An afternoon with Chip

Chip is Carol's husband. He is still grieving her loss. I had been remiss at visiting him more often. I think the last time I saw him, it was October, and we sat outside and chatted. I worry about him.

I had a weekend workshop with the school district on Brain Injuries. I drove home, had lunch and then at 3pm drove out to Tombstone to see him. Never wanting to arrive empty-handed, I stopped by PetSmart to get him some Iams Original, the catfood that Carol preferred feeding her cats. (I don't know why she fed that brand to her cats, it's not even decent kibble with all the corn meal in it!)

Chip now has a little MinPin he had adopted from the Huachuca City shelter. He named him Stan. That little dog is a little demon! The entire time I was talking to Chip, Stan barked at me. He was pissed that I was close to Chip. Even when Chip put him in another room, Stan barked incessantly. When I was in the same room as Stan, that dog would attack me from the rear, nipping at my pantsleeves. "Ankle biter" is an appropriate term for this dog!

Stan aside, talking with Chip made me realize how lonely he is. He's holding up OK, but he told me repeatedly "If it weren't for the cats, I would have killed myself a long time ago." Those words haunted me all night long, that I couldn't sleep at all. Memories of Carol, her raspy voice (and that smoke-filled cough that ultimately was the first sign of her lung cancer) and her softness for cats came back to me.

Chip wanted me to take photos of her grave. Carol was cremated and her remains buried in the backyard, where her many other former cats and kittens, some whom she tried saving from the Tombstone Animal shelter, are also buried. A statue of an angle holding a goose is above her. Next to that, a happy cow. No other markers are here.

Driving back home was depressing to me, especially since one of the prettier sunsets broke out as I drove southwest on Charleston Road. I worry about Chip, but today I realized that it's not that I don't want to see him anymore, it's the intense sadness that overcomes me when I leave his house. Carol did not get the quality care she should have gotten when she was treated at the Tucson Medical Center. Doctors wrote her off as a warm body that will pay them their bills, and kept her alive solely for that reason. I just hope I don't get the same treatment when I reach the end of my life.