The Feast of St. Francis
And a Bit About "Beautiful Joe"
[The below story is in honour of today’s date - the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi. It is adapted from a piece I wrote in 2012 for Huffington Post Canada - yes, I have a checkered past - and reading it again did not make me cringe in horror nearly as much as reading my own writing usually does. At any rate, I figure it is ok for me to plagiarize myself.]
A few years ago, both of my cats -- seniors I had had since their kitten-hoods - passed. Orloff, diabetic for the last four years of his life and almost completely blind as a result, had been a little martinet as I stuck him with insulin and glucometers. He seemed to understand that I was trying to help. But when he no longer wanted to play with his circuit ball toy or eat even his beloved Swiss Chalet, I knew I had to stop trying. Pushkin had esophageal cancer, "just like Christopher Hitchens," I remember thinking when she was diagnosed. She began vomiting blood one summer day, three weeks after her brother died, and I watched helplessly as she grew thin and furious, raging at me to let her go. When I finally did, I felt I had waited too long. (I still feel monstrous guilt about that, though I did give her as much medical comfort as the veterinarian authorized.)
I loved them both and I have kept their ashes since then, unable to decide where they should be scattered. Where had they been happiest? Well, their lives were pretty much spent in my apartment, so it follows that any happiness they experienced (and my goodness, I hope there was some) they experienced there, but scattering their ashes on my couch or bed (where they slept approximately 21 hours a day) did not seem right. I would only have to vacuum them up and they hated the vacuum. And plus, that would be gross.
My indecision continued until a few months later, when I had occasion to spend five weeks in Italy, not far from Assisi, the city of St. Francis, patron saint of animals. He preached to the birds and sent them chirping the gospel -- caw, caw, to the least of these -- in cross formation. He tamed the ferocious wolf of Gubbio (a lesser-known Italian town, well worth visiting). I had an epiphany. I would scatter their ashes in Assisi. This seemed a perfect idea until I began reading airline regulations for transporting the dead. The rules I found applied only to humans, so my options seemed to be packing the ashes and hoping no one noticed, or asking in advance about pets' ashes and drawing attention to myself. Visions of me answering questions in a small, dark office as my cats' ashes were run through a sieve by latex-gloved airport security apparatchiks or placed under the noses of drug-sniffing dogs filled my head. And what if my luggage got lost and my babies ended up on a tarmac in Vladivostok or some other godforsaken place for all eternity? (This was before I learned to travel only with carry-on luggage, even for long trips. I have since managed three months overseas with just a “weekend” bag.)
Plan B was born. I would bring a bit of Assisi back -- flower petals or leaves -- and mix it with my cats' ashes. They would be connected to their patron saint. Waiting to board my flight to Rome, I told my then beau (now my spouse) - a man who calls St. Francis a "medieval hippie punk who stole from his father" - of Plan B.
"It's crazy, right?"
"No," he smiled. "It's sweet." Pause. "And crazy."
I eventually stepped off a bus and into Assisi, which is at once bellissima beyond belief and something of a Catholic theme park. Everything there is connected to St. Francis. Convenience stores sell thimbles and other knick-knacks with his image, all of them stacked up at the front cash, the way North Americans have curiously strong and refreshing mints and seedy tabloids in the same spot. I saw more nuns and priests in Assisi than I had previously seen cumulatively and I mean in my lifetime, not just in Italy. And it was absolutely beautiful and humbling. I visited the Poor Clares in their beautiful Basilica and witnessed their spirituality and charity. And I discovered that during World War II, Assisi had been home to a network of priests and civilians who rescued Jews from deportation. Extraordinary and fitting for such a heritage.
I found myself wondering if any people in Assisi did jobs not connected to St. Francis. There must be dentists and shoe salesmen there, though you could argue they somehow must find their way back to Brother Sun and Sister Moon. Even the living statues were Franciscan in nature: the best one I saw was of a pellegrino who looked not unlike the soulful lead in Franco Zeffirelli's Jesus of Nazareth. I asked a cab driver if there were ever a time of year when Assisi wasn’t crowded, and he told me, without hesitation, “Natale.” Christmas.
I also found myself wondering why the numerous international visitors in Assisi couldn't make more of an effort to dress halfway properly. The glories of Giotto and Cimabue deserve better than your shorts, t-shirts and sun-visors, tacky pilgrims. But that is me being judgy - something St. Francis would not have been. In fact, he gave his fancy clothes back to his father.
Stealing flower petals was not as easy as I had imagined, given the teeming, poorly-dressed masses everywhere. There is no subtle way to rip a flower off its stalk and stick it in the Ziploc bag in your purse, as you wander through Assisi's steep, winding streets. Trying to look casual, I stepped into a gourmet shop (with St. Francis-embossed bottles of olive oil and limoncello on sale!) and was welcomed into a wine-tasting. It was hosted by a rotund, jovial, making-his-presence-known German, though at least he was doing it with Euros rather than the tools he might have used eighty years ago. He poured me enough wine to give me courage and loosen my purse strings. An hour later, out I went, newly-purchased bottle of limoncello in hand, and headed out to find supper somewhere. On the way, I tore three flowers off their stalks, several leaves off trees and a handful of lavender. Thank you, Hans!
In the present, my cats' now-fortified-with-Franciscan-flora ashes continue to have a place of honour on my dresser. But it might behoove me to have another epiphany already, as death takes no holidays.
(By the way, a few years after this, I brought some of my mother’s ashes with me to France so that I could spread them at her brother’s grave. I was a lot less anxious. I believed that if somehow those ashes ended up on a tarmac in Vladivostok, my mother would appreciate what a great story that would make.)
***
A bit about the book Beautiful Joe, by Canadian Margaret Marshall Saunders, which I discovered this year. It is a story about a dog - Joe - who is rescued from an abusive situation. It is narrated by the dog and apparently was tremendously popular at the time of its publication, bringing about discussion of animal welfare legislation and garnering tremendous praise for the author’s sensitivity and skill. How is this book not as much a part of the Canadian fabric as Anne of Green Gables? How is Saunders not as known as Lucy Maud Montgomery? Or have I simply not noticed? Have any of you read it? Do you know of it?
