Dear Peter

It’s been twelve weeks, Peter. I wonder if I will ever stop counting the time. Ironic since you eschewed watches, kept time by the sun’s rotation, and aligned your inner tides with the moon. All those years you spent with the Mayan time keepers in Mexico where time is measured in recurrent cycles, not by the hour-hand on a numeral clock of twelve numbers.

There’s that number again: twelve.

Divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6. Magic numbers all.

Had to go to Phoenix to help move Mom into Memory Care. My sister Carrie and my brother Ted came. We had to pack up Mom’s house in a week. Her new quarters in Memory Care is a small room now crammed with the remnants of her life that will fit in there. It is a locked floor in the Care Center, and honestly it feels like a prison.

It is heartbreaking on so many levels. She is losing hand-eye coordination, has trouble using the phone, the remote control on her tv, following suit in a simple card game like Crazy Eights.

And she wants to die. She kept telling me, “I want to be with your Dad.” Oh, if I could give her hemlock tea, or call Doctor Kevorkian… I would.

I found refuge in the wildlife around the hotel. A roadrunner (never have seen one so close up), lots of bunnies, a Gila woodpecker, a downy woodpecker, hummingbirds, and a coyote. That coyote was walking down the edge of the service road behind the hotel, not more than twelve (again) feet away from me. Bold as brass, confident, not concerned with my presence at all. The coyote was much smaller than the Coy Wolves we have here.

I will never forget the night you heard the chickens scream in the hen house, and ran out buck naked to find a Coy wolf trying to get into the hen house. I remember you saying, “not sure who was more surprised: me or the Coy wolf. But he wasn’t afraid of me. Maybe he’s seen other humans in their birthday suits at 1:00Am. I yelled at him and waved my arms, he sauntered off. Didn’t even run. Cheeky bastard.”

While I was in Arizona, your daughter, Stephanie, came to house sit. She also cleaned and completely reorganized the kitchen. It looks amazing. Your dog, Buckaroo, had her wrapped around his paw, constantly demanding treats, attention and time outside, but changing his mind frequently. I think he enjoyed his game of Guess What Buckaroo Wants.

Calvin has started work on the big barn, shoring up the first floor before putting the new roof on. I am glad we are preserving it, and not taking it down and putting up a metal building. But the expense does give me heart palpitations on top of the stress of managing everything here and my own business.

As for the garden, the tomatoes are pretty much done for the year, the melons are almost ready to be harvested. Some of the dahlias have fallen over due to the weight and size of their blossoms or maybe because we got the remnants of a hurricane while I was in Arizona and those several inches of rain were too much.

Sadly your columbine did not survive. It was living before I went to Arizona, but I found it withered and dead when I got back. I am so sorry. It was a beautiful plant and you took such great care of it.

Two of the cannabis plants are dealing with the early stages of fungi mold and signs of a caterpillar. Of course it is the two plants that are almost ready for harvest that are affected. However, we are treating the plants and we caught the problem early. Getting these plants safely to harvest is a new kind of stress. Now I understand why you got so intense weeks before harvest.

Most of the time I just feel overwhelmed. You made my life easy, Peter. If I had to rate our life together on a score of 1-10 I would give it a 12.

Twelve: the twelve labors of Hercules, the 12 troy ounces in a pound of precious metals, 12 Knights of the Round Table, 12 members of a jury, 12 months in a year, 12 inches in a foot, 12 weeks without you.