Snowball

In the softest light of the early evening, as waves spilled the last of their silver against the shore, I found Snowball, my neighbor Kevin’s black cat, on the concrete of my boat ramp down at the lakefront.

“Oh, hell…”

She was dead, stretched into a final pose among pinecones and thin strands of aquatic weed that had washed ashore and threaded themselves together.

Snowball made a good run for an outdoor cat. Something near 21 years. Though a couple of years ago, she lost half of her tail. Kevin told me she’d been missing for a couple of days. And she’d refused both breakfast and loving the last time he saw her.

Cats do that at the end of their days.

I walked up to Kevin’s place to tell him. “I guess you’ll want to do something with her,” I tendered.

A few minutes later, we were standing over Snowball. Her eyes were open, but dull and locked in a thousand-mile stare.

“I’m glad we found her,” I said. “It’s better to know. She was a good girl.”

“She was my friend,” Kevin responded. “One of my best friends.”

Kevin gathered up the cat and slipped her into a heavy plastic bag that once held salt for a water-softening system. And while it may not seem plausible, this was done with grace.

“I’m sorry, Kevin.”

Kevin acknowledged me wordlessly.

Some things don’t long for words.

Snowball

—Mitchell Hegman

Remembrance

We must remember that mountains sometimes tumble into the seas, sometimes horses pull too hard on the grass, and sometimes a person you dearly love fades away and perishes.

I was angry when Uyen passed, for there existed no beauty in it. Cancer had ravaged her from end to end, edge to center. The ability to walk gradually drained from her, then the ability to rise from bed. In the end, she could not raise an arm.

If only Thomas was right, that we might rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Instead came silence. Late snow had melted back into the raw earth, and the last honey bees finished their work on the flowering apple trees.

Ah, my sweet girl, I am not angry anymore. The bees and melting snows insist that life persists. We shall abide the rising of the light.

Today we remember Uyen Hegman, lost on this day in May of 2011.

Uyen talking with Dzao Women in Ta Phin Village, Vietnam, April 2009

Uyen and Helen December 1984

—Mitchell Hegman

A Creepy Man

This whole thing with Brian Kohberger pleading guilty to the murder of four University of Idaho students has been haunting me. No—creeping me the hell out. It's like a shadow that won't go away. And it's got me thinking about serial killers. Make no mistake—Kohberger was one in the making. If he hadn't been caught, he would’ve killed again. You can see it all over him.

After the murders, records show he searched the internet for information on Ted Bundy—like he was studying up. He stalked his victims, just like Bundy did. And the brutality? It fits the serial killer playbook. Stabbing. Beating. Up-close violence. That’s what they crave. They want the rush—the blood, the screams, the power. All the raw, immediate input. All the horror.

This stuff drills into me.

It doesn’t just disturb me—it violates something deep inside. It’s completely alien to my sense of humanity, to everything I believe in.

Brian Kohberger is terrifying, through and through.

I posted two of his selfies. The first was taken just six hours after the murders—he’s flashing a thumbs-up like he won a prize. The second is worse. His eyes are empty, like something vital never existed there.

He is the kind of man who walks unseen among us—until it’s far, far too late.

Six Hours After the Murders

Kohberger in a Hood

—Mitchell Hegman

In Remembrance

The Mayday tree blossomed early in 2011.

I know this because I wheeled my wife out in her wheelchair to sit beneath the sweet, otherworldly shroud of white flowers. The bees had also come early to the tree. The entire expanse around the tree vibrated with the hum of thousands of tiny wings.

Sitting in her chair, looking up into the tree, Uyen smiled a much bigger smile than I imagined possible. She had, by this time, lost her ability to walk or control most bodily functions. Cancer had ravaged her wholesale. And yet, she remained beautiful. And she, too, became part of that soft, living hum beneath the Mayday tree.

Only a few days later, on this very day of the year, Uyen faded away entirely. The flowers on the Mayday—ephemeral as they were—outlasted her.

Sometimes I wonder: if I had held her tighter, if I had pleaded more, might she have endured longer than the flowers on the Mayday tree?

Sometimes, the hurt comes back to me as big and whole as it was that last day in May.

Today, we remember the grace and beauty of Uyen Hegman.

The Mayday Tree Today

Uyen in 1985

—Mitchell Hegman

Ghost Keys

I’ve posted a photograph of a key ring and its scattered collection of keys. They are interesting keys. By interesting, I mean that—save one—I no longer remember what any of them are for. I keep them in the glovebox of my truck, as I have in each truck I’ve owned since the mid-1980s. The one key I still use belongs to a 40-year-old padlock that secures a shed at the lakefront.

The others are ghost keys—keys to toolboxes that no longer exist, doors long out of reach, and padlocks that have long since rusted into memory.

Until yesterday, it never occurred to me that I should peel the ghost keys away. Doing so proved surprisingly poignant. It felt as if I were shrinking my life in some quiet, tangible way—letting go of places and things that once mattered deeply to me.

Ghost Keys

—Mitchell Hegman

Jasmine

Yesterday, I cleaned out a three-ring binder filled with outdated electrical training material I had put together for a grounding and bonding course. As I removed the papers, I fed them to a fire in my woodstove. One set of papers contained details from newspaper articles about a girl named Jasmine Flankey.

On July 4, 2009, Jasmine was electrocuted on the rooftop of a church in Missoula, Montana, while watching fireworks. She had touched a section of metal associated with an HVAC unit that had become electrically energized by an uncleared ground fault created by a lighting circuit within the church below.

Such energized metal is something we term as “above ground potential,” and 8-year-old Jasmine collapsed—never to rise again—the instant she touched it.

To this day, I use the story and circumstances of Jasmine Flankey’s death when I teach courses related to grounding and bonding. Something less than a dollar’s worth of materials used to electrically bond two sections of ductwork would have prevented this. When I tell this story, I also cite a half-dozen sections of Code that were put in place long ago to prevent circuits from developing such above ground potential.

Watching flames clutch and then consume the story of Jasmine as I pitched the papers into my woodstove forced something I can only describe as grief through me. But even with the papers gone, the name of Jasmine Flankey remains etched inside me.

—Mitchell Hegman

From the Heart

Today, on the shortest day of the year, I am posting a video that sometimes moves me to tears. It features a song written and performed by James Blunt, which is deeply personal. The song serves as a tribute to his father, Charles, who was battling stage-four kidney cancer and in need of a transplant at the time it was written.

I’ve read that the song was recorded in a single take and that the tears in the singer’s eyes are genuine.

—Mitchell Hegman

Video Link:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTFbGcnl0po

In the Silence

My house is quiet this morning, save for the random ticking of my woodstove as the metal accepts the heat of the flames within the firebox. In the silence between each step I take, each sip of my coffee, and every breath, I am thinking about the passing of another dear friend—an island girl who came twirling with joy to our high north place. She has become another victim of the dreadful cancer that stalks too many of us.

Jo Cooper passed in the dark hours of Thursday night, leaving behind a young son still in grade school and a husband drowning in heartbreak.

Jo always spoke softly, laughed readily, and had a smile that defined her. This morning, she lingers here with us, woven into the silence.

—Mitchell Hegman

A Dead Raven

I spotted a dead raven alongside the road. The raven’s body was folded, wings included, into a neat black bundle with exception of the legs, which protruded stiffly and conspicuously from the black bundle. Even in death, the raven’s feathers remained shiny and iridescent.

I have no use for a dead raven. And, really, I don’t have any particular use for a live one. But I continued to think about the bird long after the sight of it smeared into the landscape falling way in my rearview mirror. The death of anything and everything has a specific gravitational pull that tugs at you, clings to you as you pass by. 

—Mitchell Hegman

A New Curse Word

I need a new curse word, one that applies specifically to the frustration of having a pneumatic pin nailer jam when you are pinning in place the final piece of trim for a project.

This very thing happened to me yesterday while I was nailing baseboards around the new flooring in the master bedroom’s walk-in closet.  I had only three more pins to set when the nailer jammed.

I issued a pretty expansive string of standard curse words when the gun jammed, but that didn’t make me feel any better.  And even clearing the gun after a few minutes of squinting and fiddling didn’t feel particularly satisfying.  Only a new curse word would help.  I want a word that incorporates a hissing sound as well as the letter “z.”

Something zesty like "fizzit!"

      —Mitchell Hegman

Ankissipation

I am the first one up in the morning here at the Hegman household.  Desiree typically sleeps in for an hour or two.  If I need to wake her for any reason, I sneak into the bedroom and do so with a gentle hug and a kiss on the cheek or forehead.  Just thinking about waking Desiree with a kiss is pleasurable.  I have even come up with a word for it: “ankissipation.”  It’s first cousin to “anticipation” but has a kiss added for a gratifying twist.

—Mitchell Hegman

Hope

I strive to keep a positive attitude in all regards. I try not to let the bad news that seems to always be stalking us to permanently cast shade on me. But the savagery of the Hamas terrorist attack in Israel is screaming at me. There is no equivalent to the evil manifested in what occurred. There is no justification.

I know revenge will be exacted, and I know it will only push Israel and her enemies farther apart. Emily Dickinson wrote, “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul…” I wonder if that is too small a thing just now.

—Mitchell Hegman

The Cat with Nine Lives

The story of the stray cat has its ending, but not the one I had hoped for. After a few false starts, the family hoping the stray might be theirs arrived at my house yesterday afternoon to see the cat. A quick glance confirmed the diminutive kitty was not theirs. Put simply: "No, not our cat."

I had already mentioned my intent to take the cat to the humane society shelter if they didn’t take it. They, a mother and daughter, kindly offered to take the cat to the shelter since they would be driving near it on their way home, and they had a cat carrier with them.

Here is the real story. Cats do have nine lives. I have lived with and loved eight various cats in my life. As I struggled to force this ninth cat (one that lived with me for only a week) into the carrier, I felt all eight of those other cats squirming and joining the fight against me. All nine lives now pushed back against me as I caged the little female.

None of them wanted to go.

Eventually, the car carrying the mother, daughter, and cat in a carrier sped across the open prairie, chasing a self-made dust devil across the bleached grass, heading for town.

I never gave the cat a name.

“Nine,” I thought as I turned away with tears in my eyes.

Nine

—Mitchell Hegman

My Balancing Act

In his famous poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T.S. Eliot offers a bleak and disjointed view of the modern world, one where the quest for meaning and connection is elusive, if not evasive.  Two lines from the poem have always stuck with me:   

“I should have been a pair of ragged claws

Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.”

The lines suggest absolute surrender to the darkest sensibilities.

On a good day, I consider my own lines of hope to replace those penned by Eliot.  I try to insert lines of optimism and imagine how the tone of the poem might be altered.  Today, my lines are these:

“I should have been a white bird

Veering across the brilliant light of an azure sky.”  

—Mitchell Hegman

The Long Drive

I was reminded of you when I accidently melted an ink pen,

on the back burner of my stove.

I last used the pen to hurriedly jot down an important note,

now long forgotten.

 

Remembrance is the only disease I have successfully shed.

Except recalling you, my brother, when I melted the pen

and each time I drive the lakeshore where I last saw you.

 

Strange, how you fell and never stopped falling.

 

The trout bite arrived late this year.  The willows already yellowed

and the sky displaying a hollow blue.

But then, trout have always outsmarted me

or perhaps I was late in trying.

 

I drove home on the opposite shore this time

and I kept the sun in my eyes.

I didn’t glance at the waves shuffling white across the water.

I didn’t turn up the radio or crank the windows down

and I had forgotten how long the drive is.

 

—Mitchell Hegman

For Chuck Taylor

Revulsion

While shopping at a local grocery store, I strode past another man going the opposite direction in the aisle.  He was clean-cut and neatly dressed.  I don’t recall having ever seen the man before.  As we whisked by each other, I glanced at him but he did not acknowledge me in in any manner.

Here is the strange: The instant my eyes fell upon the man, I experienced revulsion.  Within another second, I felt what I can only be describe as loathing for the man. 

Why did I feel that?  The man did nothing more than walk past me.

I spent the next few hours trying to figure out what triggered my instant repulsion.  Was there something vile and detectable at play within the man?  Did I intuitively perceive evil?

Or is there something twisted in me?

—Mitchell Hegman

Flirting

I will soon refrain from flirting entirely.  I don’t engage in a lot of flirting these days, but I still have a moment now and then. 

My flirting is an activity related entirely to shopping for groceries and was originally prompted by the loss of my wife to cancer.

After my wife’s passing, I found myself shopping for groceries alone.  Shopping for only me implanted a deep feeling of isolation within me.  I found myself wiping away tears on my first two solo shopping trips.  My next few shopping trips improved only slightly. 

Somewhere after my first half-dozen shopping excursions, I decided to change my attitude.  Just for the sport of it, I began taking every opportunity to tease other shoppers or flirt with women while I was shopping.

As far as the flirting went, age was not a thing.  I engaged in conversation with women from the age of 18 to 88.

“I saw that!” I would say if I saw a woman drop something, or tear two bananas from a bunch, or sneak a grape for a taste-test.   I didn’t refrain from asking for advice when purchasing items that strayed from known quantities. 

My interactions and flirting led me to tolerate and sometimes enjoy shopping.

Now, almost eleven years later, I still tease other shoppers and occasionally (harmlessly) flirt with the occasional woman, but I will have no need for that soon.  If my calculus is correct, Desiree will be here within a couple months.

No more shopping for one of this or one of that.

—Mitchell Hegman

Growing a New Leg

I recently read an article titled “Growing it Back” by Matthew Hutson.  The piece explores the concept of triggering the human body to grow back missing fingers, arms, legs, and so on.

We are not talking science fiction.  Much of the work revolves around research conducted by a man named Michael Levin.  He, and many others, contend it is not a matter of “if” we can do this, but a matter of how soon.  Among many other things, they have successfully triggered a frog to regenerate a missing leg.

Most interesting to me is the way the researchers prompt the regrowth of missing body parts.  They are not tinkering with genetics.  They simply use electrical impulses at the cellular level to urge regrowth.  Levin considers what they do as something akin to reprograming the cells.

Weirdly enough, my response to the article was to shed a few tears.

I thought about my departed wife.  She spent the last sixteen years of her life disabled and suffering from chronic pain due to a damaged spinal cord as result of transverse myelitis.

For a while she tried controlling her pain with a TENS unit.  The TENS (transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation) machine injected electrical impulses into the small of her back by way of electrodes placed on her skin.

For a while that seemed to work.  But soon enough her body selected pain again.

After finishing the article, I sat there thinking about some of Uyen’s lousy, especially painful days.  How different our lives would have been if a modified electrical signal could have spared her from that.

 

—Mitchell Hegman

Having a Bad Day

With my walking stick, I stumble through tide pools and dry stalks in ocean brine.  Beside me, the ocean shuffles white over green, dark over oyster beds.   Late sunlight struggles down through a talus of clouds.

I am hated by fiddler crabs scurrying click-clack over yellow strokes of wet sand, and I am no hero to the terns unwinding the blue threads of sky.

Listen, I am not wrong about the world being against me.  The sales clerk at my pharmacy winks at everyone but me.  On my last visit, she smashed by box of Band-Aids.

And there is more.   My boss forced me to a remote corner of the office.  “You lack zest,” he says.

I don’t know “zest.”

Walking slowly and without direction makes sense to me.  Sand, cumulous cloud, rafts of driftwood: these things are liquid.

The dull roar of miles of waves breaking against shore is the sound of me letting go.

—Mitchell Hegman

The Depression Underlying Brilliance

I am often slow to recognize brilliance.  Someone had to (more or less) beat me over the head with Shakespeare’s writing before I saw the value.   I did not really appreciate my ultimate hero, Nikola Tesla, until I was knocking on the door of middle age.

Chris Cornell is my latest late discovery.  If you are unfamiliar, Chris was the singer and often songwriter for Soundgarden, Audioslave, and Temple of the Dog.

For some of you none of this may still not mean much.

Chris Cornell’s voice rings with authenticity.  More importantly, he displayed a direct connection with his deepest emotions and his songs.  According to Wikipedia:

He was voted "Rock's Greatest Singer" by readers of Guitar World, and ranked No. 4 on the list of "Heavy Metal's All-Time Top 100 Vocalists" by Hit Parader, No. 9 on the list of "Best Lead Singers of All Time" by Rolling Stone, and No. 12 on MTV's "22 Greatest Voices in Music".

Chris suffered from depression for his entire life.  On May 18, 2017, Chris committed suicide at the age of 52.  Posted today is one of many songs that clearly displays the depression underlying his brilliance.

Chris Cornell

—Mitchell Hegman

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zdoXgGnKdc&list=RD4zdoXgGnKdc&start_radio=1