Summer '07 (the black hole) part 3: Josh Goes Through the Windshield

I got a call last Friday from my wife informing me that Josh, my younger brother, had been in a car accident. I found out various details over the course of the week: He had been asleep in the passenger seat (buckled in) when the vehicle in which he was travelling hit a parked car, he went through the windshield (figure that one out), the vehicle caught fire, etc. The police told him that had his seatbelt engaged, he'd be dead right now, because when the examined the car they found most of the engine sitting on his seat.

Poor Josh landed on someone's lawn in a suburb of Red Deer (missing 30 feet of pavement for 10 feet of grass, apparently), and woke up from his original nap in the hospital. His eyelid and one of his ears were nearly torn off, and his lip was split so badly that he tells me he accidentally stuck his tongue through the hole below his bottom lip. He took 130 stitches in his head and face alone. He also suffered multiple broken ribs and, most seriously, a lacerated liver. They're keeping him in the hospital because apparently there's a high risk he'll contract pneumonia in the next little while.

I'm very glad my little brother isn't dead. I'm also alarmed at how quickly and easily several tons of metal and glass gone awry can mangle the delicate bones and tissues of a human body (like Josh's or Eva's), and how, when that phone rings, you never really know what you're going to hear from the other end.

God(s), bless my family. You can have our blood, but please leave us our lives.

Summer '07 (the black hole) Part 2: Sox Passes Away

Sox, our beloved family pet of 15 years, was put to sleep at the New Minas Animal Hospital on July 31st, 2007. She was suffering from what we think was end-stage renal failure. Accompanying her at the end were Josh, Alex, and myself. She went quickly and (we hope) painlessly, but it was still sad for all of us. I always figured Sox would be one of those cats that live to be 20 or 21--she seemed so well preserved, like she was drying up as she aged, instead of falling apart--but I was wrong.

It was surreal (and really shitty) to see her lying there, limp, with her eyes open and glassy. I kissed her on her forehead (or the feline equivalent) and she smelled strongly of anaesthetic. We had to put her hindquarters in a plastic bag before we put her in her burial box for the ride home, because bodies get leaky when they're dead. We buried her out back of my mom's house, by the shed, in a 3 x 3 x 3 hole that Alex dug the day before.

It hurt my heart.

It's weird. When I was a child, I figured the stories my parents told us about "Cat Heaven," or "Dog Heaven" were just white lies meant to make us feel better. Now that I'm an adult, and my idea of the afterlife rests on the idea of my quasi-divine ancestors, in the distant future, having access to some technological means of locally or globally reconstructing space-time, I'm pretty sure that if people make it to Heaven, then the animals with whom we've developed meaningful and affectionate moral relationships probably do, too.

I'll never forget her elegant silhouette, her haughty, proud demeanor, and her charming, throaty, distinctly Siamese manner of catspeaking. I'll remember how we came home from Dad's house one weekend (I was 12) to find that our mother had got us a little gray kitten with white feet who was so freaked out by the sudden appearance of 5 scrambling, clutching, chattering children that she shat on the floor. She fell asleep curled up on my lap as I practiced the piano that night. I'll remember how every time I'd go off to college, once she started to get older, I'd find her right before I left and tell her that she'd better stick around until I got back. I'll remember how dense and heavy she was in her prime, for such a small animal, and how in the last 2 or 3 years of her life she seemed to weigh almost nothing, like she was made of paper.

She was a beautiful, exotic creature in a family of mutts. We'll all miss her.

Summer '07 (the black hole) part 1: Getting Married

Sorry I've been away for so long. It's been a very eventful summer, full of comedy and tragedy both. Since I wasn't able to keep the blog up-to-date while everything was going on, I'll go over some of the highlights in the next couple of posts.

1. THE WEDDING

Getting married was pretty cool. Shouts out to Josh Spicer, as well as Jeremy and Josh MacEachern, for hosting a bachelor party that would make a rock star blush, and to Marc "The Face" Harper for his Moncton street-savvy and his willingness to take one for the team (he phoned his girlfriend at 4 in the morning to ask her where to buy booze, and she was furious). I'm sure the Colonial Inn has seen worse debauchery, but this blogger sure hasn't.

The ceremony was short and tasteful, lots of family members and dear friends were in attendance, and the weather was cooperative. Props to Frederick Turner for giving us permission to read his unpublished poem, "Epithalamium," and to Robyn's cousin Pearce (or Pierce, I'm not sure how he spells his name) for his bagpiping skills. My only complaint lies with our young, inexperienced minister, who probably should have told someone he had a beef with Aristophanes' story of the stuck-together-people at some point before Cat got up and read from Plato's Symposium. Original sin is a doozy of a theological concept, but it was an unnecessary and inappropriate downer to remind everyone, mid-wedding and without warning, of how unhappy God is with the humans he created. I don't think that a wedding is exactly the time to sermonize about divine disappointment. Or maybe, as Robyn suggests, he was just being unclear. Since I don't expect to see him again anytime soon, we may never know for sure.

I'm a firm believer in the felix culpa myself. The fall describes the unavoidable shame and difficulty of human self-consciousness. If it weren't for original sin, we'd still be relatively ignorant lower animals.

The reception was a great time. Depeche Mode's "Somebody" was a good choice for the first dance, Harper was a great MC, Charlie's speech was a riot, and Matthew Hunter tore up the dance floor. So did my drunk mom, whose technicolour yawn outside the reception hall has become a MacEachern family legend. Other highlights included Chantal's moving slideshow, and the Spicers' timely bottle of Dom Perignon. The MacEacherns and the Eddies were well-represented, as were the Hunters, the Parkers, the CK crew, the Flophouse/STU almuni, the Sackvillains, and we even had a few stragglers left over from the original Berwick school.

Our honeymoon was nice and relaxing. We saw Charlottetown and Brudanelle, stuffed ourselves with lobster, and slept late for 5 days. We went canoeing, and fought the whole time, we got drunk and watched Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and we had a lot of sex. Also, we saw a raccoon climb down a brick wall face first in broad daylight to get into the garbage cans at a snooty country club. Thanks to the Hunter family for looking after Baby Jack while we partied it up in PEI.

It's good to be in love.

Overall, a good time was had by everyone. It was a shame that some of the folks we invited couldn't make it, but c'est la vie. The people who could come just had to party 33% harder.

(If I forgot anyone or anything, I apologize. Don't be afraid to brow-beat me for it in the comments section of this post).