Charlie Understood

        Charlie Understood

          In Memory of Charlie

October 24, 2011 – October 17, 2026

 

        Your Honor, members of the Jury:

        I plead guilty to the charge of first degree felicide.

        Premeditated.

        This is my testimony,

        This is my confession,

        Here are the facts,

And I will try not to weep.

 

        It started when Charlie went pear-shaped.

        We thought that kitty was just turning fat

        But his ribs and spine stuck out,

His belly bulged with fluid,

He looked like both Santa and Gollum.

He looked pregnant with death.

 

        He hated the drive to the vet, he always did.

        There the vet withdrew blood

        And 400 milliliters of clear fluid.

        When the veterinarian met me, she leaned upon the wall,

She slipped down, she wrapped arms around her knees

And she told me the bad news that I half expected.

Heart failing, kidneys failing, thyroid failing.

Any drug for one would make the others worse.

        There was nothing to be done.

        No medical miracle despite all our human magic.

        No cure, except the cure for everything.

 

        Euthanasia, we humans call it.

        Mercy killing, we call it.

        For I loved him, and I love him still

        Though I, his killer,

Have a strange way of showing it.

 

For I am a jealous human.

How dare his body conspire to kill him?

That’s my job.

 

        You want Charlie stories? Here, then:

        I took him on a leash once.

        Halfway down the block a dog barked

        So he broke loose and ran home.

 

        One stormy midnight, he jumped onto my bed

        So I said, “Ain’t it great, Charlie?

        Out there it’s cold and wet and windy

        But in here it is warm and dry and still.

        Ain’t it great to be here in my house?”

        He sat up and gave me a look

        As if to say,

        “Your house?”

 

        After the vet’s diagnosis, I spoke to him.

        I told him that he was dying, soon.

        I told him about euthanasia,

        The fine print on the cat-human contract.

        I asked him if that was okay.

        He gave me a fierce and weary look, as if to say

        “I’ve had enough. Do what you will.”

        For Charlie understood.

He was a Cat.

 

        On Monday I called for a home visit

On Saturday, a week before his 15^th birthday.

I considered waiting that extra week

Just to be neat, but that’s human thinking, not cat

And he was suffering, and so were we.

 

The lady who came was calm and gentle. So was he.

Your Honor, I paid her 830 dollars.

500 for the killing, 300 for the cremation, 30 for the urn:

The price of a cat’s life.

       

        His death was as good as death ever is.

        My daughter held him and I fed him from a tube

        To distract him from the bite of the needle.

        First ketamine for the little sleep

Then phenobarbital for the big sleep.

        He drifted off lapping churru.

        He died with cat yogurt on his chin

        And his tongue blebbing out.

        He looked beautiful, regal, and goofy.

        He died as he lived.

 

        Your Honor, members of the Jury:

Of course I mourn.

Of course I weep.

Here are my tears.

 

        But I do not regret. I would do it again.

I am sorry only that I am not sorry.

        So I throw myself upon the mercy of the Court.   

Cold War Stories, 3 of 3: Dragon's Hoard

         3. Dragon's Hoard

 

When Mikhail Gorbachev disappeared, I got a bad case of coup flu. For three whole days I held my breath. I would go up to people and ask, "What do you think?" and they knew what I was talking about, because they too had coup flu. For three whole days the world watched the past and the future play chess. We hovered, suspended, over the abyss. We saw ourselves within it, screaming, burning, dying, but we did not have time to be afraid. We did not fall; we flew.

         Then suddenly the crisis was past, the coup had failed, the Cold War was over, our deaths had died.

         Days later, driving home under the influence of the full moon, I was still grinning, still laughing at nothing in particular. The attendant at the toll plaza had headphones on, and he was dancing. 

         I parked my car at home, then climbed up to a park atop a nearby hill. I sat on a stone bench there, and I stared at the city. Downtown was close by, for long before I had moved to within the second circle in the explosion maps, where death would be within milliseconds. I never intended to envy the dead.

         It was night. The city's lights were on.  White incandescent lights, blue mercury lights, orange sodium lights. The city at night was... beautiful. It looked like a dragon's hoard of citrons and sapphires. I gazed at the city at night. I said to myself,

         "Maybe we'll live after all."

Cold War Stories, 2 of 3: On My Own Terms

         2. On My Own Terms

 

As I grew up, my father and I often argued, for we liked to argue. During one such argument, he waved a hand dismissively and said, "Ahhh, you'll become a Conservative in your old age!” Stung to the quick, I retorted, “If so, then it shall be on my own terms!” Since then I've seen that we were both prophetic. He knew me, and I knew me.

As an example of those terms, I fondly remember when I shut him up. He had the bad habit of referring to someone's "good intentions" with an audible sneer. Finally I had enough of that. I told him, "I get it. Intentions are no excuse for bad results. I get it! People have the responsibility to be competent! I get it! But do not insult good intentions as such... or this conversation is over!" My dire threat made him stop talking, and from then on he never sneered at good intentions.

 

Cold War Stories, 1 of 3: Playing Chicken With Earl

         1. Playing Chicken with Earl

 

My father, Earl Hellerstein, told me this story when I was a young lad, many years after it happened. It was a home-front war story. During World War 2, my Dad served on a secret mission. His mission was to truck supplies for the armed forces. He did not know why he was trucking those supplies, for he did not need to know; but he did need to know what those supplies were, and where he was going. The truck he drove was full of high explosives. His destination was a secret weapons laboratory, in a small town in the American Southwest, named Los Alamos.

 

He did not know then, but he knew by the time that he told me this tale, that he was working for the Manhattan Project. Young me hung upon his words, wide-eyed.

 

It was a long drive, through boring empty desert. An approaching driver chose to break the boredom. He shifted into Dad's lane and stayed there. And stayed there, and stayed there. He was playing chicken!

 

Decades later, I blurted, "What did you do?!"

 

My father mimicked holding a steering wheel. He said, "I did nothing at all. I kept driving, as if nobody was in my lane, and  pretty soon, nobody was."

 

Young me had two realizations.

 

First, that the other guy (and it was certainly a guy) made five mistakes:

1. He played chicken...

2. ... with an Army truck...

3. ... filled with high explosives...

4. ... for the Manhattan project...

5. ... driven by my Dad.

 

The second realization was that it's a miracle that I exist!

 

 

She Knew

           She Knew

          In memory of Sherri Beth Hellerstein Krynski

          January 12, 1956 – May 11, 2017

 

Don’t worry, I’m well enough. So is Hannah.

We’re dancing as fast as we can.

Little things help: friends, family, hugs.

Black humor helps:

“Why do skulls grin? Wait and see.”

Poetry helps, because it’s an angel,

And poetry helps, because it’s a vulture.

Best of all, small work helps;

The tiny day-to-day routines

That sustain the illusion of normality.

But Sherri was part of those routines

And routines are in calendar time

And calendar time is made of paper,

But catastrophe time is made of fire.

 

One small request. Don’t say you’re sorry.

Say you’re sad, say you grieve, say you mourn. Me too.

But don’t say you’re sorry. You didn’t kill her.

Heart failure killed her, triggered by septicemia,

Plus diabetes, plus spinal stenosis, plus sleep apnea,

Plus a weak pancreas, plus diabetic sores on her feet,

Plus infection through those sores, and on and on.

She was so full of life, and so full of death.

So no, you aren’t sorry. Me neither. We are innocent.

I’m sad, I grieve, I mourn

But I’m not sorry.

 

What was Sherri to me?

Wife of twenty years, mother of our daughter,

Lover, partner, guide, best friend

Inspiration and bad influence.

Nowadays, whenever a traffic signal turns yellow

I ask myself, what would Sherri do?

Shall I slow down, like me, or speed through, like her?

 

She sped through life, and she dragged me with her.

So often, after trouble and labor and my kvetching

She took me to see some human marvel or natural wonder;

A play, a landscape, a cityscape, a forest

And thunderstruck, I’d say, “I wouldn’t have been here.”

Meaning, without her.

 

And now I am without her.

The presence of her absence haunts me.

Sometimes the ground beneath my feet opens up,

And I fall, and in free-fall I ask, what happened?

How could this be?

Then I recite times and diagnoses to myself

And gravity returns. It’s like hitting an air-pocket.

 

Once the three of us were riding an airplane

And it hit an air-pocket

And for several eternal seconds we were in free-fall.

Hannah was laughing at something just then

And she kept on laughing. That’s Hannah.

I, showing great presence of mind,

Pulled the claim check out of my shirt pocket

And let it go in front of me

And watched it float in zero-gee.

That’s me.

Whereas Sherri, unlike goofy daughter and weirdo husband,

She had a normal human reaction to falling out of the sky:

She screamed.

 

Then the plane’s wings grabbed air

And cabin gravity returned

And the claim check fell into my lap

As inevitable and incredible

As the punchline of a joke.

Is life a joke?

 

Consider her Mother’s Day cake.

By Mother’s Day she was dead

But two weeks and a day before

She insisted that the next day was Mother’s Day

And she wanted a cake. I didn’t know,

Hannah didn’t want to say no

So we gave in, and I went out, and I got a cake

With “Happy Mother’s Day” written on it

And I brought it home and I put it in the fridge.

The next day we learned that, oops,

We were two weeks early

But we ate that cake anyhow.

Two weeks later Hannah and I realized

That not only did she con us

Out of a cake and a Mother’s Day;

She conned Death itself.

How do you argue with a woman like that?

 

She must have guessed that she was dying.

We all three knew, but not really.

We all three knew that she’d die before me

But we thought eventually, not just yet.

 

Our cat Charlie sensed it.

When Sherri came home that Friday,

Exhausted and spine hurting, she only wanted to sleep

Why that cat turned needy and vocal. Meow, meow.

Every time I opened the door to the bedroom

He’d zip past me, leap onto the bed,

Rub against her and purr real loud.

He was trying to comfort her.

He knew!

 

Sherri knew for sure by late Wednesday.

She told me, but I was in denial.

Her last words to me

Urgent, slurred, repeated three times

So I could understand:

“She’ll be all right,”

Meaning Hannah.

 

Later that evening we found her, eyes half open.

Breathing heavily. Unresponsive. We called 911.

I was still in denial, until the paramedics

Zapped her heart to restart it. Twice.

The cats stared, wide-eyed, and so did I.

They dragged her down the stairs and out the door

And she never returned.

 

I followed them to the hospital.

The intensive-care doctors struggled,

Then they took me aside to tell me the bad news.

She won’t revive. CPR pointless. Death in minutes.

So I went in and I held her hand.

Her pulse slowed to a stop.

I didn’t notice just when.

Then they shut down her breathing, and that was that.

 

The viewing was two days later.

Sister-in-law Michelle, ever capable

Herded Hannah and me, still in shock, to the hospital.

The chaplain led us to the room.

I went in first.

I saw her shrouded body.

My knees shook.

I said, “Too real. Too real.”

Then I stood up straight. I marched forward.

I looked at her face. Hers, all right.

Set in a scowl around the breathing tube, still in place.

I touched her forehead and her cheeks. So did Hannah.

We touched her feet, thighs, belly, shoulders and face.

Michelle sat with head bowed.

Sherri’s skin was as soft as ever, but icy cold.

Too real.

I examined Sherri’s corpse with cold intensity.

The only comfort I sought was clarity.

Some drinks you must quaff to the bitter dregs.

 

So here lies Sherri Krynski, woman of valor

Who won battle after battle with Death

For valor wins battles

And she pitched mighty battles.

For instance, her last Sunday.

 

Between the Friday evening that her heart started to fail

And the Thursday morning that it finally stopped

In between, on Sunday

Sherri declared that she was feeling better

And she wanted us to go out, to the theater

And see a play that she had paid tickets for.

I objected but she insisted.

She said, “Am I being stupid?”

I said, “Yes!”

“I don’t care, I’m going anyhow.”

I gave in as usual. You try arguing with Sherri.

 

So lo, on the third day of her death

The doomed woman rose from her deathbed

To go see a bedroom farce!

I saw it with her, it was a great show

With scandals and pratfalls

And slammed doors

And a scantily-clad actress

And a play-within-a-play

With an incompetent director and idiot actors.

It was tons of fun, laffs galore,

Boffs to die for,

And that’s what she did.

 

Sherri knew that she was dying, soon,

And she hated the hospital, and loved theater

So she went to see a comedy. She insisted.

Her body, her choice. Quality of life.

She died as she lived.

Talk about laughing at death!

Daughter, learn from your mother.

 

And daughter, here we are. Thunderstruck.

I, widower, single father; you, motherless.

Roles as new and uncomfortable as shoes that don’t fit.

But here we are, and I am grateful,

For if it hadn’t been for her

Then we wouldn’t have been here.

 

 

 

May 20, 2017