Dead, dead, dead

The three koi I had in a man-made pond died last week. 
It was partly my fault. Although the leg amputation in February and shoulder replacement in May have made getting out to see the pond risky because I'm using a wheelchair and there are two tricky steps involved, I had made the trip and could have kept doing so. If I had, I'd have seen that the power to their water and air pump was out. A friend fed them on Sunday, they were dead on Wednesday. The friend says he thinks the pumps were going, but I doubt that; the fish have survived much longer power outages, even in summer, when working pumps are essential (warm water holds less oxygen than cold water). I should have specifically asked him to check to see if the little waterfall was flowing. 

Other than things you can't see and some aquatic plants, this is empty.

I also blame the gardeners my brothers hired to clean up the grounds (I admit I was slow to do this, which is why they stepped in and hired people without telling me, but I had planned to make a call that week). They uncovered the outlet to the devices and didn't put the cover back. There was a short but strong storm that Sunday that may have shorted out the power. Also, there was a sheen of oil on the water, which would have blocked oxygen, and I suspect it was runoff from the mulch they used around the pond. 
One of the fish was twenty-five years old and had been around when my parents were alive. The other two I'd bought five years ago. All three had many more years ahead of them. I'd named the three after my brothers and I. It's stupid to give pets names; it makes it harder when they die.
The way the fish died would have been unpleasant. It is a precursor to the way I'll probably die when the form of cancer that required removal of my leg spreads to my lungs. 
They will be my last pets. Ever. I can't have pets because I love them too much and they always die, saddening me for years. The joy they give when alive doesn't outweigh the misery. Once the sadness I feel now ebbs a little, it will be almost nice not to have to worry about anything other than a couple of houseplants. But that ebbing won't be for years, and I probably don't have that long.

Sad notes and annoyances

May is a lovely month in my region, southeastern Pennsylvania. Perfect temperatures for days at a stretch. Blossoms everywhere. Birthdays of loved ones and my own.
This May, however, I have tests coming up that may indicate that having my leg amputated in February didn't nix the cancer and I'll be dead within a year or two.
Other things, most of them minor:

• A life on crutches in barely tolerable. The little things add up after awhile. An example: When you're on crutches both hands are so occupied that if you want to do something like scratch your ear or blow your nose you have to stop walking to do it. If you happen to be with someone else you have to tell them that and make a minor apology. Not that any real friend would care about this, but having to explain such small actions to people is a new burden.

  

  Author Rebecca Chace.

• I finished a novel I liked yesterday, Leaving Rock Harbor, by Rebecca Chace. I'd known the author when I was a teenager; a summer friend in New England. Usually, knowing an author puts a sort of veil over what I'm reading and I'm so busy judging the prose that I can't enjoy the book. In this case, though, it's been forty-five years, so that wasn't an issue. When reading the acknowledgements page I saw two names of mutual friends, both women, both of whom I carried a minor torch for. Not that I'd been on the cusp of romantic involvement with either of them, but after years passed I realized that both were my type and who knows what may have happened if we'd kept in touch? One had acted for awhile and then found that her real calling was teaching and she's now and Alexander Technique instructor. I watched one of her demonstration videos. She was still recognizable four-and-a-half decades later, and her laugh hadn't changed a bit, which was almost eerie but nice. The other had become a lawyer and worked on social justice causes. Then she became a pastor in her early fifties. Then, just two years ago, she died. Her obituary didn't list the cause. She'd married a guy I also knew back then, the early 1970s, and that surprised me. He was a little rough when I knew him. I guess he cleaned up. He died, too, but the obituary didn't say when.
• Mirror therapy is supposed to do wonders for phantom limb pain. I've seen videos in which users have gotten real relief within a week. I'm set up for it, but it hasn't done much for me yet. I have to put in more hours, I guess. A problem in my case is that mirror therapy tricks the brain into believing that your missing limb is still there by showing it to you as a reflected image. In my case, however, the missing limb, my right leg, was seven inches shorter than the left. When my non-existent foot hurts, the location is where the foot was, not where it should have been. 
• Yesterday I was replacing about two hundred gallons of the water in my six-hundred-gallon koi pond. As the new water was going in, the three koi I have got restless, thrashing around a little. This happens every year when I do it but usually that proportion of water replacement is one they tolerate well. Once the replacement is in, I immediately pour in a water treatment that makes the new water compatible. This time, toward the end of the replacement, one of koi jumped out completely! I was sitting outside during it, finishing the above-mentioned novel, and something rustling in the foliage next to the pond caught my eye. I had no idea what it was, having missed the actual jump. I crutched over in a hurry and, knowing that it would be very hard to pick up a vigorously writhing, foot-long, slippery fish, managed to guide him back to the pond. He'd never have gotten there otherwise and would have died an unpleasant death under an

  

  A koi jumping out of water.

  unseasonably hot sun. (Of course I talked to him during the seconds he was out of the water, telling him how foolish he'd been. I doubt he listened.) The water's not clear enough to see the bottom of the pond and therefor the fish, so the rest of the day I crutched out every half hour or so to look at the area around the edge to see if everything was all right. So far, so good, and that includes this morning. I'll have to build up the section where he jumped somehow so it won't happen again. 
• The older I get, the more mistakes I find in my writing. I go over what I write and I'm surprised by them. Dropped or incorrect word endings are the main category. Just moments ago, for example, I found I'd written "I finished a novel I like yesterday." Like instead of liked. I'm sure I'll find several others a few minutes from now when I go over this. If it weren't for the built-in spellcheck I use, you would have very little respect for me.
• I bought a new shoe Monday. The brand is New Balance, which certainly applies to me. My left foot has always been unusually wide. I describe its footprint as almost a square, though that's an exaggeration. The sales clerk was knowledgeable and considerate, but I'm not sure the shoe's a perfect fit or if I have to just wait for it to get fully broken in. I'm going to check at my rehab session this afternoon and if they say it's not, I'm returning it. Life, especially mine, probably, is too short to wear an uncomfortable shoe.    

The koi pond

A koi pond in winter at dusk.

It is bitterly cold where I am, southeastern Pennsylvania, as I write this, which is on January 1, 2018. Lows are in the single digits, highs are in the teens. Typical temperatures when I lived in Minneapolis in the early 1980s, but not for here. 
The koi pond in my backyard has frozen over. The black hole you see is a heater to keep the ice open so gasses the fish and things in the water like rotting debris make (although I cleaned it as well as I could) can escape. 
Koi need as much oxygen in winter as in summer, so I have an air pump going, too. 
Although they don't hibernate, the three fish slow down substantially and require no feeding from late November to spring, depending on the temperature of the water. A few years ago, I put a submersible camera under the water and played back what I got to see what they were up to. They were there, suspended, lined up, breathing. I imagine what that would be like, under ice, in water barely warmer than ice, little light, for months at a time. Doing nothing but being what you are.

Dying Scene 2: Swabs and Bubbles

She will never eat again. Her choice. Really, looking back, the Complete and Total Loser's mother was eating a minimal amount for months, always with a current excuse.

"My stomach hurts."

That kind of thing. She was wasting away, not that everyone looks strong and thick at 80. She wanted strawberry smoothies and other fluids but barely touched protein, saying her daily Boost, the drink for seniors that has around 300 calories, was adequate.

She will drink, on this morning of last full day of her life. The Loser, at her request, holds a cup of water with a straw to her mouth and she takes a few sips. She still knows who the Loser is, he can tell, but doesn't really acknowledge him directly. By noon she doesn't drink but asks for swabs.

The swabs are little sponges about an inch and a half long by an inch on the end of a plastic stick. You dip them in water and bite on them to release the water or juice on them. They're a safe alternative to crushed ice, the Loser guesses, and you'd never see them outside a hospital.

For hours, the Loser dipped the swabs in a Styrofoam cup of water and puts them in his mother's mouth. She squeezed the swabs between tongue and pallet to get water. Her tongue was dark, almost black. After some dips, the swabs get gunky. The Loser throws them out and opens a new one.

Meanwhile, the Loser's mother wore one of those double plastic tubes in her nose for oxygen. There's a little box on the wall with water in it. The oxygen bubbles through the on its last leg from someplace beyond the wall to his mother's failing lungs. The bubbling is a steady, pleasant sound, soothing, like sounds from his parents' small koi pond.