End of Days
Almost always with cats, the end
comes creeping over the two of you—
she stops eating, his back legs
no longer support him, she leans
to your hand and purrs but cannot
rise—sometimes a whimper of pain
although they are stoic. They see
death clearly though hooded eyes.
Then there is the long weepy
trip to the vet, the carrier no
longer necessary, the last time
in your lap. The injection is quick.
Simply they stop breathing
in your arms. You bring them
home to bury in the flower garden,
planting a bush over a deep grave.
That is how I would like to cease,
held in a lover's arms and quickly
fading to black like an old-fashioned
movie embrace. I hate the white
silent scream of hospitals, the whine
of pain like air-conditioning's hum.
I want to click the off switch.
And if I can no longer choose
I want someone who loves me
there, not a doctor with forty patients
and his morality to keep me sort
of, kind of alive or sort of undead.
Why are we more rational and kinder
to our pets than to ourselves or our
parents? Death is not the worst
thing; denying it can be.
comes creeping over the two of you—
she stops eating, his back legs
no longer support him, she leans
to your hand and purrs but cannot
rise—sometimes a whimper of pain
although they are stoic. They see
death clearly though hooded eyes.
Then there is the long weepy
trip to the vet, the carrier no
longer necessary, the last time
in your lap. The injection is quick.
Simply they stop breathing
in your arms. You bring them
home to bury in the flower garden,
planting a bush over a deep grave.
That is how I would like to cease,
held in a lover's arms and quickly
fading to black like an old-fashioned
movie embrace. I hate the white
silent scream of hospitals, the whine
of pain like air-conditioning's hum.
I want to click the off switch.
And if I can no longer choose
I want someone who loves me
there, not a doctor with forty patients
and his morality to keep me sort
of, kind of alive or sort of undead.
Why are we more rational and kinder
to our pets than to ourselves or our
parents? Death is not the worst
thing; denying it can be.
On this day in 1926, the phrase "grace under pressure" was used for the first time in print. Ernest Hemingway (books by this author) used the phrase in a letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald (books by this author). The two met a year earlier in a Parisian bar called Dingo and began a tumultuous, alcohol- and envy-fueled friendship, which Hemingway wrote about in his memoir A Moveable Feast (published posthumously in 1964).
Hemingway was a prolific correspondent, and he probably wrote six to seven thousand letters in his lifetime, perhaps because he was an informal letter writer who believed letters should never be written for posterity. Write letters "for the day and the hour," said Hemingway in a May 1950 letter to English professor and author Arthur Mizener. "Posterity will always look after herself." In his letters, he regularly ignored apostrophes, rarely crossed a t or dotted an i. And while he frequently boasted that he was a better speller than Fitzgerald, he almost always misspelled certain words, including apologize (apoligize), responsibility (responsability), and volume (volumne). He would also drop pronouns and common articles (an and the) from his letters (and sometimes even from conversation). He might have been mimicking the language of cables and telegraphs, which he loved, but he also thought the shortened, abrupt style was manly and down-to-earth.
In this particular letter to Fitzgerald, Hemingway gossips, talks about what he's getting paid, offers facetious money advice, badmouths other writers, and asks Fitzgerald to read his new manuscript, The Sun Also Rises. He uses the phrase "grace under pressure" to describe what he means when he uses the word "guts":
"Was not referring to guts but to something else. Grace under pressure. Guts never made any money for anybody except violin string manufacturers."
Hemingway was a prolific correspondent, and he probably wrote six to seven thousand letters in his lifetime, perhaps because he was an informal letter writer who believed letters should never be written for posterity. Write letters "for the day and the hour," said Hemingway in a May 1950 letter to English professor and author Arthur Mizener. "Posterity will always look after herself." In his letters, he regularly ignored apostrophes, rarely crossed a t or dotted an i. And while he frequently boasted that he was a better speller than Fitzgerald, he almost always misspelled certain words, including apologize (apoligize), responsibility (responsability), and volume (volumne). He would also drop pronouns and common articles (an and the) from his letters (and sometimes even from conversation). He might have been mimicking the language of cables and telegraphs, which he loved, but he also thought the shortened, abrupt style was manly and down-to-earth.
In this particular letter to Fitzgerald, Hemingway gossips, talks about what he's getting paid, offers facetious money advice, badmouths other writers, and asks Fitzgerald to read his new manuscript, The Sun Also Rises. He uses the phrase "grace under pressure" to describe what he means when he uses the word "guts":
"Was not referring to guts but to something else. Grace under pressure. Guts never made any money for anybody except violin string manufacturers."
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