I’ve spoken a lot about my grandfather here, and he’s coming to mind again recently. Mainly because November 15^th would have been his 95th birthday. Now 95 is nothing to blink at, but I’m still coming to the realization that he has passed away. And the grief still comes in waves, albeit I tend not to drown in them anymore.

Maybe like seven years ago, he was experiencing some hip pain in his left side. Well, not really pain but more weakness. Now this was a bit concerning because nothing about the man was weak, but not in a muscle-daddy way. More like an old-school way. This man had old-man strength. So much so that he was still living independently, driving, and cleaning out his gutters well into his nineties. My grandpa was also a cowboy, which goes hand in hand with his profession. I’m not sure I mentioned this before, but he started out as a large animal veterinarian fresh out of school. Later after making some cash vaccinating herds of cattle, he bought a practice in town and mainly focused on small animal.

Every year he would go on something called ( and I am not making this up) The Buckeroo Ride. This was a yearly horse ride through the Black Hills. I think it would take about a week and my grandpa loved it. He even went on it the last year of his life, but not on horseback and in a trailer with the other OG’s.

It was on one of these rides where I think his horse slipped and both of them fell. He never complained too much, but when he was back home it was giving him some trouble. Ever in good spirits he started rehab to gain some strength back, but I think it never fully healed.

Turns out, this particular hip continued to bother him. So, a couple years ago he went to the doctor, and they took a biopsy. Cancer.

Now remember that this man was already in his nineties and had no intent of living a smaller life. So after talking about attacking it with medicine with his doctor, he declined. Now this was a unpopular opinion in my family, but I was with him. We all know that chemo sucks. But his doctor also mentioned treatment with monoclonal antibodies. I didn’t know much about this, but apparently, they mimic your natural antibodies and can be made to specifically target certain cells without the ill effects of chemo.

He declined them all. And looking back, I get it. The cancer was located in his hip bone and he and his doctor agreed to keep an eye on it, but my grandpa went with a quality of life in his final years. In the end, he passed away alone in his home. At his funeral I was talking with his girlfriend and she mentioned how they had had a conversation that night. Additionally, my aunt had talked to him the same night, while myself and my kiddo talked to him the night before. He passed away overnight, in his home. My aunt thinks that the cancer had spread in his body, because his lungs were filled with fluid. But we’ll never know.

But I am glad that for his last few years he lived life on his own terms. But this November is sad.

Now something you would expect with a vet’s grandkid is growing up with pets. And I did! I had the privilege of growing up with first an orange tabby cat, then a sweet calico and then finally we got a dog! A border collie mix named Rosie. It was probably a bit easier for my parents having these pets because we never had to pay for vet care. And in the sad moments when the animals were at the end of their lives, my grandpa who they all know would come over and put them to sleep. Sad now that I’m thinking about it, but at least in their final moments they were with someone they knew.

Anyways! Since growing up a vet’s grandkid I’ve always been fond of animals, when I was a younger girl I was head over heels in love with horses.

But now that I’m an adult I find myself owning pets throughout my life. At first in my early twenties, I had a black and white Pitbull named Radi. She lived for fourteen years and then died of natural causes. But about halfway through her life I adopted a stray cat and named her Étoile. Her name comes from her eyes, they are the lightest blue eyes I’ve ever seen in my life on a cat, like the light blue of a distant star.

Here I am trying that viral hack of putting my cat in my backwards hoodie’s hood. She did not take to it! Since she was a stray when I found her, unbeknownst to me she was also pregnant! She appeared on my door step in June and by August she was having her first litter of three kittens, two girls and one boy.

I was with her during delivery, which was incredibly scary because it was the first time I have ever witnessed a cat give birth! Thankfully because of my grandpa and some research before I know what to expect and helped her. I can remember walking into her room (we kept the dog and cat separate at first) and she was in distress, meowing and pacing. I quickly put the dog back in her kennel and attended to my poor girl. She only had three kittens and all of them survived. I found two homes for them, one with the neighbors across the street and the two ‘twins’, the two white kittens went to a friend of a friend.

Recently I was at a friend’s house, she’s mainly a birth doula here in town and she was telling me how her cat recently gave birth. It’s a similar story, but since she has worked with humans giving birth for so long, so knew exactly what to do with the cat! Honestly I was a little jealous, because I wish I know how bloody and scary birth can be. But like my Étoile, everything ended going well with her cat (now they are both fixed!). So a happy ending for both. Oh these little nuggets, how they tug on our heartstrings.

Washington in all his glory. I’ve actually stood atop Mt. Rushmore in high school.

I’ll have to go home soon, and I’m pretty nervous about it. I haven’t been back in a number of years, in fact I’ve made it a point to not go back. Why? It’s complicated.

I really never felt like I fit in the Dakotas, either that or I have a strong sense of wanderlust. But for a long time if I was honest with myself I think I was running. Running away and it’s not like my childhood was terrible but I just never seemed to fit or I never really like the type of people I was with.

That has gotten worse over time, especially in the recent years where America has elected an orange Cheeto to the highest office in the land. More than just a Cheeto, he’s a dangerous Cheeto and it makes me feel even more uncertain about going home. American culture (from the outside) has seemed to become more cruel and dangerous since I lived there. I was talking with a friend recently, a wellness coach here in the major city where I live, and she agreed with me. Now, I have the privilege of light skin so I know that my skin tone shields me from various unpleasantness. But I don’t know how I would feel going back if I was a person of color.

Marj was saying that there’s a retreat she wants to go to in Arizona, but with the recent air collisions, government agency layoffs, and overall violence she was feeling pretty scared. And I totally get it. I’m not sure if I should trust the headlines, or if finally getting out of that culture and looking back in, I’m like “oh hell no”.   

But I have to go back, my grandfather always showed up for me, and now I want to show up for him. He was a gentle man, but tough as nails. He passed away sort of suddenly.

One day in January I gave him a Whatsapp call and when he answered he was in the hospital, a complete surprise. It turns out that he had a lot of fluid in one of his lungs. But what struck me the most was that he looked different, gaunt. His skin has a off-color tone and it seemed like his eyes were sunken a bit too much in his skull. Turns out if you go to the hospital in your mid nineties it’s not a good sign. Thankfully he was discharged (drove himself home!!) and then passed away in his home in late January. I’m grateful of that, and the fact that he didn’t suffer in the hospital hooked up to machines.

Anyways, I’m sorry that this post was sad. A sad thing happened, and writing about it has always helped me to process the feelings. I promise the next couple of posts will be much lighter and more enjoyable.  

So maybe I’m not technically a vet’s kid, but I’m a vet’s grandkid. My grandpa was a veterinarian ever since he graduated from Iowa State University way back in the 1950s. He started out his practice as a large animal veterinarian and found his first ever job working in the Dakotas vaccinating heads of cattle for the ranchers out there. He had so many stories of being called out in a snowstorm to help a birthing Heffer deliver, or for some other emergency. He even served in WW2 as a meat inspector for a brief time. But it was his time spent out on the ruthless winter prairies working with cattle and horses where he made his money, enough to switch his practice over to small animal and buy a building.

But this was long before my time. By the time I came around his practice was long established. In fact he had his practice long enough by the time I came around that I could hear stories of my mother growing up being forced to work in the clinic on the weekends. I think all four of his kids worked on the weekends there, all the way up to high school. I can recount my aunt telling me stories that he made her work, much to her dismay as a senior in high school.

He was one of the initial veterinarians in town, and turned into one of the OGs by the time he retired. Thankfully I was able to grow up going to his practice and it was a defining time in my young life. After his kids all grew up, he hired a lovely older women named Carmen to work the front desk, and I can distinctly remember her greeting me every time I came in.

He also had an in-wall aquarium with a ornate gold border and I loved watching the fish swim around. But the clinic always had a smell, obviously right? But it was a mix of cleaning chemicals and dogs (mostly due to the kennel in the back). It’s scent always burned the inside of my nostrils when I would first step into his practice.

One horrifying part of his clinic were the preserved ring and tape worms he had sitting in jars of formaldehyde. He even had a one-eye stillborn kitten. I was always drawn to his specimens but also repulsed.  

When I was very young he also had chickens in the back. Now I’m not sure if I can remember the chickens on my own, or if I can remember being told about the chickens. But interestingly enough the chickens came up in conversation the other day with my optometrist. Apparently, I have a small scar on my retina. I was surprised when the doctor asked me if I grew up with chickens, and I was like, “Yeah, actually. My Grandpa had them behind his vet practice”. I guess the type of scar I have has something to do with chickens? Anyways, it was like a lightening flash of nostalgia when I had to talk about those chickens again.

It’s kinda hard to write this, because my grandpa just passed away this week. So it’s a really bitter sweet thing to recall my early days at his practice. I’ll talk more about him later, he really was something else.