Day: June 30, 2017

Two days ago Aura, my eight-year-old white munchkin, began crying over apparently nothing. She wasn’t crying as much as moaning. As I was unpacking the parts to an IKEA kitchen cart, I thought Aura might have interpreted this to mean I was packing my bags for another trip, and was therefore distressed. Later that day she disappeared into the bedroom closet, not coming out to eat or anything. 

That in itself persuaded me to take her to the vet, but I wanted to see if she’d rebound on her own. Last night she was lying inside the closet and moaning again, but more loudly this time. That was the first super-serious “uh-oh.” It was the same sound made by my Siamese cat, Mouse, three or four weeks before he passed from pancreatic cancer.

I decided to take Aura to the vet first thing this morning instead of late last night, figuring they’d just keep her in observation until the vet doc came in around 9 am. She was still moaning just after midnight, but less audibly, more internally.

This morning we found her dead. Rigor mortis had set in heavily, so she’d probably passed around 1 or 2 am. Our hearts are broken, and we’re getting married in three hours. People who say “oh my God” annoy me to no end, but I think I might have said OMG this morning 20 or 25 times. Picking her up was agony — it was like she was suddenly made of plaster. I called a cat crematorium guy — $200 bills for a cremation plus an urn for her ashes, and the urn will even have her name on it.

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The saga of Jeff and Tatyana has been an up, down, sideways and back up again thing. We were going to tie the knot on the beach several weeks ago, and then put it off. Then we worked out some issues, and then drove around Italy and stayed in Paris as a kind of pre-honeymoon, and now I’m happy to say we’re back on again. Today is the day, Judah. Vows at La Piedra State Beach at 3 pm, and then a gathering around 7 pm with a few friends. No biggie, and at the same time big-big-BIGGIE.

You’re supposed to keep your personally composed marriage vows short and sweet, but right now they’re longish. I’ll continue to hone and refine until the big moment. Here’s what I have now:

Somebody once said that “a successful marriage requires falling in love many times.”

As we begin our life together in marriage, I can’t wait to fall in love with Tatyana again and again. I just did the other night while we were trying to assemble an IKEA table, and I’m doing that right now, and I expect that a new surge will hit me again this afternoon or this evening. Or next week or whatever.

Marriage is about hands held, eyes forward, joy, spirit, surrender, bravery, devotion and, in my case, always, always, always putting Tatyana first. I need to write my column every day, but I also pledge to love and honor Tatyana with all my heart.

She is my Russian Marilyn Monroe, my muse, my commissar, my Tsar…my own Natalya Rostova, Sonya Marmeladova, Antonina Miliukova. After watching Oliver Stone’s Vladimir Putin interviews I have even begun to call Tatyana my own personal Putin, but in a good way. Because for all his alleged shortcomings and reported inclinations to murder journalists, Putin struck me as a fairly wise and astute fellow, sly and temperate and well educated, who has his act together.

“Does Auda abu Tayi serve”? Perhaps not, but Jeffrey Wells will. Or will die trying.

I hereby pledge to keep all doors and windows open, and to try to pry open new ones each and every day. Here’s to matters of the heart and spirit, to blue and white skies and radiant starry nights, and to wit, wisdom, serendipity, clever wisecracks, inspirational guidance and the shining of kindness into all corners and crevasses.

“There is no remedy for love,” said Henry David Thoreau, “but to love more”.

I’m thinking of Luca Guadagnino’s movie, I Am Love. But that title has inspired a thought about myself since I met and fell in love with Tatyana — “I Am Luck.”

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“And though it is no one’s business, the president’s petulant personal attack against yet another woman’s looks compels us to report that Mika has never had a face-lift. If she had, it would be evident to anyone watching Morning Joe on their high-definition TV. She did have a little skin under her chin tweaked, but this was hardly a state secret. Her mother suggested she do so, and all those around her were aware of this mundane fact.” — from Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski‘s 6.30 Washington Post op-ed piece.

In order words, Mika underwent a little touch-up. Big deal.

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