For regular readers of Ashes From Burnt Roses, you
will remember my Black Labrador Retriever, Rosie.I have posted on her
through the years, especially on her birthdays.There are some great pictures and videos of
her through the years in those posts.It
tugs at my heartstrings to recall them.
Last week on the twelfth, Rosie turned twelve years
old.She is now our longest living
dog.For nostalgia's sake, here are the life
spans of our three dogs.
Birth
Death
Life
Span
Days
Sasha
Oct 5, 1991
July 18, 2003
11 Yrs, 9 Mths, 13 Days
4,305 Days
Brandi
Nov 4, 2003
Dec 1, 2013
10 Yrs, 27 days
3,681 Days
Rosie
Aug 12, 2014
Still Living!
12 Yrs, 7 days & Counting
4,390+ Days
We loved them all.
Rosie is still kicking!To my surprise.She had a bunch
of ailments as a young dog.She had Lyme
Disease.We were not as strict with her
on the heartworm pills, and after Covid we rarely took her to the veterinarian
unless it was an emergency.She was not
kept up on her shots, and frankly I wonder how good all those shots are.She had seizures last year but it’s been a
while since the last one.She had and
continues to have all sorts of benign growths, some very large.Right now she as a growth on the right side
of her chest about the size of three-inch-thick paperback, ten by six
inches.One large growth several years
ago was on her rear end, and it grew so big that it obstructed her anus.It had to be removed.The surgeon said it came out as one large ball
and it was all benign.We suspect that
large growth on her chest is benign also.
For the past year she has struggled with arthritis in her
hips.She hasn’t tried to run in over
six months.The video I posted on her
eleventh birthday may have been the last time she ran.It’s a struggle for her to go up and down the
stairs.Going up the stairs I have to
help her rear half by placing one arm under her belly and the other on her
backside pushing up and forward.Once I give
her a push she gets into a rhythm, pulling her back legs up the stairs as she
pulls herself with her front legs.We
took her to the vet in April and he did not recommend any medication.She also showed up with reduced kidney
function in her blood test.
At some point after her eleventh birthday, I started counting
down the months to her twelfth hoping she would get there.And she did!It sounds depressing but she remains a happy dog.
She, as all our pets, have been blessings to us.
We got her a floor mattress thinking she would prefer not to
climb onto the couch.In her doggy logic
she refuses to lay on the floor mattress.The best we could do was coax her to lay her head on it.
And guess who took over the mattress?Tiger!LOL.
She still gets on the couch, mostly by herself but sometimes
with a little help.
Being silly!
And with Rochelle.
In the snow in February.
Here at the Vet in April.
Here is her most recent picture on her birthday last week.
Rosie,
our Black Lab, turned eleven years old a couple of weeks ago, and I did not get
a chance to post anything until now.Rosie has slowed down.She has
these spongy lumps and nodules throughout her body, and I’m afraid one of these
days one of them will turn deadly.She’s
reached that age.On the positive side
she has not any of those epileptic episodes I mentioned on her tenth birthday.She had that one in July of 2024 and one in
December of 2024 which I never mentioned.But nothing since, and if they were a result of brain cancer I would
think that it would have really manifested itself eight months later.She is arthritic and has a hard time going up
and down stairs, but she still walks with me.I just don’t push her as much.I
really should take her to the vet for the arthritis.They have some pills that could help her.
If
you click on the “Rosie” tag at the bottom of this post it will pull up Rosie
posts through the years.
Here
is a little video I took a few days before her birthday of her sniffing out a
field.She is the sniffiest dog I have
ever had.She could literally sniff
every inch of that field.They say that
dogs sniffing is akin to humans reading the newspapers.If that is true, Rosie reads a Homeric epic
every time I take her to a field.
Here
is a picture from earlier this year of Rosie and Tiger on the couch together.
Lord,
I pray she makes it to twelve.St.
Francis of Assisi, St. Martin de Porres, and St. Guy of Anderlecht pray for
Rosie.
I’ve
been sick with what I think is the flu all week.Tuesday I felt rundown and did not go into
work.I did not have fever but my throat
was scratchy.I went in Wednesday
feeling a little better, thinking it was just allergies.Wednesday night I did measure a fever for a
couple of hours, and it was as high as 101.3F.I did not go into work on Thursday.I had a sore throat, sinus pains, and coughing but no fever.It seems that the fever was limited to that
two hour span on Wednesday night.
Thursday
afternoon my mother called me.She knew
I was sick.By Thursday afternoon my
voice was all hoarse and I sounded I had laryngitis. This is roughly the
conversation we had, though it was in Italian.
How are you feeling?
Eh.Could be better but not too bad.
You sound horrible.Are you sure you’re ok?
I’m as good as I could
be.
Are you taking anything?
What can I take?
Something for your
throat.You can barely speak.
I’ll see what I got.
Listen, if you go out can
you get me some grass seeds.I need to
put more down.
Sure when I go out.
I’d like them this
afternoon.Before the rain comes.
This afternoon?I don’t know if I’m going out this afternoon.
And if you go out, I’m
out of Mira Lax.Can you go to Costco
and pick me up?
Costco?
I don’t need it today but
I do need it in the morning.And if you
do go to Costco I need a bag of sugar and a bag of flower.
I don’t know if I’m going
to Costco.I don’t know if I’m up to
take you to your eye doctor appointment tomorrow.
Oh don’t worry about
that.Just get me some grass seed and
the stuff from Costco.
You say I’m sick and
sound horrible and you want me to go out for grass seed and to Costco?
Whatever you can do.
LOL,
I swear, no one cares about me.But in
fairness, my mother is generally overprotective.
So
I did reschedule her eye doctor’s appointment, and I’m trying to rest
today.Maybe by this afternoon I might
be up to going to get her grass seed.I
doubt I’ll be up for Costco.Being sick
stinks.
This is a story that happened to me in November of 2024,
and because of time I have not had the opportunity to post it.It was a heartwarming story that I wanted to
first post for Christmas, and then for Easter, but at each holiday I could not
get to it.You may have had a similar
experience to this.Nonetheless I hope
you enjoy reading it.
A
particular Thursday in mid-November—the week before Thanksgiving—was a rainy
day, and I drove to work and back in the rain.My car, a Toyota Corolla, drove fine.That night I drove over to my mother’s house, and on the return leg back
home the car stalled on startup but after a few cranks of the key it started up
and I got home.As a preface I should
say the Corolla was 16 years old with over 138,000 miles.It was up there in age, but Toyotas typically
go more than those amount of miles, and even my mechanic, Rafi who you will
meet further down, the month before said the car had a lot of life still in it.I guess he was wrong.
The
next day, Friday, the car would not start up at all.I tried, it just cranked but it would not
turn over.I called Triple A (AAA) to
either get a boost because I suspected the battery (it was four years old, and
it was the first really cold day) or get towed to my mechanic.The AAA service man charged the battery, but
it still just cranked without turning over.The AAA guy said it might be just the ignition, but he really thought it
should kick over.Finally, I had him tow
it to my mechanic.
The
mechanic finally got to my car Saturday morning and told me it had nothing to
do with the battery or the ignition, it was the fuel pump.OK, that was surprising, but it made
sense.If fuel wasn’t pumping into the
engine, it wouldn’t start.But I did
drive to and from work on Thursday with no problem.His estimate was going to be over $850 with
tax.Wow, ok, but the car wasn’t going
to be ready until Monday.
Monday
came and the mechanic said there’s something wrong.There must be a short in the electrical
system somewhere.The car won’t stay
on.What?He needed to find this short or the car was
not drivable.OK.I’m wondering where is this going.Now I’m getting panicky.I took Monday and Tuesday off from work
because I did not have any means to get there.The Wednesday before and the Friday after Thanksgiving I always take
off, so the week was accounted for, but come Monday I will need a car to get to
work.
I
checked with him on Tuesday.He said
there is something wrong with the engine.The cylinders are not giving any compression.What???This is getting ridiculous.He
now needs to do diagnostics to figure out what is going on with the
engine.What am I going to do?I still need a car.Rochelle is convinced he’s taking me for a
ride (ha, pun not intended) but I do trust him.He’s the owner, his name is Rafi, speaks with a thick Israeli accent,
and I’ve been going to his place for a long time.He used to have two shops, and for something
like 20 years I went to the other shop managed by his sister-in-law named
Gayle.Gayle was always straight with me
and honest.I had complete trust in
her.But during Covid they had to sell
one of the shops—the one Gayle ran—and do business from the one he managed
himself.Rafi is nowhere near as good a
manager as Gayle.His shop is always
hectic and chaotic.I had thought about
leaving and finding another place.I
even told him he should let Gayle run his place.He just smiled and said in his deep, staccato
Israeli voice, Gayle is good.
Once
I heard engine problems, I knew I could no longer trust this car, even if he
fixed it.All I could feel now was
chaos.The car I trusted for 16 years
was in turmoil, my available finances were not handy, and I needed to get to
work come Monday.And all week I had
been cancelling my mother’s doctor’s appointments because I didn’t have the
means to take her.And I’m racking up
this huge car repair bill for a car I will probably not drive again.I’m imagining this bill is going into thousands
of dollars.
Come
Wednesday morning, the day before Thanksgiving, I can’t locate the owner but
the woman who answered the phone said they are still doing diagnostics.OMG, at this point I’m a wreck.I have to buy a car and will probably have to
rent one to get to work because I’m not just going to buy any car, and I just
don’t buy used cars from a bad experience I had when I first got my
license.So, I called my mutual fund
company and withdrew enough for a good down payment.I knew exactly the car I wanted.I’ve wanted a Toyota RAV4 for a couple of
years.It was going to be my next
car.I researched prices that morning.
That
afternoon when Matthew got home from school, Rochelle, Matthew, and I went to
the Toyota dealer.As it turns out, it’s
lull time for them before the after-Thanksgiving, Black Friday storm.But they have been having their Black Friday
sales all week, and no one else seems to realize it. I am hooked up with this
really nice, young salesman who happened to go to the same high school that
Matthew is going to now.We’re having a
great conversation.They are four RAV4s
on the lot, none the color I would have wanted but the silver one was
definitely acceptable.After an hour of
going over the cars, making the deal, and another hour of getting the insurance
and plates (they were ready for the big Black Friday crowd), and another half
hour of getting the car prepped, I am literally driving a new car home that day.I was stunned.In the past it has taken me weeks to get a
new car.
As
soon as I bought that car, everything settled into place.The chaos morphed into order just like
that!I could feel heavenly peace.Thanksgiving was nice, and I loved driving
the new car and figuring out all the neat gadgets new cars have now.We had gotten Rochelle a new car last year
and she has all the electronic things that are so cool.I don't have as many in my new car but still
it was great synching the phone to the car computer and listening to my
podcasts and music.
But
there was still the old car to resolve.At this point I was dumping it (donating actually) so I wanted them to
stop working.I called several times
Friday but no answer, so I figured they must have taken the holiday weekend
off.
I
called Saturday morning for the heck of it and to my surprise the woman at the
desk answered the phone.They had been
open on Friday.Why didn’t anyone answer
the phone?More chaos!I wanted to say, get Gayle to run your
place.The woman said Rafi wanted to
talk to me.Yes, I wanted to talk to him
too.He’ll call me as soon as he
can.Urgh.More delays.Now I’m thinking about how I’m going to argue against this bill.If the car wasn’t starting because of a
short, then the fuel pump was never the problem.If the fuel pump was the problem, then they
caused the short when they put it in.Where the engine problem came from, I have no idea.It ran fine last time I drove it.I was resolved I would not pay for anything
above the fuel pump replacement.
A
couple of hours later, Rafi called.He
would like to speak to me in person.I
said I’ll be right there.I have a new
car!So on the way I’m getting my
arguments together in my head.No, I am
not paying beyond replacing the fuel pump.Paying for the fuel pump would be fair but no more.I am not paying for all the diagnostics and
whatever else they did.
When
I got there, the woman at the desk tells me she’ll go get Rafi, “He wants to
talk to you.”When he came in, he shook
my hand, gave me a nice smile, and said to me to come aside where I can talk to
you in private.Oh boy, I’m thinking he
wants me away from the other customers.
He
says in his thick Israeli accent, “we never found the problem.Your engine has no compression.”
“But
how can that be, I drove home before I gave it to you?”
He
says, waving his finger, “your car cannot be driven.”
“So
what do I owe you,” I asked.
“Oh,
you owe me nothing,” he said, speaking as if he acknowledged his inability to
find the problem.
“What???But you put in a fuel pump.I owe you at least that.”
“You
owe me nothing.Consider it from God
above.We all live under the same God.”
I
was stunned.My jaw was literally
hanging open.We then discussed having
the car towed away the next week.“That’s
perfect,’ he says.He shakes my hand
again and says goodbye.
I
could not believe it.Generosity can come
from all faiths.What a good man.(He still needs Gayle to run the place for
him!)Because of him, I upped my year
end charitable donations by a thousand dollars.I didn’t want to profit from that.His generosity was convicting.That was awesome.
Some
pictures.My old Toyota Corolla, sitting
in Rafi’s parking lot.
Its
final odometer reading.
A
little short clip of the Corolla being towed away from Rafi’s shop.
I
had a lot of good years with that car.It served me well.
Finally
a couple of pictures of my new Rav4.
I
hope to get some great years out of this car.
There
are so many blessings to count in this story.There was the blessing of getting home from work in that rain with a
flawed car.I will never know exactly
what went wrong.There was the blessing
of getting that Black Friday deal on Wednesday and driving the car home that
afternoon.No way would that car have
still been there on Friday, and I would have had to fight the crowd.And of course, there was the blessing of
being relieved of the debt by Rafi, bless his soul.And there is the blessing of being able to go
to work on Monday.
I
hope that was interesting.Say a prayer
for Rafi, and if you’re on Staten Island and in need of car work, go to Rafi’s
Auto Repair.
The
occasion of thinking on this poem has to do with a recent event in our
household that has, as it turns out, some correspondence to the event that
inspired the poem.In the wee hours of
Monday morning (overnight Sunday into Monday) I heard a big crash and ruckus in
the hallway outside my bedroom.I
initially thought that Matthew had gotten up in the middle of the night to go
to the bathroom and stumbled into something.Then I heard another crash and ruckus.I got out of bed to investigate.Tiger, our cat, was chasing a mouse that had gotten inside the
house.He was swiping and lunging at him
with incredible violence, and at one point got him under his paw.The mouse played dead—he was motionless and I
thought he was killed—but when Tiger lifted up his paw the mouse scooted
away.This was all on the upstairs bedroom floor.
For
the next day and a half Tiger was on the hunt trying to sniff him out and wait
for him to come out.When my wife got home
Wednesday afternoon at about one o’clock she found him just inside the
vestibule on the main floor, downstairs from the bedrooms, lying dead.There must have been a battle.I guess he ran to try to get out but Tiger
caught him.Here’s a picture.
Poor
little mouse. I thought him cute.I put
the body across the street at an unkempt yard where feral cats live.Tiger as a kitten came from there, nine and a
half years ago.
This
made me recall the Robert Burns’ poem, “To a Mouse,” where the poet felt a
compassion for a field mouse he had disturbed.
To a Mouse
By Robert Burns
On Turning her up in her
Nest, with the Plough, November 1785.
The
occasion of the poem was said to be Robert Burns overturning a mouse’s nest
while plowing a field.Both Burns’s
event and my event disturb a mouse’s life in November.His mouse I think lived, unlike the
unfortunate end of the mouse in my house.Both Burns and I connected with the mouse on a compassionate level.We both meditated on our own mortality from a
poor mouse’s life and fate.If Burns’
mouse lived after the scene, she will probably not survive the winter given the
disruption of the nest.
Some
of Burns’ diction is a bit hard to grasp.One can almost make out the Scots words but it would be helpful with
annotations of the Scottish.I don’t
know if the Scots used here is considered its own language, a slang, a dialect,
or a creole (probably a dialect), but it does mix English words with what I
take are Scottish versions of English words.Some words seem to be purely Scotts Gaelic (“cranreuch,” “daimen”) and
some are English words transcribed from a Scottish dialect (“sleekit, cowrin,
tim'rous beastie”).Wikipedia has what
it calls an English translation of the original Scots, which I’ll post here.
Little, sleek, cowering,
timorous beast,
Oh, what a panic is in
your breast!
You need not start away
so hasty
With bickering prattle!
I would be loath to run
and chase you,
With murdering paddle!
I'm truly sorry man's dominion
Has broken Nature's
social union,
And justifies that ill
opinion
Which makes you startle
At me, your poor,
earth-born companion
And fellow mortal!
I doubt not, sometimes,
that you may thieve;
What then? Poor beast,
you must live!
An odd ear in twenty-four
sheaves
Is a small request;
I will get a blessing
with what is left,
And never miss it.
Your small house, too, in
ruin!
Its feeble walls the
winds are scattering!
And nothing now, to build
a new one,
Of coarse green foliage!
And bleak December's
winds ensuing,
Both bitter and piercing!
You saw the fields laid
bare and empty,
And weary winter coming
fast,
And cozy here, beneath
the blast,
You thought to dwell,
Till crash! The cruel
coulter passed
Out through your cell.
That small heap of leaves
and stubble,
Has cost you many a weary
nibble!
Now you are turned out,
for all your trouble,
Without house or holding,
To endure the winter's
sleety dribble,
And hoar-frost cold!
But Mouse, you are not
alone,
In proving foresight may
be vain:
The best-laid schemes of
mice and men
Go oft awry,
And leave us nothing but
grief and pain,
For promised joy!
Still you are blessed,
compared with me!
The present only touches
you:
But oh! I backward cast
my eye,
On prospects dreary!
And forward, though I
cannot see,
I guess and fear!
Like
most translations of poetry, the beauty of the sounds of the language is lost
in translation.Still it helps.Let’s analyze the poem, but I won’t go into
the social and economic context of the times in which the poem was written.You can find that online if you want to.I’ll stick with the immediate poem.
There
are eight stanzas of six lines of iambic tetrameter, each stanza with an
unusual rhyme scheme of A/A/A/B/A/B.The
fourth and sixth lines—the lines with the “B” rhyme—do not have eight syllables
of a tetrameter line but either five syllables or four syllables.Why sometimes five syllables and other times
four?I can’t see a pattern, so perhaps for
oral articulation or perhaps just out of convenience.Nonetheless, I really like this stanza form.
The
divisions of the poem I see in this way.
Stanzas
one and two provide situation of the event.The poor mouse is in a panic, jabbering at the person who disrupted his
modest home, and scooting hastily about.The second stanza I would say is the statement of the poem’s theme, the
breaking of some sort of an unspoken agreement between man and nature.
I’m truly sorry Man’s
dominion
Has broken Nature’s
social union,
An’ justifies that ill
opinion,
Which makes thee startle,
At me, thy poor,
earth-born companion,
An’ fellow-mortal!
The
last two lines characterizing the mouse as a “poor, earth-born companion/An’
fellow-mortal” lift the little mouse, one of the most insignificant and
despised of animals, to an equality with humanity.
Stanzas
three through six characterize the impact to the mouse of the overturning of
her nest.The mouse’s home is in ruin;
she is now exposed to the winter elements; the plowed field has removed any
source of food.
The
seventh stanza connects the mouse’s futility with humanity’s, “In proving
foresight may be vain,” giving us that great line that is truly a memorable
quote, “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men/Gang aft agley” (“the best-laid
schemes of mice and men often go awry”).
The
eighth and final stanza, Burns concludes with a distinction between man and beast.The mouse is blessed because, as an animal,
he can only live in the present.He will
move on from this event and forget about it.The poet, on the other hand has memory that will bring back sorrow every
time he remembers such a catastrophe and, disrupted, will live in constant fear
of the future.It is interesting that
though not an overtly religious poem, a blessing is mentioned twice (third and
eighth stanzas).
This
is ultimately a nature poem, with man as an agent for disrupting nature for his
purposes.
There
are some great lines in this poem.I
already mentioned “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men/Gang aft agley” from
stanza seven.I would say the first four
lines are just so charming: “Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim’rous beastie,/O, what a
panic’s in thy breastie!/Thou need na start awa sae hasty,/Wi’ bickerin
brattle!”The first four lines of the
fourth stanza are so musical: “Thy wee-bit housie, too, in ruin!/It’s silly
wa’s the win’s are strewin!/An’ naething, now, to big a new ane,/O’ foggage
green!”As are the first four lines of
the eight stanza: “Still, thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me!/The present only
toucheth thee:/But Och! I backward cast my e’e,/On prospects drear!”
Such
a lovely poem.You can hear it read in
both the Scot’s dialect and a modern translation on this clip.
What
about my poor, little mousie?Well, though
I feel for his plight, I’m not exactly to blame.He intruded my space, and he faced a natural
enemy, Tiger!Behold the mighty hunter!
I
was wondering how I was going to get the mouse out.Tiger saved me the trouble.
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