On Love, Loss, Communication, and Rock & Roll

This is the story of my friend Artemus, who left us the other day. He was a big blonde, kind of like Robert Plant (formerly of Led Zeppelin), only he was more of a fan of a certain left-handed guitar virtuoso from Seattle who appeared in a Purple Haze and left this world prematurely.

The leave Artemus took was rather permanent, and it came as a bit of a shock. We should have seen it coming sooner. The signs were there for years, but we kind of ignored them, hoping they'd amount to nothing. As is true in other situations in which you ignore the symptoms but the underlying problem doesn't go away, manifestation of Artemus' frailty became more prevalent.

In that way, our behavior reminded me of that of our culture. It is so easy to see - right in front of our faces. But the truth is too awful to contemplate. It couldn't be that Artemus' health was deteriorating rapidly, could it? Just as it can't be that the earth's living systems are all in decline. But Artemus was failing before our eyes. And every study conducted by credible scientists (by that, I mean those who aren't employed at the pleasure of corporations, their government proxies, or based on their ideologies) indicates that species are vanishing, indigenous cultures are vanishing, so-called "minor" languages are vanishing, polar ice is vanishing, and the global climate is warming with catastrophic consequences, all due to the behaviors of the world-dominating culture. All these things are demonstrably true. As with all ugly truths that defy our belief systems, we chose not to stare too long at the physical degeneration of our friend Artemus.

A big difference between our family's behavior and our culture's behavior is that Artemus was on a one-way trip with a foregone conclusion. We don't HAVE to allow our culture to destroy the world, but we need to face the fact that it is our own behavior causing the destruction.

But I digress. Artemus was our feline companion. His life came to an end 3 weeks short of his 21^st birthday, which is pretty remarkable. Our shared experience was as complex as one might expect from lives as intimately intertwined as ours were for such an extended period. There are too many anecdotes to relate. OK, just one. Artemus was named after a character in the television serial "The Wild, Wild West". It seemed like a good idea at the time. It has required innumerable repetitions, explaining to the too-well-read that Artemus was a HE, and HE was NOT named after a goddess, he was named after the clever, gadget-wielding, disguise-employing Artemus Gordon, James West's sidekick. Made perfect sense to us.

We had the sort of communication characteristic of very long relationships, the kind in which each participant puts more emphasis on listening than on being heard. I think you all know of this phenomenon. We communicated despite the species barrier that separated us. We loved Artemus, and it was apparent that his devotion to us was of a depth you could only describe as love.

We did have a couple of weeks to reconcile ourselves to the onward-rushing inevitability of mortality, from which there was no escape. It wasn't like we'd never been through this drill before (with both human and non-human family), but this is the sort of experience for which practice definitely does NOT make perfect. We did have enough foresight (there is something to be said for the wisdom gained by experience) to spend some extra time with Artemus as his departure approached. We had a chance to say our farewells, painful as they were. Although his mind was clouded by dementia and distorted by his infirmity, in a moment of lucidity, Artemus said to me "If I don't meet you no more in this world, then I'll meet you in the next one, and don't be late. Don't be late."

I understood. I'll be there when the time is right. Until then, I'll carry him in my heart.