One Mighty Owie on Top of Another

My innocence died in early October 1942.
Several brothers and sisters died still born or spontaneously aborted for my mom and dad.
My one surviving brother is lost to me.
My two surviving sisters are beyond reach.
Mom died on 9 Nov 71. She was buried on 11 Nov 71.
My Gram died in excruciating pain. It about killed my mom to watch this, Mom was 52 when she died, I was 31, her mom died when I was 22 and she, my mom was well...do the math if it matters. My 'little' sister was 11 when our mom died. My 'little' brother, was born when I was 12. I was his substitute mom, by mutual choice, and we were very close. I was the only one who could understand him for some time, after he was struck by a ballpeen hammer in a garage accident, when he was about 8 months of age.

Gus died on Nov 4, 2004.
We cremated him, me and this guy who had so many stories to tell me about his time in the service of his country. Things I dare not ever repeat.

I picked Gus up at the vet clinic on campus within minutes of his spirit going into the void, maybe into the blue black sky, crowded with stars that spun in the heavens as I groped my way to him, into the smoke of night he flew, I thought, as I watched the night swim in my eyes, that he had died...though I kept asking him with a voice in my guts to wait for me...he couldn't do it... you have to take my word for it, he had to leave and he had already said so...why would I lie about a thing like that, why hope when there is none. Only death and inexorability.
Yes, after we loaded him into a blanket and a box and wheeled him out to my truck I tried to think what I would do next...though I had no fixed plan, it was not yet so cold that I could not dig a hole...but I couldn't part with him yet...just couldn't...so...I took him to the crematorium... a couple of days later. But first...I drove him home and couldn't sleep or breathe very well. I thought of my gun and how much I didn't want to live anymore. Later. I did some dumb stuff, but who cares what. A day or so later I...
Drove to Ypsilanti with him in the back of the white pick-up truck that had been wrapped around a telephone pole, the one with the Jesus is #1 front bumper sticker right over that dent like a stupid band aid...he, my silent Gussie, in a box a bulky black dead Gussie, with glazed eyes that looked like puries, Gussimer who used to jump up and down when he felt joy, I mean spring six feet in the air, and to the roof in the car, when he saw we were going to the dog park or to see Tom...It is true that he once knew where we were going after having been somewhere as few times as twice, though now he knew nothingness more than anything, anymore, and I wished I was with him.
Once upon a time he was much more than sentient. He thought, he had a large vocabulary, he would sigh when I sighed, and then we would laugh... I mean I laughed and he would get that stupid look on his face wherein he would bare his lower teeth in what looked like .0 a mimicry of a grin, like when he did something he knew I didn't want him to do... but he'd look at me that way and make me laugh...he had a great sense of humor, the poop head, and we always made direct eye contact when we smelled skunk in the country and he'd do that dumb grin when I would say "skunk, pshewwwww"...he actually spoke to me before he died, pushed me over in the bed like he had never done before and then he snored at me in a very deliberate way, telling me, I spozed, a couple of days in retrospect, he would be permanently sleeping soon. I about shit when he bit me when I wouldn't let him lie down in the yard and not get up...and I rubbed his back feet so they would get warm...and made him get up and walk, and ... stuff...
there's more, much more...I can't bear to share it...right now.
Alison died in January but we scattered her ashes a short while back, on a beautiful day full of color,texture, contrast, sadness, love, joy and two many words that simply cannot encapsulate her perfection(s).
***
Did I tell you (I think I did.)?:

'If Alison were here she would laugh heartily at the tone and slant of what I’ve written, she’d tell me it’s a bit grand, she’d advise me to speak more simply. But she’s not here and this is what I have written about her:
To some of us she was more essential than an Act of Congress, if she was not actually, she was very nearly an Act of God, this self-selected fellow American Citizen.
Alison’s life, you see, was a wholey exceptional exercise in personal power. Both her personal and professional agendas were endless; remain ageless. They’ll always be empty of greed, avarice, or any of the other persistently deadly sins that afflict most of us and reveal a base pettiness. She was an avowed pluralist, not anti but certainly non-elitist.
This year, on the January night that she left us I posit that Alison, my favorite sister, may have been greeted by another feminist energy.
It’s not so outrageous, to my mind, that Sister Teresa gladly took Alison’s figurative hand in greeting, gave her a kiss, their energies combining to merge into the light -- only to re-emerge according to their sense of where they might be needed or wanted; perhaps where they might be sent. Radiantly. She may, in fact, be with us here and now, extending her usual warm welcomes, composing the natural illuminations as are an enhansement of this exquisite beauty…that of our apprehendable universe.
You may think that I’m trying to deify her, propose her for sainthood. No. Alison was of this earth and fully aware of its processes. She celebrated creation in so many forms, to know her was like intimately knowing a hurricane or a still ocean. Boundless energy in life, was Jim’s oh so wonderful bright star, Raphael’s mother.
[In Memory of Alison Mc Maugh 1927-2005 (Barbara J. Brown - 12 June 2005)]'

Yeah.

Gus is in two tins. Ashes and bone, I wouldn't let him grind the bones. Maybe I'll make a glaze and put it on an urn. Maybe I'll make a cask for him, mayhaps I'll use one of the hand made wooden caskets I have, one made by my brother and the other with brass straps over the humped lid, and affixed to the corners, lock hasps and handle all of brass...with a tray set into the piece...looks like a near exact copy of that one on the Antiques Road Show thing....
I don't know. Maybe I'll buy a plot for ananimal cemetary
have been thinking I will go to some townships etc to research the parameters of cemetariness...and open it to others, maybe.
Become a tender of feathered and furry creatures gone. Something. Call it Guston Brown Memorial Park. Have little ceremonies for the also aggrieved. It would not be the first on the planet. Maybe a lot of things.