While I have some free time, I thought I’d write down semi-random remembrances from my life. Not that it is some great story, not that there is some great moral to the story, but I recently lost my last close relative, and its a shame to let these memories just slide into oblivion just because I procrastinated.

I’m gonna start with something that I’ve been thinking a lot of, recently. It’s a simple story, and I don’t quite understand why it had such an effect on me. The storm on the lake.

I grew up in Minnesota, specifically suburban Twin Cities on the east side. To say it was homogenous is an understatement – everybody was white, every family (except a couple who I can name) was upper-middle class, everyone was well educated, everyone was politically middle of the road with a tendency toward conservatism. There were rumors of things such as The Klan, foreigners, homosexuality, but just rumors. I think the only person I met who had an accent prior to the age of 10 was a guy named Zig Lupe, who had a German accent.

My dad built the house I grew up in on the shore of Lake DeMontreville. I’m told that when he bought the land in 1960, it was the last time a bear was seen in the neighborhood. When my brother John was born in 1961, it was the last time a deer was spotted on our plot. My mom told me a story of a neighborhood kid pulling a bass out of the lake that was nearly as tall as he was (3’6”? How big are kids?)

I will digress often while writing this, since I am writing about memory, and memories beget memories, like a nuclear explosion, each memory triggers another two or three memories, which each trigger two or three memories until your brain explodes and a sensible narrative thread is blown up. I’ll try to keep on track.

The land my dad bought was an interesting shape in that Lake DeMontreville was originally two lakes, with a small isthmus between them, and the land included half of the isthmus. In the image below, if you note the peninsula going up and to the right, that’s where the two lakes were originally split. According to folklore, the lake on the left was originally a cow pasture, but as the water level raised, it became a lake.

The lake in the lower left is Lake Olson, and when the water is high enough, you can actually boat between Olson and Demontreville, through an area known locally as ‘The Swamp.’ The area where DeMontreville and Olson nearly meet on the left middle, is small enough that you can stand on the road and see both lakes. This gave rise to the nickname of ‘The Island,’ to the land between the lakes.

The isthmus of my parent’s land started eroding almost immediately. It broke on the far side of the lake, and once the lake converted the isthmus to a peninsula, the ownership was also split, so legally our land went 90% to the other side of the lake. By the time I was self-aware, it was maybe 75% to the other side and sinking. Now I’m told it is a stub, but we knew it as ‘The Point.’

My childhood was as near idyllic as anyone could ask. I spent my summers either reading books in a hammock by the lake, reading books (OK, comics), or fishing or swimming in the lake. One of the best fishing spots was on The Point because there is a natural spring about halfway across and back then a small tree (weeping willow?) grew near the spring. The combination of shade and fresh water is apparently irresistible to sunfish.

Finally, I’ll get to the story – sorry, first entries in an arc tend toward exposition and background.

One day, I was fishing on The Point with my back to the tree (W/NW). Intent on catching another little fish, I had zero idea a massive storm was building behind me. One side of the lake, where I was looking – was sunny and perfect. The other side was literally black. Where there was color, it was aquarium green, that color that makes Midwesterner’s stomachs churn.

Quick aside – unless you grew up in the Upper Midwest, you don’t know what a thunderstorm is. I’ve lived in a number of places, and most places have their own terrors, but no place does thunderstorms like the upper plains. The sky is black, the lightning flashes and the thunder pounds your ears. Until the thunder makes the ground shake around you and windows visibly quiver like transparent jell-o, your storms are wimpy imitations.

My first inclination that something was interrupting my fishing was a cold wind nearly pushing me into the water. The air dropped twenty degrees as I turned to look and saw a black half-dome over me and a downpour hitting the far edge of the lake. I doubt I swore at the time, not because I wasn’t surprised but because back then I didn’t really know any swear words at that age.

And this is where my words fail. In an instant, I corked my hook, and started running for home in. It was only 50 yards away, but the entire run is in slow motion in my memory, as I recall all the trees bending to the ground, the grass flailing around me, and the waves lapping over The Point. I don’t know why, but I could feel something gigantic over me and I felt how tiny I was in the world. Sure, as a kid, I really was tiny, but I felt it to my tiny toes. I felt like a I mouse being batted by a mountain sized cat. I was thrilled and scared and probably laughing.

#newpainting #nostalgia

I hope to paint my next big painting to somehow show this. I’m bring literal in that I hope to paint the view of Demontreville as I remember it, with a peninsula and a tree and a storm coming. It will be difficult, as the sun will be behind the viewer.

Here’s a terrible sketch. I’m just working out the locations of everything. I know I want The Point at or near the bottom. The imagined viewer will be 20’ or so in the air, over the lake, seeing the storm coming. The sun beams will touch the left (home), The Point, the little tree, and maybe the other side.

I’ve never shown such an early sketch – usually I just work things out in my head – so be kind.

My inspirations for this include Bierstadt, whose wonderful storm painting has the drama, but I’m not quite shooting for documentary realism.

I’m hoping to have some of the dreamlike sensations that JMW Turner evokes. My experience was dreamlike – I remember it in streams and lines, not solid formations.

Finally, a big challenge will be the colors. That sickly green that Midwesterners fear is difficult to reproduce. I know it is created when sunlight goes through tons of water in the air, I know it is a sign of imminent downpours, but none of that knowledge helps me pick the color and use it correctly. My best bet is to paint the scene and then tinge the parts in storm with the storm green. It will be interesting to see how a storm green glaze acts on pure black.

I blame Bill Gates. And Hollywood. But mostly I blame Jacopo Pontormo. 

There is a frequent online discussion in the UX community about whether designers should learn to code. 

I’m on the fence on the issue, but really my answer is – why the giant wall between the two? It’s not that big a deal. The two are not opposing universal forces or anything.

Why do we assume the “creative” side is barely rational, given to fits and furious fugues of inspired work, but incapable of balancing a check book?

On the other side, why do we assume a computer programmer is a dull drone, merely punching keys in the proper sequence to produce a program?

Some of my older friends know that I went to art school. I was at one time an up and coming glass artist who placed third in the world in the annual intake of glass artists into SUNY Alfred’s master’s program (the first two got a full scholarship plus living expenses, not that I’m bitter or anything). Occasionally, as a “creative person,” I’ll encounter a bias where someone feels they have to explain something technical because I’m, “one of those creative people.” 

Friends from later in my life are know me as a computer geek. Some even make the assumption that I’m a hardcore programmer, which up until a couple years ago, wasn’t even close to true. I’ve since taught myself to use the Laravel platform (I’ve been playing with PHP for years), but I don’t think of myself as a hardcore dev. These friends will not invite me to go to an art museum because they assume I won’t be interested, or they’ll chide me for reading from a Kindle rather than a dead tree book, and see my tech abilities as somehow removing any possible aesthetic sensibilities. 

Allow me to blame Jacopo Pontormo. 

Pontormo was a mannerist painter in Italy, a later contemporary of Michelangelo and Rafael. He was also, according to Visari, eccentric. He was described as “young, talented, and lonely,” a man who did things his own way. He wore black.  He painted his windows black. He picked fights with other artists. He was sullen. In short, he was the archetype of what we expect modern artists to be – asocial, slaves to emotion, and marching to distant drummers.

It’s bullshit. OK, maybe not bullshit, but certainly coincidental. Yes, Pontormo was a genius and created some amazing works, but as any logician will tell you, correlation is not causation. It is coincidence that Pontormo was the proto-goth artist, not a necessarily defining pre-condition for his creativity, and I blame him (and others) for setting the cultural norm that all artists are barely connected to reality, and can’t be held to account for their anti-social behavior.

In a similar vein, if you ask anyone to define a computer programmer, they’ll turn to Bill Gates, who isn’t the most social person, seems prickly, and perhaps overly precise. More to the point, if anyone was casting about, looking for someone to create a painting or write a novel, Bill Gates would be at the bottom of the list, as would any of his fellow computer-centric companions. You know what an algorithm is? Well obviously, you are boring, unadventurous, non-creative, as beige as the box you work on.

But the blame doesn’t cut one way. I have a feeling that if I could jump in a time machine, I’d see Pontormo playing up the creative stereotype, swanning about with his muse, in order to secure commissions. I suspect I would also see him, and others of his ilk, feigning ignorance when it came to finances, hoping someone would step in and figure his taxes for him or maybe even forgive a debt because he’s “touched by God.”  If being “odd” helps the bottom line, an artist will be odd. If it means getting hired, a computer programmer will put on horn-rimmed glasses, lose the mohawk, and wear a pocket protector for an interview.

OK, this is getting longer than it should – summary time – as far as the question, should designers learn to code, the answer is sure, why not? You aren’t asking them do anything impossible. If they have the time and the desire, go ahead. It will help them in the long run become better designers, but it won’t help as much as spending more time learning about design. 

Should developers learn to design? Sure, learn the basics if you don’t know them already. Everyone should have a bit of aesthetic knowledge. Will it make them better developers? Probably, in small ways, but it isn’t required, and I suspect a greater return from learning more about dev.

More importantly, don’t apply arbitrary stereotypes to people, and don’t let them be lazy by playing in to your expectations of that stereotype.

I’m cc:ing this from what I wrote in a travel forum:

A short walk home from Balçı Bağı, fog is settling in for the night. I hear the distant purr of a deliveryman on his Vespa; the bark of a neighborhood dog. Strange Turkish words spin around my head, staying just out of reach. Last week this time was night, now it is light enough to see. The Black Sea; once little more than idea, now plainly visible, though gray and indistinct, on the horizon.

I find my keys are in my hand. I pick out the light from my building and walk through the open gate.

My introduction to the world of work was pretty easy. My dad ran a small construction company and he was building a house for a client just a mile away on DeMontreville Trail. Apparently the crew had left two boxes of nails on the roof and a storm knocked them into the garbage pile. To this day I don’t know how much two boxes of galvanized nails cost, but I’m sure it wasn’t worth the $6 per hour my dad gave me to fish them out of the construction trash.

I went to the job site one day and made $24. As I recall, later that same summer I also stained some house trim before it went up and came away with about $50 and some very odd brown stains on my blue sneakers. I think I was 12 or 13.

I would continue working for my dad pretty much every summer up through my second year of college – with one break when my parents’ divorce turned ugly and my mom didn’t want me working for ‘that man.’  Eventually, I got to know the crew. Randy, Dave, Bill the Lifer, Gene, Ronnie, Zig the painter, last names didn’t matter, last names were used for special cases like telling someone they are being foolish or when you wanted to goad someone.

A note about Bill the Lifer – He was Bill, the laborer, the newest addition to the crew. He was not yet a journeyman or a carpenter, he was Bill the Laborer. One evening I mentioned him to my mom and she misheard it as “Bill  the Lifer.” I thought about it and realized the name was accurate. He wasn’t an ambitious man, he said his goal in life was to make it to 30 years old and to ‘spend every weekend at the titty bar.’  He was in the job, probably on the bottom rung, for life.

Bill the Lifer is the origin of the title above. My dad and my uncle ran the construction company together and usually kept two or more jobs going. Since expensive tools were always in short supply, someone – usually me since I was the most useless of the crew – would have to shuttle equipment from one job to the other.  I learned it was expected that you ask everyone at one site if they needed anything from the other site. You would hear, ‘get the sawzall’ or ‘see if they have the cement saw’ or something similar and inevitably Bill the Lifer would pipe in at the end with, “Oh yeah, tell Hanson he’s a fag!”

“Hanson” was a born again Christian, married, well mannered and quiet. He didn’t swear, always showed up on the job site in clean clothes and often read the Bible during lunch. As I recall, he approached me once and only once and asked if he could talk about Jesus to me, and I declined. He never brought it up again, never mentioned religion. Basically a good, polite man, someone a professional author would describe as ‘salt of the earth.’ In Bill the Lifer’s eyes, that was enough to grant him ‘fag’ status. Not gay, of course, but not rough enough to be blue collar without some harassment.

This is a subtle point of the culture that most people miss. If he had said once directly to his face, “You’re a fag” or if – even worse – he said, “Dave’s a fag,” using his first name, then there probably would have been trouble or at the least hurt feelings. But because he used his last name, and because it was every day like a compulsion, it wasn’t even an insult. In an odd way, it was a term of endearment and both parties knew it. How you address someone counts for a lot. At first I was “Ernie’s kid,” someone known but different. After a few years, I was Chris or sometimes Christopher (as my dad called me) or – more times I care to admit – “Nordling!” when I did something stupid.

My name wasn’t in the same league of Randy, Dave, Bill the Lifer, Gene, Ronnie, Zig the painter, but I had a name. I worked with them, swung a hammer with them, ate with them and took the union scheduled breaks with them. I like to think that if I had chosen, I could have been part of the crew. Randy, a man who said perhaps 50 words in a day, even took the time to suggest I get some real work boots.

I think the closest I came to being an accepted member was the Wildwood job. Nordling Construction – my dad and my uncle Norvin – had moved up from house building to municipal work and we were remodeling a grade school, Wildwood Elementary in Mahtomedi.  It was a nightmare job; everything that could go wrong, did. I wasn’t there to see it, but the architect flooded our work space – to this day I have no idea what he was “testing.” The story goes that he put the chipping hammer against the wall and pulled the trigger and immediately a jet of water sprayed six feet into the basement. As the guys said later, “The goddamn architect said something about, ‘gotta get something in my office’ and just left.” The guys watched the water get first ankle deep and then knee deep. They grabbed their tools and sloshed out, knowing there would be no work for a few days.

I think part of what got me ‘in’ was taking my turn at the cement saw at Wildwood – a 12″ diamond tipped saw that OSHA says should be operated with a six foot standoff and a full respirator, but my dad, “Spend a dollar to save a dime!”* figured a face shield, a piece of wet cardboard, and a spray bottle was enough.  The saw was like trying to hold down an angry animal and when it hit a stone, it bucked back with enough force to knock you on your butt. One time it bucked under me and got out of control. The diamond tipped blade nicked my jeans and tore a couple threads on the top of my thigh before I pushed it back in the slot. Bill the Lifer was on spray bottle duty and said simply, “Keep your legs out of the way. It’ll cut them clean off.” Good advice, strangely coming from a guy who would operate the same saw with no mask – he’d just light up a cigarette and pull the trigger. You would see a cloud of cement dust and a little red glowing dot in the center of it. I heard years later Bill the Lifer did make it to 30 years old. He even got married somehow.

The following year, the split happened. It was the summer between my second and third year of college and I had a radio show on Wednesday afternoons at the college station. I didn’t want to disappoint my two or three listeners so I asked my dad if I could leave early on Wednesdays. He grudgingly agreed, but in the eyes of the crew that made me ‘special.’ Until then I never heard any insult or slight aimed my way, but it was clear to the crew that I was not on their path. I was in the habit of wearing canvas work gloves more often than they did, and that became the tiny wedge they would hammer. Soon there were comments here and there about ‘not wanting to get his hands dirty’ or ‘don’t forget your gloves’ when driving to the next job. Nothing outrageous, just them defining a line between us. They were the construction crew and I no longer Chris, I wasn’t even the boss’ stupid son, I was “The College Boy.” I did not return the following summer nor any summer after that. I continued on to grad school and now I’m a professional in Manhattan, living on the 40th floor, doing a job that would make the guys’ eyes roll it is so removed from real life; basically I live on a different planet than they do. But I still have my work boots in a closet somewhere.

*My dad was – charitably – careful with his money. He would try to come up with innovative ways to save money on the job, many that would eventually backfire and end up costing more than if he did things by the book. I learned this one day when Randy relayed some instruction from the boss (my dad) that I barely understood, but the other guys knew exactly what was going on. After a beat, they smiled and all said in unison, “Spend a dollar to save a dime!” which was their assessment of the plan and a number of my dad’s plans in the past.

There’s a mini-trend going on in the press right now of people telling horror stories about the measles, probably an attempt to scare anti-vaxxers into getting the damn shots.
I hope it works. If not, I’ll add my own story which I hope will scare the shit out of anyone who isn’t immune to the measles.

This was my crazy week. I was in Thailand with Alex, and we were planning on visiting Russia and then I would fly on to Washington DC for ONE DAY and then moving to New York City. The following Monday I was to start a new job in mid-town Manhattan.

That’s right, I was going to fly around the world, move, and start a job over the period of just a few days. Kinda crazy.

Anyway, this isn’t the story of the visit to Russia, the story of moving or the story of starting the job, this is the story of getting the measles, so I’ll fast forward to my first symptom, which was a raging fever. It was a Wednesday in September, very warm, and I ended up shivering in the 47-50th Street station even though it was probably 90 degrees on the platform. That’s how bad the fever was. Getting onto the air-conditioned car was painful. It was so cold, I couldn’t stop shivering, and even though I wasn’t aware of it, I’m sure people were stepping away from me.

Later that evening, I noticed sores on the inside of my mouth. Nasty, pink/white sores that burst open at the slightest touch, exposing nerves. I called in sick the following morning, and just hung around the house in a daze. I have no idea what my temperature was, but it was definitely affecting my consciousness, so it had to be up around 104 or so. I noticed redness around my neck but didn’t think twice about it.

By the evening, the sores got bad enough in my mouth that I couldn’t eat anything. I called around various doctor’s offices (keep in mind I just moved) and the earliest they could see me was the following week. I made an appointment and tried to sleep it off.

That’s when the vomiting started. I’m not going to pull any punches on this. It’s going to be disgusting, but I want to make sure everyone who reads this knows that measles is sometimes a very serious disease. I started vomiting, randomly and forcefully. Soon my stomach was empty so I was just vomiting up stomach acid.

By the following morning, my mouth and throat were covered in open, bleeding sores. I woke up when I vomited into my own nose. Imagine the pain of vomiting stomach acid into a mouth that is just one gigantic exposed nerve. That woke me up at about 5am.

If figured I was gonna die, so at that point I decided to go to the hospital. I didn’t have the strength to get back up to my 3rd floor walkup, so this was a one shot deal – stumble down the stairs, grab a cab and get to the ER.

I don’t remember anything about the cab ride. It was only 8 blocks. I hope I didn’t give the measles to the cab driver.

When I got the ER, the intake person told me to wait. This is surprising since, even though I didn’t know it at the time, I was bright red. Not red dots. Red. My skin was red, my mouth was red, the whites of my eyes were red.

Finally I got to see the intake nurse, who was bored beyond belief. She didn’t even look at me and just asked questions as she entered info into the computer in front of her. Finally she glanced up and saw me and – I’m guessing here – her professionalism kicked in and she didn’t gag or scream at my appearance. She just calmly reached over to her desk phone and said quickly into the receiver, “I”m going to need an isolation room.” She then excused herself, went into a supply closet behind her and emerged with a particle mask, a full face shield and rubber gloves up to her elbows. She returned to the keyboard and continued to ask about my insurance and my symptoms etc.

Her face was the last one I would see for about 4 days.

The problem was that no doctor had seen an adult with full-on crazy measles like mine and when they heard I had been swimming in southern Thailand just 10 days before, they freaked out. Every person who entered my room would wear a mask and gloves and, unless absolutely necessary, not get any closer than 3 feet.

I was put into an isolation room, with negative pressure so any germ would flow into the room when the door was opened. The NYC Department of Health was called. The CDC was called. They had a guy recently in the tropics AND Russia, bright read, feverish, listless, puking blood laced stomach acid, so they weren’t taking any chances. I was Plague Patient Zero until proven otherwise.

What followed was three days of blood draws and uneaten food in a feverish daze. I kept telling the doctors I couldn’t eat because my mouth was lined with sores so I couldn’t eat without screaming. They never seemed to listen, and insisted an IV of fluids and such was enough. Finally a young doctor listened to me and said I could try a lidocaine gel. All I had to do was to swirl it around my mouth and the pain would be knocked down for 20 minutes so I could eat. The only danger was that I wouldn’t feel my tongue, so I had to be careful not to bite bits of it off.

That did the trick. From the moment I was able to eat I started feeling better. By then, the lab tests came back and the doctors were relieved it was just measles. At that point they brought EVERY student doctor in the hospital in to see me to see what adult measles looked like.

By then, the CDC got involved. They came to interview me before getting discharged from the hospital. They hated me. They asked me where I had been in the last couple weeks (Bangkok, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Paris, Washington DC and New York as well as a couple gas stations.) I had help loading the moving van, I had help unloading the moving van. They had to contact all those people. The CDC called the HR department of my new job and called EACH AND EVERY PERSON on the floor on which I worked and said, “we can’t say who, but someone exposed you to the measles.” Later, my new boss would explain to me that he considered it my fault that I exposed a more valued PREGNANT co-worker to measles. Unfair, yes, since I didn’t know, but I still wondered how guilty I would feel if anything went wrong with her unborn child. One of the CDC people kind of lost it when they asked how I got to/from work and I said the B Train. He swore under his breath and smacked his notebook on the table. I had exposed everyone on the B Train to the measles, and by extension, pretty much everyone in New York.

I got better a few days later and went back to work. Other than my boss, nobody said a thing about me being sick, but I didn’t last long there.

There was a cat named Rue.

He was smaller than the average cat, probably the runt of his litter. He was a ‘tuxedo’ cat, meaning his fur was dark brown/black and white roughly in the shape of a tuxedo. Rue’s white came up all the way to his jaw and a tiny swirl of white went up to his mouth and just beyond. He had both black and white whiskers that vibrated when he purred.

And he purred a lot; he was happy in his last few years. I think he was purring in the first few moments I saw him in San Antonio. Alex had left him with a friend when she went to Asia, that friend in turn left Rue with a co-worker who turned out to be a cat hoarder. She had innumerable cats and dogs and Rue, being a lover, not a fighter, did miserably in cat gaol. He survived, somehow, for a couple years in the cat herd, but weighed next to nothing when Alex finally got him back; maybe six pounds and two of that was dirt. He was so frail Alex worried he might have to be put down then and there, and when I first saw him, I couldn’t help but notice his bony butt stuck out past his back legs, an odd structure for a cat.

That first night, though, I knew he was different because when Alex and I went to bed, Rue climbed in with us, put his head on the pillow like person and went to sleep.

He was like that. When I tried to put myself in his mind, some of his actions only made sense if he thought of himself as a person, not a cat. After his time in Texas, he hated other cats. At the vet’s office, if he saw a cat he’d hiss and charge, making himself as big as possible to intimidate the other cat. He loved people, though. He was a petting slut. Alex and I would joke that if burglars ever broke in to our place, Rue would go up to them and wait for petting.

Some times Rue would get impatient waiting for petting. He’d tap us, ever so gently, to remind us he was there, waiting, purring, to express his affection. When I got dressed in the morning, he’d follow me around the room, tapping me for petting. Occasionally, while I was putting on my shirt, he’d stand on the bed and rub his head against my stomach. That would always make me laugh. And it would make it difficult to go to work. Why face the stern faces at the office when I can stay home and be unconditionally loved by Rue? Eventually, though, he would get the message and lay down to sleep while I slipped out the door.

I wondered, one time, what he did while I was at work, so I set up a time lapse camera to record his day. He slept the entire time, bounding out of frame only as Alex came home.

Yes, it’s true. Rue would greet us at the door, just like a dog. He was so excited to see both of us, he would run to the door and meow and rub against us. If he was on my lap when Alex came home, he’d leap halfway across the sofa to get to her. And I’d say to him, “What am I, chopped liver?” in mock annoyance.

I had a few months of unemployment this year, they were financially disastrous, but now I’m glad they happened. I got to spend some quality time with Rue. While I was on the sofa, emailing resumes, he would be sleeping at my feet. Once every couple of hours, he would tire of sleeping (?) and climb up onto my chest, demanding petting. On my favorite afternoons, he would settle down onto my chest and nap on me while I watched some terrible movie on afternoon cable. If I moved a bit, he’d rouse himself and give me an annoyed look, trying to keep his ‘bed’ stable.

Later, in the evening, we’d do ‘walkies.’ I would clean his litter box and take the bag to the garbage chute. He’d come with ‘on patrol.’ I was never quite sure what he was patrolling for, so I told people he was looking for pirates. Rue kept the 40th floor safe from pirates for almost two years. Occasionally neighbors would come out of their apartments and be startled by Rue. He would walk right up to them and demand petting (payment for all his pirate fighting duties), and in one case tried to walk in to a neighbor’s apartment.

Rue was only angry with me once, and it was my fault. He was climbing on a guest, angling for some food, and to pull him back, I grabbed him by the tail. Rue whirled around, stomped up to me and hit me with all his might (no claws, of course). He then ran away to hide. I laughed, because if it is possible for a tiny cat to impersonate an angry sailor from a 1940s movie, Rue had just done it, with all the swagger and bravado of Jimmy Cagney. He then realized what he did and ran for cover.

I loved him so. True, sometimes he followed me around too much. I think the number of times I’ve been in the bathroom by myself the last few years is in the single digits. When we lived on 70th, he would follow me into the bathroom when I was preparing for bed, jump up on the toilet and demand water while I was brushing my teeth. I’d give him his bowl with cold water and he’d drink, finishing up about the time I was finishing rinsing my mouth. This is most probably the closest I’ll come to experiencing a father and son moment when my “son” imitates my actions.

There are so many stories. He got to go to Central Park one time. This past year I introduced him to the pleasures of bacon, which he inhaled and demanded more. I found some “duck pate” cat food and gave it to him when I could. He loved it.

Unfortunately, cats don’t live forever. He was 19 years old and I was looking forward to his big 2-0 in February. But he started showing signs of aging a few years ago. He couldn’t keep on any weight, even with regular bacon and duck feedings. In the last few months he suddenly decided he would sleep on our dining room table rather than in one of his many cat beds. Then about a month ago, he found he couldn’t jump up to our bed anymore, so he found an alternate route. In addition, more and more often he would stand in the hallway and howl pitifully. It didn’t seem like he was in pain, but now I’m not so sure.

On occasion, his back legs would wobble. Alex and I would say he was ‘Drinky.’ We thought it was arthritis or hip problems. We found out later that his body was eating his muscle and he was just barely able to stand.

On what turned out to be his last day, Rue tried desperately to come with me to work. He wouldn’t take no for an answer and eventually ran into the hallway and got ahead of me by 10 feet or so before I could scoop him up and deposit him back in the apartment. Alex later told me that he kept this up all day, howling to get out and leaping for the door if it was opened. He hadn’t eaten for couple days and was now not drinking water either. When I got home I tried to hand feed him some ground up ‘people chicken,’ one of his favorites. He had no interest. I held up a greenie treat to his nose, again, no interest.

Alex made an appointment with the vet. Normally Rue would fight tooth and nail to avoid being put into the cat carrier – he knew that meant another visit to the veterinarian. He would meow loudly the whole time he was in the carrier, try to run out of the vet’s office, etc. This time, when I put the cat carrier down, he walked into it and sat down and waited for Alex and I to get ready.

We weren’t ready.

I can explain the rest of Rue’s life; it was only about 30 minutes from the time he sat in the cat carrier to the last beat of his heart. But it all seems surreal.

I have a vague memory of a comedy I saw once. God was a character in it, and he was played like an old borscht belt comedian, but his jokes never made sense to those around him. The one I remember specifically goes, “One second you’re alive, then ppphhffft! you’re dead. Funniest thing I’ve ever seen!” I guess from a certain distance things look very different. I’m sure you, reading this, want to remind me ‘he was just a cat.’

One second Rue – the most loving creature I’ve ever experienced or ever will experience – was alive, then he was dead. I looked into his eyes when he was gone. It was a mistake; I don’t think I’ll ever get over seeing his eyes not blinking.

Alex is away tonight, and I’m in the apartment that is so unnaturally quiet now. Tonight was hard. Rue would normally greet me at the door and he would crawl all over me and nuzzle my chin. Now it is quiet, the only sound is the refrigerator running and all I can think is how Rue would stick his head in the fridge to sniff the food. There should be some storm or cracking of he earth at his passing. I can’t stand the people on the sidewalk, going about their lives, not acknowledging that Rue is dead.

Rue is dead.

That’s why I am writing this. I want some record of him to go out into the ether to be found centuries from now. I want to believe that someone will find an ancient archive of the internet and randomly read this. I want that person to feel sorry that they never met Rue, never got to nuzzle his furry face or carry him to bed, never got to hear his reassuring purr. Alex and I will spread his ashes somewhere, but I can’t think of an appropriate place that would sum up his life. And when Alex and I go, there will be no memory of the little guy, the cat who loved us and we loved him back. Such a small thing, but so desperately important:

There was a cat named Rue. He loved and was loved. That’s important.