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David McElroy

making sense of a dysfunctional culture

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Goodbye, Anne (2009-2019)

By David McElroy · July 11, 2019

On June 23, 2009, Molly gave birth to four kittens. They were tiny and always seemed sickly. Sometime Thursday, the last one of them died. Anne was the only one to make it to 10 years old.

A couple of weeks after their birth, one of the kittens died without an explanation, but three of them lived to become Charlotte, Emily and Anne. They loved to sleep on books, so they were named for the writing Brontë sisters.

In 2015, Emily became the first of the sisters to die, with no explanation. In 2016, Charlotte died, too, again with no warning or explanation. Their remaining sister, Anne, died while I was gone to work today. She seemed perfectly fine this morning, but she was cold and still when I arrived home.

There seems to have been something tragic in the genes of that family, because their Aunt Bessie — named for my own Great Aunt Bessie — died without explanation or warning last year.

When the four kittens were born, I tried to find homes for them, but there were no takers. Before long, I had become too attached to give them up even if someone had wanted to adopt one of them.

Emily was the social one of the family. Charlotte and Anne never wanted to be picked up or touched — much like their formerly feral mother — but Emily wanted touch. She slept on me every night of her short life and she constantly wanted my attention.

When Molly’s sister, Bessie, died last year, I took comfort from the fact that she still had her one remaining daughter. They have continued to spend a lot of time together. I know they don’t have a rational understanding of their relationship the way you might have with your daughter or son, but I think there’s a biological attachment that remains intact. You can see a typical recent picture of them together below.

The only bad thing about living with furry friends and getting attached to them is the almost certainty of outliving them. When you accept them into your life, you know that each one will leave you at some point — and that he or she will take a special little piece of your heart when that happens.

Most of my cats and dogs have lived much longer lives than these little sisters and their lovely Aunt Bessie, but I’ve gone through a lot of grief from watching them die over the years. Even knowing the hurt their loss causes, though, I still believe the attachment and effort are all worth it for the love and connection which come in return.

For the last year or so, it’s Dagny who I’ve been concerned about. She’s 15 and she has been seeming frail, so I feared I would lose her next. I never dreamed that I was about to lose Anne, because she was the youngest remaining member of their group.

I’ll miss you, tiny Anne. I think your mother Molly will miss you, too. Thank you for giving us 10 years of joy in your short life. It wasn’t long enough.

Addendum: One of the most interesting parts of being human is how we reinterpret events to see narratives of one sort or another after we become aware of something hidden. Following Anne’s death today, I’ve found myself thinking about a couple of things she did in the last few days — things which made me happy, but which I now see in different ways.

Once this past weekend and then again on Wednesday, Anne let me pick her up and rub her head and back. She has occasionally tolerated that in the past, but she’s never seemed to enjoy it. Especially on Wednesday — when I found her lying on my bed and I picked her up — she seemed to relax into the attention and enjoy it. I’ll never know why, of course, but a part of me wonders if some part of her needed comforting as she experienced her final days of life.

Whether it was coincidence or some need on her part, I will always appreciate that she allowed me that time with her at the end which had been so difficult for her to allow for the 10 years of her life.

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At sunset Tuesday evening, the cloud cover over me At sunset Tuesday evening, the cloud cover over me was solidly gray and black, but one tiny break in the clouds appeared just for a few minutes to show a little bit of sunset’s colorful light. #nature #naturephotography #sky #colorful #clouds #sunset #birmingham #alabama
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I don’t have the right lens to photograph the mo I don’t have the right lens to photograph the moon properly, but there are some nights when I try anyway. The longest lens I have goes to 240mm, which means I have to enlarge a tiny part of the frame way too much. But even if I had the right lens, I’m not sure I’ve figured out how to expose the moon decently while still showing some stars around it. Tonight’s attempt has given me a grainy moon and pinpricks of stars that become invisible when viewed at normal size. (Blow this up with your fingers in the app and you can see the tiny stars.) I really want to learn how to do this better, so if anyone has tips for me, I’d be happy to hear them. #nature #naturephotography #sky #moon
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On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

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Have you ever had what you thought was a new idea — and then discovered that “old you” had the same idea years ago? I had that experience tonight. And it’s been wonderful. I came up with an idea tonight for a very short satirical film that would be a promotion for a fictitious college. The point is to make the college promote — as good things — everything which is actually terrible about most modern colleges. Then I remembered a fake college that I invented back when I was in college. I had created student recruitment brochures and various newsletters back then, so I decided to call my “new” college by the same name I’d invented years ago: Ochita College. As I searched my computer for any old material I might still have about Ochita from the past, I discovered an email I sent to someone in 2009 — outlining essentially the same idea which I came up with tonight. Since I didn’t remember writing that, it felt like magic. So my next film project just might be this one instead. If all goes well, you might soon see “Ochita College: Your Future Starts Here.” This should be fun.

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