is a blog by Brendan
For the first time, I can say that I’ve posted a year’s worth of Anacrusis without skipping a single day. It would have been much sooner but for the two days I missed before last year’s Worst Christmas Ever.
Christmas was much better this year, but we all missed Joe.
He was a canine Houdini, absolutely brilliant at escaping whatever fences, gates or other barriers we could set up to keep him safe. He was brick-stupid about everything else: glass doors, bigger dogs, cars. Those two things in combination don’t make for a long life expectancy; it’s kind of surprising that he lived to be eleven.
Pookie was always nominally my dog, although Ian took care of him more often, and after we moved out he was really my mom’s. She found him, Friday afternoon, on the wrong side of the fence around Kelly Ridge. There wasn’t any real evidence of what exactly happened. Could have been a car, or another dog, or some unknown medical problem.
He was a shih tzu, the kind you see like little furry hovercraft on shows: glossy, legless, gliding. Pookie never looked like that. His fur was short, tangled and dirty; he smelled like a dog. He lived outdoors, and always seemed satisfied with that.
After Mom sold the house, Pookie spent much more time with Joe and his giant antisocial dog, Greg Brown, out on the ridge. I don’t know how Greg and Pookie first behaved around each other, but by the time I saw them together they were inseparable. Pookie was already nine, but he acted like a dog finally growing up: his body got thicker and more muscular, and he seemed more reserved, less goofy. Greg never let anyone he didn’t trust near his protege.
When he was wet he looked like a rat, but when his hair was just the right length he looked like those Chinese statues of lions. I’ve never met anyone more confident, or more trusting, or who spent his entire life in such a happy mood.
In addition to Caitlan’s car, which (after its acrobatics last Wednesday) is totalled, Ian’s car is now a danger to drive; he’ll probably have to sell it for parts. Regarding Mom’s van, the mechanic told her to keep driving it for what time it had left, then leave it wherever it broke down.
Jon and Amanda, on their way to Tennessee for Christmas, skidded on ice and ran head-on into a truck. They’re okay, but the car is gone, and Amanda’s collarbone is broken.
It has been a bad December for cars, and for my family; but I am shaken by how much worse it could have been.
A year ago I was writing about the earthquake in Bam. I thought an earthquake death toll of around 50,000 was the worst I’d see in my lifetime. I was wrong, of course.
Update 2330 hrs: And my grandparents flipped their truck on ice on their way to Florida for Christmas. They are also miraculously okay, and also currently without transportation.
Joe died very early Wednesday morning, in his sleep. The first report from his autopsy hasn’t established a certain cause of death; his heart was greatly enlarged, and he had a little cardiovascular disease, but was otherwise healthy. They’ve established that it wasn’t a heart attack, a stroke or an aneurysm. His sister Laura, a nurse who specialized in cardio, believes it was a rhythmic irregularity that could not have been predicted: he had no risk factors except that he was a male in his fifties with some family history of heart disease.
Ian, Caitlan and I are here in Richmond with my mom now, staying nights at Joe’s house near Lancaster to take care of the dogs and keep the fire going (it’s heated with wood). Caitlan flipped her car twice on the way to see Mom that morning; the car is probably junk, but Caitlan is okay aside from some whiplash. She’s attempting to incorporate her neck brace into various turtleneck ensembles.
Weather and other delays have moved things to after Christmas. The visitation will be at Spurlin Funeral Home in Lancaster from 3-8 pm on Sunday the 26th. The funeral will also be at the home, at 10 am on Monday the 27th. After the funeral we’ll proceed to Blue Bank Farm in Casey County, where Joe will be buried in our family cemetery, next to my father and my mother’s father.
Thanks to everyone who has sent condolences and well-wishes. I appreciate all your words; I don’t have time to answer you individually right now, but your kind thoughts mean a great deal to me and my family.
Donations may be made, in lieu of flowers, to three things Joe loved: the Garrard County Humane Society, Kentucky Educational Television, or St. Mark School.
Last night Ian, Caitlan and I hopped in Ian’s car amidst pouring rain and drove down to Planet Thai in Lexington, where (as per Mom’s instructions) we surprised Joe at his birthday dinner. I’m not actually sure how old Joe is. My guess would be “bearded years old.”
In addition to Joe’s Eddie Bauer gift certificate, I got to give out the last of my California souvenirs–Joe got a t-shirt, Mom got a bar of Lily soap from the European-goods store in Lawrence, and Caitlan got a green Robin Hood hat from a vintage store in Berkeley (Ian had already received his copy of All Flesh Must Be Eaten). It was fun, especially since I had wrap-bagged the presents in the car, while sitting right in front of Caitlan.
Planet Thai was, by Mom and Joe’s well-honed Thai standards, a bit mediocre. Ian didn’t much like his pad thai, but I ate a whole lot of my crab fried rice. It was pretty subtle, though. It could have used about eight or ten more pounds of crab.
Ian and I left everybody else behind to continue on yet to Richmond, where we met the famous Katie and went bowling. Ian and Katie called each other names, and I bowled a two. This is harder than you’d think, especially with the gutter bumpers in.
Richmond doesn’t look strange yet, or maybe it doesn’t look strange anymore; I mentally moved out of there sometime during my senior year of high school. Not much has changed, except for the increase in liquor stores, which is rapidly approaching parity with the population.
It was a long night of driving, and I’m glad Ian was courteous enough to be my ride, especially with the roads as awful as they were at first. I fell asleep for a while on the way back (Mom and Dad drove me around when I was a baby to get me to sleep, so I pretty much always do this), and I think at one point I woke myself up by snoring. My neck hasn’t been quite right since, but on the other hand, I’m not dead in a car crash either. Ten points.
Right, Christmas. It was good! The Adkins-Wood Collective borrowed the infamous Deb’s house (she was out of town, and we’re homeless) for the fastest gift-opening we’ve ever had, then left in the afternoon to come to Louisville and have dinner with Joe’s sister Laura. Who I guess is now my aunt? She’d probably be weirded out if I called her that. While there, I met her stepdaughter, who I guess is now my cousin?
Normally I’d make some crack now about the new definition of family units in the new millennium, but to tell the truth, I feel kinda behind. I just got my first step-cousin-in-law, man, everybody else has had theirs for years.
But yeah, the dinner was good and Joe embarrassed Ian and me (but mostly me) at the pool table. I got warm socks, emo hoodies, the first season of Highlander and as many copies of Finding Nemo as I have hands. Mom was at least a little taken in by our we-got-you-DVDs, what-you-don’t-have-a-DVD-player, oh-well-you-get-this-present-too gag, and that was good. In grand Brendanian tradition, I forced Blankets on Ian and Daredevil: Yellow on Caitlan, things with which they seemed cool.
Man, have you heard about Blankets? Just… just google it and read a little. It’s pretty much everything they say.
The band was okay–nice people, just the Motown they usually picked to play was not slow enough to slow dance and not fast enough to fast dance. They did get everybody out on the floor, though, for “Brown-Eyed Girl.” My mom’s song.
I saw Ben McBrayer, whom I’ve been meaning to write, and a million people whose names I didn’t know I remembered. I was terrified I’d read my Corinthians too fast, but a lot of people complimented me on that, and on how much I look like my dad. Instead of best man and maid of honor, they had Best Moms–my grandmother Virginia and my new grandmother Betty Jo. Father Pat started to prompt them, but they already knew the vows by heart.
Maria was kind enough to drive down from Louisville to get me last night, and I’ve spent Thanksgiving with her family today; Ian’s at Noah’s and Caitlan is at our family farm. This week was the only chance they’ll have for a break together before Christmas. I don’t know how they managed to pull this whole thing off in six weeks, but it was…
About halfway through the service, one of the light bulbs right above the front row chose November 26th as its day to expire. Nobody noticed: my mother and stepfather were glowing.
As seen camwise, I have a lightbox. Like a real honest to goodness lightbox. It is made of a box with plexiglass on top, and it has a light switch on theside, and when you flip the switch these two fluorescent lights on the inside come on and you light it up FROM THE INSIDE. So you can trace things. It is a miracle of modern technology.
Like most of the web cartoonists who have one of these, I built mine instead of buying it–if by “built” you mean “stood around and made helpful grunts while Mom’s boyfriend, Joe, did all the real work.” It ended up taking six hours and costing about $50 in materials, plus probably hundreds of dollars’ worth of skilled labor on Joe’s end that he wouldn’t even let me chip in for. He’s a really good guy, and amazingly skilled with anything related to carpentry or building. He tends to stay away from computers, but lately I’m starting to think that’s a wise attitude.
Anyway, I have a lightbox, and it’s well beyond merely “cool” into “slopy” territory. I need to sand down the corners, probably, and maybe stain or varnish the wood, and I’ve got a can of glass obscurer that I may or may not use on the window to diffuse the light a little. We’re going to Gatlinburg tomorrow afternoon, so I’ll pretty much have to test it out tonight if I’m going to do a comic thisweek.
I’m guessing it’s going to cut my inking time in half, at least–which will knock that out of its top place as Most Dreaded Part of doing the comic. Now the writing is all I have to fear.
Back Wednesday.
