Bella Ziemann 5/?/05 - 4/29/08

On November 8, 2006, Jeff brought home a stray cat he'd found while golfing with a friend at their country club home. The cat had been hanging around their property for a few days/nights, and when he went to leave, she jumped into his car. He stopped at the pet store on his way home to purchase the necessities, and when he got here, the girls had a pet!

I must admit, a cat wasn't my first choice--I'd always wanted another Siberian Husky, or a German Shepard when the girls got old enough to take care of another living creature. But our new addition stole my heart immediately. We named her Bella--that's Italian for beautiful--and she truly was.

Within a few days of her arrival here, her first visit to the Vet, she was adapting well to her new surroundings. (They approximated her age at 18 months old-barely out of kitten stage!) We attempted to find her owners, but no calls were answered. On the third day, she suffered a gran mal seizure and subsequently, another nearly one month to the day of the first. More talks with our Vet, and we deduced that she was epileptic, a rare condition for cats.

My immediate thought was that someone had let this beauty out their back door because of her affliction, with no regard to her safety and well-being. It broke my heart. I think I grew to love her all the more, knowing that she was in need of daily medication--which she obviously had gone without until we learned of her condition--and that she once had a home where she was loved by someone, somewhere. They let her down, and I couldn't do that.

Over the next year or so, it was a constant battle to find the right dosage of phenobarbital to keep her from seizing. Too much medication, and she was lethargic & lazy, too little, and the seizures returned. Much to my dismay, the attacks always came when I was alone with her--which in hindsight allowed the girls to have been spared the horror of the event. It was not a pretty sight to see.

Much communication with Dr. Paul, trial and error with dosing her, and always feeling like she had to be contained to one area of the house when we were gone for any length of time--I was at my wits end in terms of being certain she was comfortable. The seizures kept occurring, more frequently, and the administration of a tiny little tablet 2x daily was taking its toll on all of us. She was gaining weight, alot of weight, and the strain on her heart was apparent. I had to make a decision that was not an easy one to make.

Dr. Paul had offered me comfort in that we had done all we could to give Bella a warm and wonderful home in the time that we had her. But sometimes, our pets just don't have the strength or stamina to get on with their lives with a condition that hampered her every waking moment. I was reminded by the girls that we could continue dosing her, yet there were issues that they couldn't understand and the reality of letting her go was not one they could comprehend at 7 & 8 years old, either.

Yesterday, we made our last visit to the Animal Care Clinic and to Dr. Paul. I was confident in my ability to do the right thing by her, but the emotion crept up on me as we signed in at the reception desk. My baby in the carrier hanging on my shoulder was not going to be coming home with me ever again.

The staff there was extremely warm & kind. They understood exactly what I was going through as I'm sure they see these things regularly. My only problem was that this was not regular for me, and I was losing my composure, rapidly. We immediately were escorted into an exam room and the next half hour or so will live with me forever.

I held my large and sedate Bella in my arms as Dr. Paul induced the injection, and within a matter of a second, she was gone. My self control was shot and I cradled her, reminding both of us that she was now running and playing with others just like her, never to be traumatized by those awful moments here on earth again. I stroked her neck as she used to like, and I spoke to her in the low tones that always got her to purr with delight. I put her back on the table and folded her front paws in her most comfortable position and said good-bye.

My God, it was the hardest thing I'd ever done, until I got home and realized that in only one short hour, the girls would be home from school, and I'd have to break the news to them. I struggled with how to put it, and my mind raced with the variety of their potential reactions. This was honestly worse than the earlier moments I'd faced alone with her.

As I expected, the girls were broken hearted. They immediately burst into tears of loss, and I into tears of compassion. This reality was not what they wanted to know about, they simply wanted their Bella back with them. We cried tears together, and gradually they began to reminisce of playing with and caring for our Bella. Over the next few hours, I kept them very busy and with the help of some of their wonderful friends, they were occupied mentally from the torment of their loss. Then we got home from dinner at Cheeseburger in Paradise, and the tears started all over again. It was going to be a long night...

Over the course of sleep, Monika woke and was in tears at 2:00 am. She must have been dreaming of Bella-Pie and was visibly shaken. Jennifer tossed and turned over and over--she slept next to me on the couch and I was up most of the night. But they awoke this morning and while dishing out cereal and powdered sugaring waffles, we talked more about our loss. They each have a paw print of Bella's that was provided by the Vet just before she left us. And I reminded the girls that Dr. Paul said he was proud to know that these two young girls loved and cared so much for a very sick cat.

Off to the bus stop, and on to school. I'm sure at the end of their busy day, they will be emotionally drained. It will be a few days before the pain eases, and their memories become soft comfort. Our newly adopted stray, Bianca, will be of great strength in their grief, she had already stolen their hearts as the cat who could do all of the things that Bella couldn't. My choice to bring a new animal into our lives a month ago was one of the smartest things I'd ever done. We saved another lost animal from a life of uncertainty in a shelter, and she is thriving with us all.

Sadness, memories, recall of the torture Bella endured and how we desperately tried to help her all flood my heart now. As the Vet told me, we gave her a year and a half longer than she would've had on her own. And certainly, she was loved in a way that someone else wasn't capable of providing for her. Bella opened my heart to the world of cats, and she will forever be etched in my heart for the beauty that she brought into our lives.

Horrific

Yesterday was Valentine's Day--normally a time to consider that you are fortunate to be with the ones you love. To have and to hold them, to comfort & console them, to be grateful that they are with you.

Horror struck at the campus of Northern Illinois University this Valentine's Day, 2008. Life as so many knew it came to a screeching halt. One disillusioned soul, several dead victims, peril and mayhem for all involved. The pain sears through your heart, engulfing its vicious ugliness around an extended community.

We grow from young children with the wonderment of exploration. When we leave our parents and venture to college, we expect that events will change our lives. What is not anticipated is an event that changes the world.

Several of these massacres have occurred in recent time. Each more heart wrenching than the most previous, equally destructive in our ability to believe that the world is well. Something is wrong, ferociously wrong, and we are all searching for answers.

Ironically, I find the date of this tragedy to shed a sliver of light to it's morose existence. Perhaps, oddly, that this occurred on Valentine's Day sums up a simple equation.

What brought each of us into this world; what holds us together is one in the same. Quite simply, it is love. Love nurtures us from dependent infants into grown adults. It is uncompromising, unconditional, unequivocal. It is written that there is no greater gift than love.

So what of this distraught young man who thought so little of his life, his existence? What runs through the mind of one so bent on taking innocent lives with him in his quest to end his own? Was he in search of love? By voluntarily turning these families upside down was he in search of bringing with him, in his own demise, someone to come home with?

Experts in the field of psychology will examine and re-examine this case. Much will be written, posthumously, of the young man who seemingly lived an upstanding and successful life. Most of the points that I will read regarding these in-depth analysis will go right over my head. I am not of a capacity to understand the in-depth structure of the human mind. But I comprehend one thing.

This young man could not have felt love. He could not have grasped that, to the inner core of his being, there was something about him that could be loved. In my heart, I cannot fathom this sense of abandonment, but I can surmise that it is what he grappled with. There can be no other explanation than that.

He may not have experienced love, may not have believed he was worthy of love. He may have been in love and shunned. But whatever love he did not feel, he needed to know it was there. He needed to know he was loved.

No one lies in fault here. I am not placing blame in any one entity in a scenario where I am merely speculating my own hypothesis of such a traumatic series of events. All that I attempt in these words is the ability to equate how one of God's creatures could feel the depths of loneliness that would cause one to ride the path he took.

May God have forgiveness for this young man. May God have love to bestow upon him. May God somehow grant us the power to show love in everything we do, to everyone we meet. It is indeed the greatest gift of all. And we will fail as a society if we can't accept everyone whose paths cross ours to be a unique and qualified recipient of love.

We are the top of the ladder, the highest on the food chain. We're going to destroy ourselves from the inside out, if we don't work feverishly to end the hatred, end the disparity of our seemingly innocent actions without seeing the cause for positive reinforcement. Discord is evident, we need to reconnect.

It had been a long time!

When my oldest was born, I never felt the loss of my mom's death more deeply. The minute this little baby came into the world, I was dumbfounded at the depth of my realization of what a mother truly gives.

So my quest was to find the woman whom my mom had asked to be my Godmother 38+ years earlier. The closest I could come to a mother who was an only child. They were best friends through high school and beyond. I had little to go on, "Auntie Mary Lou" had long since moved west and remarried. All that I knew was her husband's name was Vito and he was a pit crew boss back in the late '80's out in Vegas.

It had been nearly 25 years since I'd seen her, and had only most recently spoken to her when I'd called to tell her of mom's passing 20 years ago. Memories of this wonderfully open-hearted woman with long flowing auburn hair, and her white pressed uniformed shirt, badge and holstered gun are vivid! (She was, at one time, a Cook County Sheriff's Deputy!)

It took me nearly 8 years, but thanks to this very platform that brings far to near, I found her on one of the school reunion sites. I read a new entry on their high school page one morning back in July, immediately pulled up a pay-per-use information site and $14.95 later, I had a variety of phone numbers & addresses for her & her husband.

I called several and hit the jackpot when Vito answered the phone. After asking a few questions, he had a few for me, then he gave me her number at work. When she answered, I asked if she was sitting down, and she replied: "Who died?"...

We talked for nearly an hour. It was like I'd just called her last week, except that we had a lifetime to catch up on. Back & forth we went on, her telling me of their life and that of her 6 children, me on what's happened since Jennie left us. They still live in Las Vegas so I told her that the first trip my husband would be making out west, I'd be tagging along. This past week, I did just that!

I cabbed it from Caesar's out to North Las Vegas & couldn't get into the community gate, so I walked into the clubhouse...spoke to a woman at the counter, and saw Mary Lou stand up and turn around behind her. We laughed & cried for a few minutes, hugging and looking at each other. One of those reunions you read about in the women's magazines!

Just before Christmas, she told me they had found a small but malignant tumor in her lung. She's been treated with Chemo & Radiation ever since, so the beautiful hair I so colorfully recall had been taken away--but the effervescence of her personality was shining through. She is vibrant and heartwarming, full of stories and advice. She is blissfully married to a wonderful man whom I've come to know on the phone, and also couldn't wait to see.

I spent the afternoon with them and later, with Jeff, met them for dinner at their favorite steak house away from the strip. It was a fabulous night together, and they welcomed my husband just as they did me, a few hours earlier. The evening was over all too soon. Vito hit a video poker game on the way out and won a few bucks, she and I waited for the boys outside the casino.

We planned to meet up for lunch on Saturday before I returned to Chicago, but our schedules didn't mesh. On the phone that morning, we spoke of how grateful we were to have each other again. The photos I'd brought were a trip into our pasts, and it was breathtaking for me to hear her tell the same stories mom had done over all those photographs so many years before.

I eagerly look forward to getting back out west in the next few months. Next time, she'll be over her treatments and will be full of the energy that has left her, for now. I know she will be that bubbly and over-the-top woman I've come to know and love again!

Even in the midst of adversity, love and the beauty of life triumph. I'm grateful to have been given this chance to share my mom's granddaughters---her legacies---with her friend who so welcomed us into her heart all these years later. It had been a long time, but it didn't feel like that...at all.

Like spinning the big roullette wheel, eh?

Ladies and gentlemen, fasten your seatbelts...

I haven't figured out why you should yet; but I'm hovering at the edge looking over and it seems an appropriate line to open with.

This is an experiment in will, skill and thrill. Hang on~ we'll see how far I can take it.

I can't promise daily posts, I can't promise weekly posts. I can promise, I'll write.

If you find the time, check back...I just might surprise myself!

Welcome aboard, I hope you enjoy the flight!