Here’s a special Angel Bumps story from my friend, Lee Gaitan. Enjoy!
I’m not what you’d call a nature girl. While I appreciate the
beauty of the natural world, I feel no need to camp out in it or get
parts of it directly on me. A “back-to-nature” retreat to me means
having fresh-cut flowers on the table beside my soaking tub. My older sister, while
quite the accomplished soaker herself, was also comfortably at home in
the wild. She was the child who lay in the grass and talked to the ants
as they crawled up her arm, the one who gently carried every daddy long-legs
from the high-traffic porch steps to the safety of the back
yard.
As an adult, she regularly invited a possum into her kitchen to
dine with her cats and allowed a squirrel to give birth in the hole for
her dryer vent, giving the squirrel family unrestricted access to her
entire house. Boy, did the realtor earn his money the day Mrs. Squirrel
casually sauntered down the stairs while he was showing the place to
potential buyers.
By contrast, I once paid $2,000 to evict a band of free-loading squirrels from my attic
where they’d chomped their way through ten inches of insulation to lay in a
supply of acorns and assorted other nuts between my rafters. It was like
a Golden Corral buffet for tree rodents up there and they weren’t paying
me one single cent in rent. Unlike my sister’s, my encounters with
undomesticated animals have traditionally not gone well.
Over the years, I’ve been stalked by a possum, intimidated by a raccoon and
head-pecked by a deranged blackbird. Back in my teenage days, the
creatures that terrified me most were owls, with their weirdly
human-like eyes that seemed to stare right through you. I found them so
creepy I wouldn’t even eat Wise potato chips. My sister, of course,
thought owls fascinating, weird eyeballs and all. (But, seriously, how
could I not fear something capable of spinning its head around almost
360 degrees? At 16, the only other living thing I’d seen do that was
Linda Blair and we all know what was going on there!)
To my sister’s great amusement, she was able to witness my fear of owls literally
reach new heights one summer night when my boyfriend dropped me off from
a date. She was watching from the side patio as I ran to the front door,
accidentally brushing against a low-lying tree branch on my way.
Instantly, a shrill, hideous screech of “Hooooooooooo!” pierced the
still night air, launching me several feet into that same air and
causing me to let out a pretty hideous screech of my own. It’s hard to
say which reaction was strongest, my panic, the owl’s annoyance, or my
sister’s delight. This incident gave my sister even more ammunition for
teasing scaredy cat. From that point on, she missed no opportunity to sneak up on me
and “hoot” and was particularly fond of doing this in darkened rooms or when I was in
the shower.
All these years later my left shin still bears a small scar from
a hoot-induced leg-shaving mishap. As I pressed a wad of tissues against
my razor cut that night, I could never have imagined the bittersweet
significance a hoot would ultimately hold in my life. At the much too
young age of 43, my sister received the devastating diagnosis of early
onset Parkinson’s disease. For the next 22 years, she faced her
diagnosis as she did everything in life, fearlessly and with great
humor. She had several good years, and with a few concessions to her
illness here and there we continued to have wonderful adventures
together.
Eventually, however, positive affirmations and a sassy
attitude were no match for her cruel and merciless enemy. The last year
of her life was a series of medical crises, each leaving her
increasingly fragile and largely unable to move or communicate. Early
one morning last October, a strange noise invaded my sound sleep and
wakened me at precisely 5:30 in the morning. It was an eerie sound, one
I couldn’t quite place. I listened for a few moments, but hearing
nothing more, decided I must have either imagined or dreamed it. I was
about to fall back asleep when a clear and mournful “hoooooo” outside my
window broke the predawn quiet.
In nine years of living in my house I had never once heard an owl hoot. I would not only
have remembered if I had, I would have probably packed my bags on the spot. With a
mounting sense of dread, I sat up in bed and stared at the phone, certain the
call I’d feared for the past year would come any minute. I stared at the
phone for two hours until it was time to get ready for work. In the bright light of day, my
notion that the “hoot” had been a message from my sister seemed almost silly. I was
chiding myself for my superstitions when the phone rang at 8:15 with the news
that my sister had suffered another stroke, this one even more severe
than the last, and that any minute might well be her last. Just before I
hung up the phone, I asked when the stroke had occurred. 5:30 a.m. was
the answer.
Stubborn to the very end, insistent on meeting death on her
own terms, my sister defied her doctors’ pronouncements and held on
for another week, long enough for us to share a last goodbye and even a
final weak smile at an old joke. And then, with barely a whimper, she
was gone, taking with her a large piece of my heart. The first night
after she was gone, my sense of loss was so profound, my grief so
crushing, I could do little more than crawl into bed, face unwashed,
teeth unbrushed. I lay in the dark, pillow clutched to my chest, and
cried for hours. Mercifully, exhaustion at last took over and I felt my
eyelids getting heavy.
And just as I was drifting off, I heard it. It was soft at first and then strong and clear, an
unmistakable series of hoots outside my bedroom window. I sat up and listened intently
for the next several minutes, but only silence followed. I lay back down and
closed my eyes. Despite my sadness, despite the tears rolling down my
cheeks, I couldn’t help but smile. Fly high and free, my dear sister,
far from the pain and limitations of this earthly realm. And thank you
for giving a hoot one last time.
Lee Gaitan Note: I had originally intended to post this piece two weeks ago
as a tribute to my sister on the one-year anniversary of her passing,
but in the ironic circle of life, my daughter went into labor with my
first grandchild during the same week. One light is extinguished and
another is lit. And in honor of both, we carry on.
Lee is the author of two books, Falling Flesh Just Ahead and the #1 Award Winning My Pineapples Went to Houston- Finding the humor In My Dashed Hopes, Broken Dreams and Plans Gone Outrageously Wrong. She’s been featured in Erma Bombeck, Huffington Post, Feisty After 45 and many others.
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