Nocturnal Beasts

There was a time when I imagined myself nocturnal. It was an image that went well with writing: the gaunt and haggard scribe throwing candle shadows all over the walls while the rest of the world wasted their lives with Mr. Sandman. I had sharp teeth and my eyes burnt through walls.

You can only hold on to a fantasy like that for so long. Especially when you really love sleep. I love sleep. I love everything having to do with sleep: beds, pillows, sheets, darkness, lullabies. I once thought I would make a good midwife. Then I realized that midwives lose a lot of sleep. I once had a bed that I used to fantasize about during the day.

I am not nocturnal, but my friend Frank is. She was born for sleeping most of the day. And most of the night. The rest of the time, she attempts to fulfill her destiny as a hunter. Birds, mostly, but mayflies, moths and dragonflies will do.

Or me and a full night of sleep.

All through the winter, she has been my hot water bottle, my heart warmer, irresistible when she climbs under the covers and stretches out with her back against my belly. Compared to her sisters-huntresses, Taz and April, Frank has been angelic. Where Taz has been short tempered and quick-clawed, Frank's been tolerant, a balm, a bean bag. Where April has been demanding and cranky, Frank's been generous and serene. A buddha with black fur and golden bedroom eyes.

Now it's Spring and the other night my sweet bunny became my evil nemesis. Or was it this morning that I woke to the sound of claws on wood, a sound that struck deep to my marrow. At first, I thought it was a wild animal clawing at the side of the house, then perhaps an animal accidentally locked into a bedroom. Then, I realized it was Frank, on her back under the bed, propelling herself from top to bottom and side to side with her claws. I grabbed her as she slid across the carpet with the grace of an ice skater. I pulled her up onto the bed, where I was fully awake. She was panting and joy poured off her in a halo of shed hair. As soon as I fell back to sleep, she returned to her gleeful gliding.

So yes, I sought revenge, waking her every time I caught her stretched out in a spot of sun, singing into her twitching ears that song "Are you sleeping, are you sleeping, French word, French word, French word...?" But I couldn't match the delirious giddiness with which she had interrupted my already patchy sleep.

Last night I had the best night of sleep I've had in a long long time. When I woke up, Frank was wide awake beside my head.

Singing

Requiem for your Toes

Lately it feels as if I've only just begun to grieve his loss. It's amazing how long it takes to really get it that he's gone. Denial is such a precious gift sometimes. I don't pretend to know how it works. Perhaps some unconvinceable part of my brain holds onto the idea that he's going to come back, that it's impossible that he's gone, that this can't be. While I've absorbed the common knowledge that we live and we die, that none of us is going to be around forever, that our days are numbered, there is this surprise I did not expect. Two years later, it hurts worse. Two years later, I still think "This can't be."
It is. Two years ago yesterday, Daniel Glen Mills, my little brother, died of pancreatic cancer. Two years ago tomorrow, I flew into Salt Lake City, where my sister-in-law picked me up at the airport, then we drove from store to store buying stacks of newspapers (containing his obit). Later that afternoon, we went to the funeral home, where we bathed him and dressed him in his burial clothes (he was Mormon and they get dressed up in white). I remember his toes, white and cold and beloved.
So, I know he's dead. I saw his body. I touched his body. He wasn't there anymore.
When he was there, he was amazing. Everyone he ever loved knew themselves to be loved. He had a way of surprising you with his sense of humor. And he laughed along as if he'd surprised himself. He made me laugh every time I saw him. He made strangers laugh. He had a straight face and a fiendish delight in life. He was a Mormon, but he was not what most would expect from a Mormon.
When he first converted, I was living with Diane, my partner at that time. He wrote me a letter saying he wanted me to know that his converting to Mormonism didn't change any of his feelings about me or Diane, despite his new church's stance on homosexuality. We were, and always would be, family. He said he didn't believe that god left anyone out of his love and he refused to let the church's narrowness limit his heart. He and Al continued to visit us and to make us part of their family.
Daniel had a heart I strive towards: big, inclusive, tender, fiercely loyal, stubborn. He knew more about love as a verb than anyone I've known so far. He screwed up as much as the rest of us. He left his wife for another woman when their youngest was six months old. And he came back. When he was 20, he went to prison in South Carolina for two years for having sex with a 13-year-old. Right before then, he married and fathered a daughter who was then taken away from him. He could be a self-righteous asshole. He liked to argue. He liked to be right. He was a terrible driver.
He'd been sick for four years before he was diagnosed. He'd gone to urgent care over and over with excruciating back and stomach pain. They didn't find anything. Right before they discovered the cancer, a doctor told him he wasn't going to get anymore pain medication from him because he thought Daniel was working him. He was diagnosed the week after he graduated from college with his degree in systems design. He was already enrolled in a master's program. He was 37 years old.
I already knew that life is not fair.
I just had no idea how much I would miss him. And for how long.

At a Loss for Words

It's not that I haven't had anything to say.
Who knows where these gaps come from in the life of a writer. What I've learned in my 40 years as a writer (I won a poetry contest when I was 12, but I started writing when I was eight.) is that I always stop and I always come back. It used to scare me. Maybe it still does.
Some call if writer's block, but I could have written if I'd really wanted to. For me it is more like a momentary lapse in ambition, or maybe just pure laziness. Lately, I've preferred reading others' writing. I've been devouring books with a ferocious appetite: six in the past month.
Or maybe I have too much to say and I lose the ability to gather it up in my arms and work it into something I can handle. So I just let it all roll around until it's compacted enough to pick up again.
When I've thought about writing in the past month, this is what I've thought of: Daniel, who on April 4, will be two years dead; the temporary nature of feeling good; sex without estrogen; Daniel; the hike Dan and George and I took at Big Basin; Daniel; sleep and lack of it; living as if I have 20 years; and Daniel.
I'm not quite ready to write about Daniel. I still have a bunch more crying to do about that.
But I am ready to write again.