Nizzibet and I have been together now for 18 years. During that time we’ve each been, at least, half a dozen different people. We’ve grown. We’ve changed. We’ve given each other the silent treatment. We’ve said too much. We’ve danced. We’ve made art. We’ve made family and expanded it. We’ve been each other’s cheerleaders. We have made a home in each other where the doors are always open and a warm fire is always burning.
Happy Anniversary to my favorite Mouse.
Trisha Smith Creekmore passed away on October 18th, 2012 at 8:25 am.
I’m thankful that she and her husband, David, were so open and sharing about their lives and her illness. I know from my own experience that, during troubled times, it’s important to let people know about the trouble. We’re social animals. We need company in both good times and bad times. In the 21st century, some of that company comes via the internet. It doesn’t replace spending time in person but it can add to it.
Through their posts and more direct Facebook exchanges I got to know a person who could have remained just an old memory. I got to know a living, amazing person. That was priceless.
Above videos by David Creekmoore.
I posted this cartoon for Trish on Facebook with the caption: Heaven Can Wait. Unlike Trish, I don’t have cool taste in music but apparently the caption was appropriate. Iron Maiden, a band that she liked, had a song by the same title.
When I was a senior in high school I made an effort to give a card and, often, a rose to every girl I knew on her birthday. I drew the cards myself. The rose was usually stolen from out of a yard somewhere in our town of Sebastopol.
I don’t remember what I drew for Trish’s card. I do remember the look that Trish gave me when I handed her the card and the rose. I can’t tell you what the look meant. It looked to me like a mixture of curiosity, disbelief and appreciation but I really have no idea. Like I said, we ran in different social circles. We didn’t hang out or have conversations. She said thank you. I said you’re welcome.
Trish was born October 6th, 1964. I wanted to do a special illustration for her birthday this year but I didn’t think it was smart to wait until her birthday to deliver it. She was in hospice card and had been given a limited time to live. I posted this cartoon on Facebook on October 3rd, 2012.
Brave. Loyal. Stoic. Cool. Adventurous. Irreverent.
Trish loved cool shoes. And travel.
Trish loved the ocean.
While I was in Colorado, I got the news that Trisha Creekmore was no longer able to get treatment for her cancer. I’d known Trish, as Trish Smith, since 7th grade but we hadn’t run in the same social circles. The most interaction we’d had in high school had been when we were in dance class and in theater productions. I started catching up with her when she friended me on Facebook in 2009. For an outline of who she was, please read her husband’s eulogy of her.
I wanted to do something for Trish. Sending flowers seemed redundant. I was pretty sure she was getting enough of those. A drawing however, some kind of cartoon, that I could do. This was the first of a series of cartoons that I drew and posted to Trish’s Facebook account. One of the things that Trish had wanted to do before she passed was to swim with a whale shark. I’d first thought to draw a depiction of that but then I thought, “Why stick with the possible?” Trish was going so she might as well go big.
I didn’t hear what Trish, herself, thought of the cartoons. I didn’t expect to. I hope that, if she saw them, that she got some amusement out of them. I do know that they gave her husband comfort. After Trish passed away he asked me to send them to him. I gladly did so.
The fox was waiting at the side of the road. We were no more than a mile from her house. Just seeing it standing there, in full morning light, seemed like a bad omen. My first thought was, “This isn’t good news.”
Then, “She’s not coming home from this.”
I stopped the car and waited to see what the fox would do. It hesitated, then, slowly, crossed the road in front of the car.
I don’t believe in omens. I don’t believe in signs or portents. The fox was just an animal, a small carnivore, moving from one side of an open space to another. I do have an imagination and an active brain. Brains make thoughts like a heart pumps blood or the lungs draw in air. My brain made thoughts. Her lungs were laboring. She’d needed extra oxygen for months. I said nothing about my thoughts. That would have been rude. That would have been saying that she could not beat this. That would have been telling her that I had given up. I hadn’t given up.
It was a Friday. We went to Denver for what we thought would be a simple procedure: draining fluid from her chest cavity. There were x-rays and a CAT scan. Fluid was drained, less fluid than had been removed only four days before. The process took longer.
The doctors said, “Either the cancer medicine has caused your lungs to be inflamed or the tumors have spread. Either way, that means that the cancer medicine is ineffective. We have no other treatments available.”
We stayed in the hospital through the weekend while the social workers made arrangements for her to have hospice care. On Monday we were told that she could be moved to a hospital in Woodland Park, nearer to her home, until the necessary equipment was set up. Her husband was told that the necessary equipment didn’t exist and that she would be staying at the hospital. That was unacceptable. He called the oxygen suppliers, the hospices, the administrators, the ambulances, anyone he needed to.
On Tuesday an ambulance brought her home to Divide.
Her friends came by, singly and in groups. They invited her to a movie night at a friend’s on Friday. It was suggested that the movie night occur at her house instead.
By Friday it seemed likely that she wouldn’t have the attention to watch a movie but we decided to have the gathering anyway. She loved parties. She loved her friends. Her mother and sister arrived from California and Hawaii that night.
At about 2 am on Saturday morning, her husband woke me up. Her oxygen levels had dropped. He’d turned up the oxygen flow but it wasn’t making any difference. We did our best to make her comfortable. He woke the rest of the family.
She passed away a little before 4 am. I noticed the time on the clock of the stove as I went into the kitchen to get a glass of water. I thought, “I should remember the time. Someone is going to want to know.”
Brains make thoughts.
We called the friends and family that we felt needed to know immediately. We waited until after the sun came up to call anyone else. People started arriving about an hour later. Friends who had been there the night before came to cry and clean and organize and to just be available. The hospice nurse came to fill out the official paperwork and start the necessary wheels turning. The nurse asked when she had passed. The nurse asked why we hadn’t called at 4 am. I thought, “Why the fuck would we? She asked me to be sure that she was gone before anyone came for her body.” I said, “We wanted to wait until dawn. It seemed like what she would have wanted.”
A memorial celebration was held on the following Thursday. Her friends and neighbors dressed in tie-dye, cooked favorite dishes and filled a community center. As the night wound down, some of us even danced.
The next evening, the Friday two weeks after we had gone to the hospital for the last time, I drove her older son to a football game in Woodland Park so he could videotape it. He slept for most of the drive.
I drove back to the house alone. Her son would call when he was finished so that someone could come and pick him up. It was the first time I’d driven the car since taking her to the hospital.
Her ghost rode with me all the way back.
I didn’t say anything. I hadn’t expected her to be there. I hadn’t been prepared for the presence of her absence.
I don’t believe in ghosts. I didn’t see one on that drive. I kept my eyes on the road. The brain makes thoughts and serves up memories and then we make meaning out of them.
Two hours later, when I drove back to pick up her son, I expected her to be there. It felt comforting. And sad. So very sad. She’d been a part of my life for thirty-six years. We’d known each other for three quarters of our lives.
Saturday night I drove her boys to a late Halloween party. They were to call me to pick them up when the party ran down. They’d been going to school, doing their homework, mostly living life as they had before she’d passed. Kids do that.
The party was close to the house so drive back was shorter than it had been the night before. She was laughing. She was happy. I told her that her kids were going to be alright. I told her that her husband would be alright eventually. I told her that I missed her. She laughed.
Three hours later, when I headed back to pick up the boys, I looked, really looked at the passenger seat for the first time. I looked directly instead of via my peripheral vision. It made me nervous to do that. I don’t like taking my eyes off the road. It drives me crazy when driver characters in movies spent long minutes talking to their passengers and not looking at what’s ahead of them. I think, “In real life, you’d be driving into a telephone pole or over pedestrians. You’re an idiot.”
The seat was empty.
That Monday, her husband drove me to the airport in Colorado Springs. I’d been in Colorado for most of three months. We stopped briefly at the offices of a propane supplier, located at the head of the road to her house, so that her husband could pay a bill. As we pulled into the parking lot, her husband pointed out a roadkill a short distance from the driveway.
It was a fox.
I could not think what that might mean.
Final colors. And this is also my last post for a little while. My computer access is limited and I don’t have a good scanner available. But I shall return!
