Lump People and Pump People

Happy Birthday Mom, seen here with me and my sister.

In the beginning, there were Lump People and Pump People. The Lump People were very secretive, as they prefer to stay in the shadows as long as possible, then in a moment that seems sudden, but is actually very incremental, they emerge like a flower in the night. Is there a cocoon? And when is the Butterfly Period? The spirit animal of the Lump People is the cat. Mysterious. Cloying, a black cat with green eyes, rubbing up against your legs, the pouncing on you from the bushes. Cats and Lumps have claws that dig right in, leaving their marks deep within the wound.

Pump People are more obvious. They just keep on keeping on, until suddenly they don’t. Actually that isn’t true as their growth is also incremental. The spirit animal of the Pump People is the dog. Faithful. Loving, like your heart, steady, steady then SQUIRREL!!!

My family has always been Pump People, having traded away our functional cardiovascular system for a head of good hair. Did we also get a handful of beans? At the time, it seemed like a good idea. Perhaps there were also Sober People and Drink Pump People.

So when Lump was born, and what a fine Lump he has grown up to be, I was a bit surprised. Of course my surprise was delayed, as I was not even aware of Lump until he was quite visible. He still holds a grudge for that ignorance. So here we are, a hybrid of Lump and Pump People.

Since the death of my father and father-in-law in 2006, I’ve always seen the world as either Cancer People or Heart People. Lump says Lump People and Pump People. Michelle’s father was dying of cancers, and my father was dying of congestive heart failure. One father wasting away, getting smaller, his bones protruding, while the other father filled with fluids because his heart could no longer pump blood and fluids through his body. Congestive heart failure is like drowning in your own body.

In the fall of 2005, and early 2006, it was Duelling Dads to the Death. We were living in White Rock at the time. There were two blue jays who always visited us on the White House deck overlooking the pool and the big back yard with the three tall trees that grew so close together. Michelle and I were married there. Our fathers and mothers were all alive then. Michelle’s mother died first of a heart attack, so I guess she was Pump People. She was also a smoker. As was Michelle’s dad. My parents both were smokers, until they weren’t, quitting for over forty years before they died. Still, when my father died, they said cause of death was smoking, which he had not done for so many years. I always felt they were padding their stats on that one.

Michelle’s dad left out peanuts for the blue jays. One blue jay was Skinny, who like her dad Pat was skinny, and the other one we called Fatty, who resembled my father Fred. The blue jays came back after both dads had died. We waited and watched for them. Locals crows grew to love our peanuts too, as did our dogs. A year after the deaths of the Dads, I had a heart attack. Coincidence? Grief can be a cruel mother.

Everyone dies. My Mother was very unsentimental about death, having volunteered for years with the Hospice movement in her town. Much of her hospice work was inspired and informed by the work of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, who wrote Death and Dying. Kübler-Ross described the Five Stages of Acceptance.

Lump says get over it.

My Mother, had she been alive, would be 102 today. She died at age 93, and when she died, she was living with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. She always joked about not wanting to get cancer, because she had a “little pinhead”, her words, not mine, and would never find a wig that would fit her little head. She had little strokes in her little head, progressing on to dementia. Her first son, who was named Pat, followed her on this trajectory, his dementia called vascular dementia, and she followed him, dying a year later on the very same day.

Life is like that. Coincidences. Similar names. Birds. Lumps and Pumps.