as though the lost ones had come back as those two kittens, but as though, somehow, I was given back the part of me that had loved them. As though I had been given a chance to re-live their kittenhood, to revisit memories I had forgotten in the rush of the years, to have the hurts, the sad memories somehow smoothed away, and the memories of the young, strong, lively ones returned to me, fresh and clear, unspoiled.

I have experienced this with all lost loves, memories that touch my shoulder and remind me that love still exists in me.  I recently opened a book and found a folded slip of paper with a note from my father saying that he believed in me, and enclosing a check to 'keep the wolves from the door'.  Driving through Vermont one autumn afternoon, seeing a hillside with a familiar slant behind a yellow house...  My grandparents' old house, which they sold decades ago, now repainted.  Landmarks had changed, but I remembered.

Those memories, touching our experiences, are a part of us, a reminder.   Something to be embraced.

IWSG for January, 2018 - Plans and Dreams

This is the January entry for The Insecure Writer's Support Group Blog Hop.

The hop takes place on the first Wednesday of every month.  All are welcome to sign up and participate, and visit the blogs of the other participants.  

The co-hosts for the January 3 posting of the IWSG are Tyrean Martinson, Ellen @ The Cynical Sailor, Megan Morgan, Jennifer Lane, and Rachna Chhabria Go visit their blogs!

The question for January's blog hop is: 

What steps have you taken or plan to take to put a schedule in place for your writing and publishing?

Tempus Fugit...if you haven't noticed.

Speaking as a writer who had not written anything substantive or published anything at all in three years for a lot of very good reasons (there: I've said it!), even thinking of writing was a step in the right direction. But that was only the first step. 

I read a man's blog where he mentioned an app that reminded him to write 1,000 words per day. It was on his iPhone, he couldn't avoid seeing it, and it was a nice reminder for him. I sat back, blinking. That was what I needed! A reminder, rather like getting jabbed in the ribs with a thumb, rather than a rather muzzy, wistful 'Gee, I should really be writing...' thought I.

I went hunting for the app and discovered that it is an older one and unavailable right now. Apparently it is not mainstream and is undergoing an overhaul.

After some searching, I found a similar one for iTunes: Momentum Habit Tracker.  

I have set it to remind me to (1) write 1,000 words per day; (2) READ (amazing how you can stagnate if you don't read other peoples' work...), and SCOOP (my cats' litter box).  Hey, what's good for writing is good for cleaning.  It also offers to 'discuss' any issues with you.  I haven't taken it up on that offer just yet, since I am not sure how to address  my iPhone.  I'm sure I will learn.

So far, so good.  I get pinged around 8pm if I haven't set up my writing time.  Or reading time, or scooping time.  I've enjoyed getting reacquainted with other writers like Georgette Heyer and Tolkien.

Once writing, I have to keep up with it.  There is a nice (?) little app called 'Write or Die' (by Dr. Wicked), which I encountered during NaNoWriMo:

Write or Die by Dr. Wicked

This is the dashboard.  You set the time (in this case, 60 minutes) and the output (1,515 words in this case - attainable).  You can select the screen background - white works for me - and any deterrents or incentives that will keep your nose to the grindstone.

There are levels of motivation,  including one where the program starts erasing what you have written if you don't write fast enough to suit it.  This was a little too harsh for me, so I selected different motivations and rewards. 

If a certain amount of time passes with no output (I selected two minutes), an alarm sounds and I am treated, so to speak, with an alarming image - in this case, it is Grumpy Cat, superimposed on my typing and scowling at me.  It is hard to be alarmed and buckle down to slave at the keyboard while laughing like a fool, but it does help.  The beep is more effective than Grumpy Cat's scowl, but the grin is helpful at any rate.

If you manage to meet your goal, you are treated to a rewarding image.  I chose a cute puppy wearing a birthday hat, which appears behind the text that I have typed after I have reached my goal.  If I am cooking along at a great rate, it is a little startling to see that I am scattering text over the face of a cute puppy in a party hat, but it makes me laugh and continue typing.

Have I written every day?  Well, no.  But I'm reading more and writing more and thinking more and jotting more, and the cause of the blockage, a combination of work, eldercare, health issues and exhaustion, is now beginning to crumble.  The momentum is back, and while it may be a bit of a struggle, I am going to commit to having my most urgent WIP, an eagerly awaited (by my readers, at least) installment in my Egyptian series, in a state to be published by September.  I can do it.  Besides, I don't want to have Grumpy Cat mad at me.  

I know that cat is SOMEWHERE!

How about yourself?  Do you need to do something to get going?  It's a common problem, and not just with writing.

Read the other entries in this hop and see what they say - I will be reading them, too!