Lizard Chapter 15: Caregiving

In the morning she went to him gently to take him and place him in the towel to take him to the path for burial, but he was still alive! So instead she took him outside when the morning sun hit the front porch and he came back to life. He puffed up, stood up, even took an eyedropper of water from her. His injured eye was swollen; the other looked almost shut. She loved and cared for him.

As the day passed he got very quiet and still again. Once again she prepared for his demise. She slept on the couch nearby and in the morning he was in the same position as he was the night before. It was Sunday. She went to lift him off the towel and, once again, very slowly, his head moved from side to side at the disturbance. He was very slow to rouse and this gave her a chance to look closely at his injured eye. She cleaned the blood off of it with sprays of water--he continued to sleep. She then saw something small and thin and straight coming out of his eye and it seemed to be an insect stinger or a cactus needle. She got her tweezers and very very delicately she grabbed the needle and pulled. He coiled around and writhed in pain for about 10 seconds and then he was totally still again. She was afraid she may have killed him.

Mr. Lizard needed all the help he could get.

She started studying up on lizards and found out he was probably a Clark's Spiny Lizard.  

Lizard Chapter 14: PAYBACK TIME

All of a sudden, Mr. Lizard took her by surprise for he jumped high up onto the right arm of her jacket. His left hand clasped the string of her hood and his other hand and feet grabbed on tight. She didn't know quite what to make of it so she she just walked into the house and sat on the couch and let him cling to her arm. Dinner was in the oven but she turned the oven off and forgot about dinner. She didn't care about anything but Mr. Lizard. 

He would still be clinging to her arm now if she could have been sitting there this long! She eventually slid her arm out of the jacket and left him on it, still clinging to the drawstring. She placed him on a flat pillow on a towel on her jacket and she proceeded to sleep on the couch next to him all night. She was sure he was dying he was so still and silent. She prepared to bury him up on the trail with my ashes the next morning, which was Saturday.

By the way I don't know much about cameras and colors but many photos of Mr. Lizard have purple clouds in them. Maybe it was just the reflection from her jacket, or maybe it was something else.

LIZARD Chapter 13: LIZARD RETURNS

One week in early March Spring broke through. The sun came out and warmed the earth and the trees. It awakened the birds and the bees. Buds started forming on branches and there were even blossoms on the peach trees. She had been healing little by little from the losses. She still had far to go. She wondered if Spring was awakening Lizard too.

It was a Friday night and she was in the mood to stay home, but she had to mail a package at the post office to go out by morning. She got into her car, drove to the post office, ran a couple more errands and returned home. As she drove up the road and approached the house she saw something light-colored on the blacktop ahead of her. "Is that what I think it is?" she asked herself. She jumped out of the car and examined what was lying on the road.  

It was Mr. Lizard. He wasn't moving. He wasn't squashed.  He hadn't been hit by a car. But he was injured somehow and had been crossing the road, heading right towards our house. He was only a few feet away from our driveway. She ran inside and got some cloths and tools.  She came back and pulled his webbed feet off the blacktop just as she had pulled them off the cinder blocks on the fireplace.

He wasn't moving at all. She studied him closely. He looked older. His scales and his body were intact but his eye looked like it had been pecked out by a bird or something. The left side of his face was caved in and had blood on it and he had blood all around the edges of his mouth. She knew enough about medical stuff that if they bleed this way they may have internal bleeding that is fatal. Her tears began to flow again. Losing him somehow brought back a lot of the pain and sadness of losing me and her father too.  

Jack McAfghan's Facebook Page Growing: Facebook.com/MyJackofHearts

We tallied 87 Likes as of today, even though this image will show the number of likes on the day you are viewing this post. 
Hopefully there will be more than 87!!

Jack

Lizard Chapter 12: WINTER ARRIVES

Days, weeks, months passed. The winter was the hardest winter on record. She was grieving and she was healing. Time heals everything if you let it. Still, she thought of me night and day. She thought of her father a lot. She thought of Mr. Lizard often too. She thought of him as the monsoons washed the autumn away. She thought about him and worried for him with the snow and the wind and the cold. She wondered where he was living and she prayed that he was safe and somehow warm. She was glad that she believed in Heaven and the Rainbow Bridge so that she didn't worry so much about her Dad and me. She didn't understand that she didn't need to worry about Lizard either. 

Meanwhile Lizard was concerned that she was upset with him. It is hard to be God's messenger when you come to take someone away from someone who loves them. He hoped that she would forgive him because he knew that forgiveness is one of the most important things on the face of the earth.  

LIZARD Chapter 11: HE WAS SENT FOR ANOTHER REASON

She asked him if he needed anything but he said no. He never needs or wants for anything. He thought it was sweet that she left the light on for him the night before, but he wasn't not into eating bugs that night anyway. She took off her wet boots and coat and left them on the bench outside and went in to continue to get used to the house without me there. Somehow I could talk to Mr. Lizard and he would hear me, but when I talked to her she couldn't hear me. I had so much to learn. She had so much to learn.

Around the noon hour it was still raining like crazy. She took a phone call. She learned that her father had died unexpectedly in his sleep. They weren't sure what time but it was within hours of my passing. She was shocked. She had hardly come to terms with my death and now she was facing another. She was very glad that Mr. Lizard was there.

Now the crazy auric light out there is purple. Purple light in the dark night.  

It was comforting for me that he stayed with her outside the front door for the three days it took her to take care of the details and to clean out his apartment. She brought in some boxes from her car on the third day. She greeted him, glad to see him. She wanted to get some time to sit down with him later. She brought her tea out that evening and sat on the bench and talked with him for a very long time.  Mostly she thanked him for being there.  

The next day she was sad because not only was I gone and her father was gone, but Lizard was gone too. Well, we weren't really "gone" but she couldn't see us. Lizard told me that he had to leave on another assignment. He was not sure he would be back again.

Here Lizard, Her Father and Me we make up the colors of the rainbow.  

Lizard Chapter 10: HE LEFT HER LONG ENOUGH TO ESCORT ME OVER THE BRIDGE

Saturday morning it was pouring rain. I thought she was crazy but she put her raincoat on and went out to walk our trail through the woods. People can do funny things when they are grieving. She opened the door, looked for Mr. Lizard to no avail, and went on her way to the trail through the rain. She walked until she was drenched. The trail was rushing with water in some places. She didn't care. She cried and the heavy rain drowned out the sound of her tears and joined her wet face so she didn't know where the tears ended and the rain began. She was strangely comforted by it.

Upon her wet return, there he was again! Mr. Lizard was in his appointed place underneath the light. "Oh am I glad to see YOU!" she said to him. She sat on the bench under the eave with him and they sat for a long time and talked. They talked about loss. They talked about death. They talked about love. They talked about the Rainbow Bridge and they talked about Heaven and God. 

She didn't know that he had left long enough between dusk and dawn to escort me to the Rainbow Bridge. But I wondered...Why did he go back to her?