We're not in Kansas Anymore, Toto.

Reservoir Dogs.

A couple weeks ago I was delivering Drew to a boy scout campout, early on Saturday morning. I got lost, despite having a GPS in the car, because the other scout dads with which I had chatted that morning before we all took off in our own cars said "Oh, just go to La Cygne. It's not that big. Then turn right at State Line, or something? Its right there.

I should have known, right then, that I was in trouble. Also, the lat/long listed on the website for this location was wrong, and had too many digits. Again, a sign I should have heeded. But no, I am adventurous mom! So I just took off driving for La Cygne and figured I'd find it.

Yeah. Not so much.

After finally getting a hold of a dad with a clue and an internal GPS chip in his phone who could text me the lat/long of his exact location for the love of God, We started down the right highway. For the record, the place we were looking for isn't actually in La Cygne, Kansas, or anywhere really near it. It's actually in Missouri. That would have been helpful.

 

As I turned off of highway 69 onto 52 toward Amoret, I saw traffic stopped up ahead, and what looked like a black calf running down the middle of the road. No kidding, I thought it was a baby cow. As I got closer I realized it was a dog. A very big one. Being who I am, and if you've ever read my Facebook profile you already know this part, I pulled over.

 

Drew sighed and said, "you're going to put that dog in the truck with us, aren't you, mom?"

"Yup. Get the extra collar out from under the seat."

I stepped out of my truck, clapped my hands together and said, "Come here, baby." He galloped up to me and put his face in my hands and tried to walk between my legs. He was trying to get into my lap, while I was standing.

He was hungry and muddy and cold, it had been raining lightly for a while and was cold the night before. But his toenails were trimmed and his coat was glossy, this was a well cared for dog. I didn't really know what I was going to do with him, but I wasn't going to leave him running along that highway looking for someone to take him in. I opened the hatch of my truck, tapped the floor with my hand, and he jumped in without any more encouragement.

We went on to drop off Drew at the scout campout. Boy Scouts apparently love a good dog rescue story. Somebody pulled a pan of leftover scrambled eggs out of the trash, and the dog ate it all in about a minute. And then he laid down at my feet, and rested. The boys named him Scout.

Here's the thing. As I pulled over on the side of the highway it hit me. This is why I was lost - I was supposed to find this dog. If I had been on the right route and not wasted an hour finding my way, I would have missed him.

God speaks to me in tiny epiphanies. I haven't heard much from him lately, what with leaving my job at the church and the drama that went down as part of that (which I will not be discussing here, but trust me, there was drama.) When my grandmother died and we went to Springfield for her funeral and visited with family, I heard nothing. But for some reason that Saturday on the side of a country highway, I got the message, loud and clear.

I brought him back to Kansas City with me, unsure if I was doing him any favors. I've talked to some vets down in that area and a local rescue organization in Louisburg. He had no collar, and wasn't microchipped. People, listen to me. MICROCHIP YOUR PETS. It's easy, it's relatively cheap (we paid $45 for Max when he was a puppy, and they did it while he was under anesthesia to be fixed so he didn't even know.) Some rescue groups even do it for free.

Speaking of Max, when I introduced him to my new friend, they sniffed each other for a few minutes and then settled down together under the kitchen table, at my feet. Uh, yeah, I'd say he's comfy with other dogs.

We've been calling him Bear, because he's as big as a black bear. Remember, when I first saw him I thought it was a calf running down the road. He is not a petite animal. He's kind of an oaf. But a sweet, very loving one. But he needs a home. He's being fostered for the time being by my brother, but they've discovered he needs a much bigger house and probably is used to running on some land. He needs more space. He needs somebody who likes big dogs, and who knows how to handle them. He needs somebody who wants and 80 lb. lapdog, but can let him run outside. He's not very graceful around breakable things (the tail, it wags hard enough to knock the remote off the coffee table.) With kids, he pretty much just rolls over so they can climb on top of him and rub his tummy. If this dog were to hurt someone, it would be out of a total lack of awareness of size and strength.

I was supposed to save this guy for a reason. I just don't know what it is yet.

 

Remember Jackie, what I told you.

My parents are those odd people who like to look around in cemeteries. Sometimes they are looking for ancestors as my mom is very into genealogy, and sometimes they just like to putter around in quaint little cemeteries in forgotten little towns. Recently, my dad came across a tombstone in one of these little places that intrigued him. Hell, it intrigues me. It was a tombstone of a woman, and under the name and the dates was inscribed: 

Remember Jackie, what I told you.

Now I don't know about you, but that is the kind of thing that blows my mind. The randomness of it - who is Jackie? What did she tell her? Why did Jackie need to be reminded of something so much that this woman had it engraved on a tombstone? Think about it - she needed Jackie to remember. Was it tangible, like - here's where the money is hidden? Or was it more emotional, like -Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get?

Did Jackie even ever see it?

I bet she did. And I bet she remembered. I bet it was stamped on her brain, just like it was stamped on that piece of granite. Never, ever forget. It was that important.

****************************

My grandmother died last night, after 10 days at Hospice House of Kansas City, an amazing facility, with amazing nurses and caring people. 

This past June, a week before I left for San Diego, she was diagnosed with tumors in her lungs, a recurrence of the breast cancer that had metastasized. She'd had mammagrams every six months for the last eleven years, and they all came back clean. Suddenly one day she can't catch her breath very well, and it's because there's no space to pull air into the lung, a tumor is in the way. She didn't want to fight it. She was a nurse, after all, she knew better than any of us that at 94, the treatment would kill her anyway, and rob her of what she had left. No.

Eleven years ago, as I was about to deliver my first child, my grandmother was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was 83. She'd found a lump, which turned out to be a swollen lymph node, which was surgically removed and then she did radiation for six weeks, "as a precaution" the doctors said. Really nothing major.

While she was going through radiation therapy, her husband (my grandfather) was dying in hospice. She'd been nursing him herself until she couldn't lift him, and then hospice came in. And then she was diagnosed with cancer herself, and he had to be moved to a hospital against his will so that she could come to Kansas City and be treated. It was rough.

Anyway, he was dying, she was taking radiation, and come that July, I had a brand new baby I didn't know what to do with. Everybody needed a lot of attention.  It was a very stressful time for my mom and dad. But my mom had a solution. So for that first week I was home by myself after my husband went back to work, my mother would deliver grandma to my house after her radiation treatments, and she would hang out with me and the baby for a few hours. I needed the company, she needed to feel needed, and my mom needed a break for a while. Everybody wins!

Together, my grandmother and I were like one whole person caring for this tiny baby. I had lost a lot of blood in delivery and was severely anemic, barely able to move from one room to the next without sitting down to rest. She was tired and weak from the radiation therapy. But together, we could make it work. We sat and talked, we took turns feeding and burping him, and she helped me smear vaseline on all his various parts that needed it. We giggled about how hard it was for either of us to even lift him out of his crib. We were silly together. It was really a nice time.

When Drew was three weeks old, my grandfather died. At the graveside, she sat in her little folding chair with her head held high while the preacher talked. At the end, my dad said quietly, "Mom, are you ready to go?" She said, "I've taken him as far as I could take him. I've done what I promised I would do. I believe I'm ready to go now."

She spent a few more years living alone in the house they built with their retirement money down at Truman Lake, outside of Warsaw. But then she had a bad fall, and nobody could hear her crying out for help. It scared us all. After she recovered from (miraculously) just a couple of  broken ribs and collarbone, she decided it was time to move to the city and be near my parents. She moved to an assisted living complex in Leawood, and instantly made new friends, played bridge three times a week and got her hair and nails done regularly. In short, she loved it.

Last year when she fell (she was totally pushed) and broke her shoulder, I got to spend time with her again while she stayed a a rehab nursing facility near my house. Nearly every morning I stopped by to visit on my way to work, even if it was just for a few minutes. I treasured those minutes, and so did she. It was a chance for me to step out of how crazy and busy my life was, and just visit pleasantly about the weather, the kids, whatever. It was a chance for me to catch my breath before going onto the next thing. For her, it was attention and company she needed, and someone who could help her with difficult things like putting new batteries in her hearing aides and fitting them into her ear that she couldn't reach. We needed each other then, again.

She doesn't need me anymore. She doesn't need anything. She's got her husband back.

She told me, back when we were caring for that tiny baby who is now my middle schooler, "Do you ever get blue? It's okay to feel blue, lots of new moms do. You need to know that it's okay to feel that way, and that it goes away."

She needed me to know that. She had felt it herself. Here she was, sick and weak and missing out on her husband's decline, and she was worried about me. She was probably feeling it then, so helpless and out of control of all these different situations. But it was tangible, how important it was to her that I know that feeling depressed was part of the post-partem process, and that if I felt down enough to be bothered by it, I could talk to her about it. It was stamped on my brain. She understood, and it would all be okay.

I still remember what she told me. I always will.