Quietude

Giving up Vinnie was difficult but necessary, and he is in good hands.  Although Hamta doesn’t work for me anymore, she has sent me email updates and I did see a picture of him on her phone, on her last day here.  I miss him, but am enjoying the quietude.   Now it’s just me and the hummingbirds with a sliding door between us.   I doubt I’ll ever get another cat.  If I had gotten an older one like I intended, it would have been fine.  But I gave away everything cat related: the carrier, two dozen cans of food, toys….the works.  We’ll see  I just don’t want to worry about what will happen to the cat after I die; and caring for him is way more work than I am now capable of and sad to admit.   But watching the Decorah eagles and the Peregrine falcons on upstream is interesting and educational and makes me smile.

I’m trying to let go of all the jumping up I do even with help here.  I usually throw my own sheets in the washer so that by the time my helper gets here (Jeanie) it’s ready for the dryer.   But starting today I’m letting her do it all.  I have control issues, what can I say.  The pain just keeps ratcheting up; I really don’t know how much longer I can stand it.  My dad is not doing well and I worry so much about him.  And I’m so saddened that I just can’t get to him or him to me.  It’s not that people aren’t willing to take us; it’s that neither of us can be in a car that long.  Forty-five minutes without traffic.  Too much.

So, as summer creeps along I’m enjoying the sunshine from my couch but not feeling let down about it too much.  I think I’m just hanging in there and being grateful for what I do have.  I watched a documentary on Stephen Hawking last night.  It was about G-d and the Universe.  He is a firm non-believer, but as a scientist, not as someone who feels jilted because he has had ALS for over 50 years and is basically “locked in”, unable to communicate except via a computer complete with mechanical voice.   I haven’t a clue how it works but he is a world famous physicist with best selling books and goes on lecturing tours all over.  He expresses gratitude for being alive and making the most of it.  I find it fascinating, listening to him.  While he claims not to believe in a higher power (and makes a case against it), I find his arguments a bit conflicted.

For instance (and no, I’m not a scientist) he uses the example of a river and asks the question “where did the water come from?” He starts by stating “well, it could be from the rain” but where did the rain come from?  Clouds and moisture in the atmosphere, but where did that come from?  The sun and particles within, but where did that come from?  And on and on….until he got to black holes.  I have a limited knowledge of black holes myself, but as he explains it, he says they are so dense that everything, even time, disappears within.  He said a clock would actually stop working if sucked into one.  THEREFORE, he states, when the Big Bang happened, it happened when there was no time….so asking “When” did  G-d created the Universe, is pointless because it happened when time didn’t exist.  So G-d didn't have anything to do with it.  Fine.  I get that.  But it was at that point he stopped asking “where” did the black hole (or who created it) come from.    I found that interesting.  A black hole was responsible for the big bang but we still don’t know where the black hole came from.

I have way too much time on my hands.  Perhaps the pain makes me see things less clearly.  All I know is I’ve had way to many experiences in my life to not believe in G-d.  And if it’s not true, if there is no G-d, so what?  After I’m dead, it will either matter or it won’t.