The Crane

First, Annie died. I got a short e-mail from Mom a couple weeks back letting me know what had happened. Sitting at my desk reading the words--"Laura had to put Annie to sleep last night. She had a huge cancerous tumor. Laura is broken hearted."--the world went ever so slightly askew for a moment, and it actually hurt a bit having it so. I mean actual physical pain, but dull and lasting only a second or two. It was sort of like what happened last fall when I splurged at lunch and bought myself a gyro combo from Two Choppers and took it back to my office. I was eating it and mindlessly surfing the net when I bit down on something small, hard and not remotely gyro-related. So I stopped mid-chew and started fishing around in my mouth with my tongue trying to corner the little piece of what-the-hell-was-that when I discovered that one of my teeth had been reduced to a Ginzo-sharp shard. A mini enamel stalactite, that's all I had left. I must have swallowed the rest of it, along with the mystery gyro rock. And then, well, I just had myself a little freakout, right there at my desk. Why had my tooth broken so easily? Was I falling apart? Was I really that fragile? For Christ's sake, a fucking 5 dollar gyro had taken a chunk out of me. How was I going to make it through the rest of the day, let alone the week or month or year?

That's how I felt when I got the news that Annie died. Like a little part of me was suddenly, irretrievably and without warning, gone for good. And this was not even my dog.

So then, Amy's Grandmother died. Amy was at work when I took the call from her mother, who told me that Gi-Gi had died in her sleep and the funeral was going to be Tuesday or Wednesday. I was virtually silent through the entire phone call. What an idiot. Here was Laurie, telling me that she had just lost her mother, and I didn't say so much as "I'm sorry," or "how are you holding up?" or "is there anything I can do?" I guess I didn't know what I could say that wouldn't sound phony. So I didn't say anything, and hung up the phone feeling sad and stupid, but not surprised. I mean, she was 96 years old. But she was tough as nails, and sharp as a tack right up until the end. Just two weeks ago she gave me no end of grief for driving home from Wisconsin in the middle of the night instead of staying over and leaving in the morning. Sorry Gi-Gi. If I had only known, I would have stayed, and insisted that we play a few hands of Sheepshead before we all went to bed.

The funeral is tomorrow. Today at work I was looking out my window thinking about two photographs: One of Alex (who is now 16) as a baby curled up next to Annie on the floor of my sister's old house, the other of Grandma Gi-Gi sporting a cowboy hat that her great-grandson Cameron got for Christmas this year. I don't know why I thought of those two pictures. Maybe just because they're particularly cute and silly, and thus memorable. Anyway, I was thinking of these photos and half-watching the construction going on across the street from my office, where our city's new art museum is slowly coming into being. There is a huge yellow crane in the middle of the construction site, easily 100 feet tall. A skinny ladder runs all the way up to a small compartment at the top of the crane where the controller must sit everyday, although I've never seen anyone climb up or down. I was staring at this crane, as I'm sure I've done dozens of times before, when I noticed a fuzzy speck of green about halfway up the right side. I moved closer to the window, but still couldn't make out what it was exactly. So I walked downstairs and across the street and got right up to the fence surrounding the construction site. It was cold today but the sky was a sharp blue, against which I could easily make out a small green furry stuffed monkey attached to the side of the crane about 60 feet up.

God only knows what possessed the controller (assuming it was him) to put that monkey up there. Maybe it is his trademark, attached to every crane he operates. Or maybe it ended up there because of a teenager's prank or a dare or some other meaningless gesture. Whatever the reason, it made me smile just to figure out what it was. It also made me think that death may be the only thing that gets more confusing the closer you are to it. But maybe I'm wrong about that.