Zoe-Anne Fitzhugh,
1943 – 2024, always
making lives better for people
and for animals.
by her husband and partner for 41 years, Bruce McFarland
The story of an exceptional human being cannot be summed up in a few words, especially when written by the man who spent so much time enjoying her company and the journey by her side, that he didn’t realize he should have been taking notes along the way. Putting this story together has been varied from stream-of-consciousness to disjointed-cut-and-paste, but I hope you’ll be able to follow along and enjoy my perspective.
As indicated above, there were two major themes to Zoe’s life: a Registered Nurse with 57 years of caring for and about people and a lifelong love of animals. I’ve learned so much in the four weeks after she died from her co-workers about how many people’s lives she helped and influenced far beyond any clinical expertise, I’m more proud of her and even more grateful now than ever before to have been her partner for 41 years.
Please note that this Tribute/Memorial on Zoe-Anne.com is a public-facing website and because of privacy concerns for everyone, I am not allowing people to post tributes, but there is a private, invitation only website with even more pictures and memories of Zoe-Anne that is available for family and friends to visit and join. Please go the Contact Page to apply.
I hate to start with the sad ending of the story, but everyone wants to know “what happened to the vivacious Zoe-Anne” and why haven’t we heard from her.
Zoe got the results of a routine blood test at the beginning of November 2023. The primary doctor got a message to her that the results didn’t look too good, so advised she should get a bone marrow test. We did that and were asked to come in the next day to see a new doctor (oncologist) for the results.
We got the AML (Acute Myeloid Leukemia) diagnosis on November 9, 2023. That’s the day everything changed for both of us.
“You’ve got AML and maybe 6 months to a year without chemo and roughly 6 months to a year, maybe more with chemo,” the oncologist told us.
Zoe WAS going to get chemo (3 times), but she needed to be in good/better health (she was already dealing with Crohn’s, although pretty much in remission, and some other issues). Three days before the third scheduled chemo, she was in the ER with a Crohn’s flare up, and she and the doctor decided she wasn’t in good enough shape to have chemo. That was probably a good call. Even in the best of cases, chemo, and taking the follow-up drugs every day is hard on the body, not to mention the spirit. Zoe did fairly well spirit-wise the next six and a half months, considering the diagnosis. until the last month, when she started getting weaker. That’s when I needed to help her to do just about everything, and I was happy to be able to take care of her. Even then she kept a pretty good attitude and sense of humor.
From the beginning, she didn’t want anyone to know she was ill. (sorry to all the folks that I couldn’t share with). The last week was a little tough, but she had very little pain, even until the last Saturday, June 29, about 2 p.m. when she died in my arms.
The good part for Zoe and I was that for the nearly eight months since we got the diagnosis, we had some of the most valuable communications ever. We had the best talks, and the most honest and productive times in our relationship. For me, I was able to give to her in a way I never had a chance to do before, to take care of her and thank her for all she had done for me, and given to me for 41 years.
Soon after we got the AML notice, I tried to get her to make some notes about her past to share with the grandkids, and hopefully great grandkids to come. She did write down a few things (she called them her musings), but I didn’t want to push her, and alas there weren’t as many stories as I had hoped for. So again, friends and family, please share some of your own personal stories about your experiences with Zoe-Anne. I’m sure others (including myself) would love to read them.
I’ve been working on so many things, including trying to write this obit, so it’s not as complete or perfect as I would like, but I’m sure you’ll understand. I’m sort of going to try to tell Zoe-Anne’s story in chronological order. I’m leaving out so many things, but it’s still going to be longer than a typical newspaper obit. I hope you enjoy my perspective of Zoe-Anne, her background, and our 41 years together. She was my partner in everything in our lives. I’m so thankful that our cats, Pasha and Presto, are still with me to take care of me. Zoe made me promise to outlive them and take care of them. You will note that I mostly refer to Zoe-Anne as Zoe, that’s what I usually called her. Other people called her Zoe, Zoe-Anne, or Zoey – all okay with her.
Zoe’s father, Charles Vernon White was originally a logger from New York. Many of Charlie’s family members moved out west to British Columbia and Yukon Territory and Zoe still has cousins in BC. Funny aside in my mind; one of Zoe’s cousins was named Bobbie Cousins. He was a bush pilot in the Yukon Territory, I Zoe and I had a chance to visit him on Bald Person’s Day (why? – June 21, because it’s the longest day of daylight). He was a very nice and interesting man with a beautiful wife and two wonderful dobbies. That’s when I learned that dobbies can be the sweetest doggies. But I digress.
Zoe’s mother, Margaret Olive Campbell, came from a small farm town in Manitoba, called Chater. There were a lot of Campbell farmers when Maggie grew up, but she decided she wanted to become a career woman, a nurse, a career choice that Zoe ultimately followed too, although it wasn’t her first choice. There’s still a lot of Campbells in Chater and surrounding areas, but the corporate farms have taken over most everything in Canada and most kids haven’t wanted to stay home on the farm anyway. Zoe still has a bunch of cousins thereabouts as well.
The Campbells have a family cemetery where Zoe’s mother was buried, and when her dad died, Zoe had his ashes buried with her. Being the great planner, Zoe made a trip up to Canada last year, well before her diagnosis, to visit relatives and make sure there was a place for her to be placed with Mom and Dad when the time came. She even commissioned a stone being cut for herself to be placed there. We had already made arrangements with Neptune Society for cremation services earlier in the year, so it just seemed natural to make sure that their disposition process was taken care of as well.
I mentioned Zoe-Anne’s musings which she started shortly after her diagnosis, so let’s go there.
I’m putting what Zoe said in italics, because I’m limited in how I can format on this website. I may interject some things in non-italic for clarification if needed. She didn’t go back and edit her thoughts, so this was pretty much stream-of-consciousness in her own words (she does refer to our cats, Presto and Pasha occasionally):
It’s Friday November 10, 2023. Yesterday we received the news that I had AML and was essentially dying. I’m so very sad and frightened. I’m not ready for this journey or leaving you. I love you so very much. I’m frightened because I must travel Dante’s circles of Hell. But it is less frightening because you will travel with me. I never thought I’d do this to you.
You asked me to jot down things about my life. I think it will be important, because it will help me grieve what I will lose and remember what I have gained. This will be a flight of ideas. I will not edit just feel what I’m feeling at any given time and try to capture it for you.
Right now, I’m lost in the fact that I’m leaving you alone. Alone is not a good place for you. I promise to stay connected as much as possible. Only you will know when our journey ends if I keep my promise. I love you. I’m incredibly sad.
I still feel this is happening to someone else. But each time I close a door, I know it’s happening to me, to us. Doors closed today, Dr. Close (Zoe and my dermatologist who helped Zoe with some skin problems), Oh the mosquitoes are here. 😊 I watch the kittens and think about not being with them.
I guess one of my greatest joys was getting a cat. My folks didn’t believe in pets in the house, so I only had a bird and goldfish. My first apartment I adopted Nuisance (a cat). She helped with the loneliness. I always said, if you love me, you must love my cat. Larry (her first husband) did both. We ended up having several cats and a dog. Each one had a story. They came with us when we went to Boston. Also, a story.
You will be home soon, so I will close for now, All my love. You walked in the door about 3 minutes later.
Saturday Nov 11th. I don’t know why I mark the days. I may not later. It’s early morning. I have my tea. I slept well last night. I think I feel safe because you are near. I woke up about 6:30 and laid there listening to your cpap machine. It was comforting. I am trying not to miss you. We are still here and together. I do miss planning for the future.
You know we came to the states in 1948. We left all our family in Canada. I think I spent time asking when are we going home. The early years are a blur. We had an apartment near mummy’s work. While waiting to find work in Seattle, he worked in Alaska. I think maybe a couple of summers. Mum worked at Providence Hospital. We moved into the house on Federal Ave in 1952. I think. I can’t remember where I went to middle school. High school was Lincoln.
A funny story: Mum’s sister Cassie spent several months with us. It was during the school year. Her job: to get me up and off to school. One morning I decided to fool her. I put pillows in the bed, snuck out the door. Well, I got an earful when I got home. Cassie came up stairs, saw me “in bed” and when she pulled back the sheets, she was not happy. Oh well.
Lincoln (High School) did not sit well with my mother. You must remember she was strong-willed. Dad was the softy. I was smart. But did not apply myself in school. I remember feeling like an outsider. Her solution, Helen Bush (a private girls school) at grade 10-12. Because I was not at par with my new peers, I spent my 9-10 grade summer in summer school, and I lived in the residence. That way homework was completed. I spent a lot of time in the study hall. Best course choir. One thing Bush promised was to get every student into a university. Margorie Livingood traveled the college current every spring. My school was Pacific University Music Department. Graduated in 1961, I sang Panis Angelicus at graduation and the audience was silent. I was a very good and passionate singer. I could move people. It was my joy. I also got drunk at the senior party and sang blue moon. That was a disaster, I think. Looking back, alcohol was a problem starting in my teens. We would visit family in Vancouver, all drinkers, and we start drinking PIMMs cups in the afternoon. I didn’t drink much, but I did drink. Mum and Lil, Steve’s mother, would start fighting. Even then, like a lot of alcoholics, I used it to feel okay about myself. I was often told I was too heavy, needed to lose weight. It continued to be my mantra through my life. That continued until we decided to quit. I was thankful. That decision changed parts of my life. I learned I was worthy, I even started to forgive myself for all the transgressions. Glad I was never pregnant. This was the 50s and early 60s. Not a good time for a teen to be pregnant and the 2 men I had sex with were not going to be fathers. Boston and the 70s later. I still drank, but I marched too.
That reminds me of two things:
I was in a children’s theater group in my early teens. The highlight: to sing Amal in Amal and the Night Visitors. When my chance came, I was at Bush, and they said no. My grades might suffer. I took piano lessons but didn’t like it. I loved to sing. Singing did find me a place in university.
Connie Flateboe and I were great friends at Bush. She was very smart but was an outsider like me. She was a day student. Her mum had a white Buick, and she would drive us around. One fellow I dated, David, lived across the street from me. His brother, Page, dated Connie for a while. They had an old friend, maybe 50 who loved jazz and made homebrew. The four of us and David’s dad would spend hours drinking beer, listening to music, and solving the problems of the world. These were the days of On the Road and the Beatniks.
Pacific University was a mixed bag. I was self-destructive, emotionally not physically. Picked the not-so-great group of friends. The black sheep or loners. I met Judy there. You know that history. Best class choir. I even had solos. But I was not disciplined and looking back on this I think my poor ego and acting out, stopped me doing more performing. We did the Mikado and I pretended that I was one of the 3 girls. I wasn’t. I was in the chorus.
I left Pacific University and went to the University of Washington for 1 quarter. Took all science classes. Failed and never put the school on an application. I can confess to that now. This was the quarter Kennedy was assassinated. I was on a bus going to Providence to see mum when it was announced.
In addition to David, I had a couple of boyfriends during my teens. These were not my best times or healthy for that matter. I wasn’t confident. Often felt unworthy. And really wasn’t emotionally healthy.
I’ll stop for now. I will not reread anything, So be prepared for maybe some repeating. And no doubt a stream of consciousness. Oh I wrote poetry for a while. I’ll see If I saved the poems. You might like to read them. I guess I should start putting things aside as I think of them. (I haven’t found the poems yet, but if I do, I will post)
I love you. I am trying to stay in the present. Well, looks like I am closing, Pasha thinks it’s time to be fed. She’s been talking about it for about 10 minutes
Sunday the 12th Met with the family for breakfast. Just said because I think this is the last time I’ll see the Moore’s. Hunter was there with Rachael. Not much to say. However, I did speak with Rachael. When the time comes to disperse things, please give Rachael my baby things and the pictures I have from mother.
That’s it for now. Hugs
November 15th. Pressy decided to sit with me. I was taking a break anyway. Seemed like a good time to muse. 😊 I have flashes of anger now. I don’t want to leave!!! Things are coming together. It’s good really. Except when they are done, I will have nothing to distract me. That’s frightening. I don’t like going to bed. It’s ending a day. Every day is precious. But you know that. I am thinking positively about chemo. Hopefully it will improve my universe. Oh dear, it’s feeding time. Pasha just arrived. Back later.
It’s been a while since I wrote anything. I’m preparing things to send north with Bruce. There are stories connected with each item. Bruce wanted to know more about me. So will share them here and then copy for Rachel and CJ. Warning, just like the rest of my musings I am not editing. It’s a stream of consciousness.
Before we go much further, I think I’d better explain a little about our family tree. Zoe never had any children of her own but was married before to Larry Fitzhugh in 1968 in Los Angeles. They were separated but remained friends when I met her in mid-May 1983. Her divorce from Larry was finalized in 1987.
I was married three times, the first time for three-plus years in the early seventies to Pauline. We had a son, George, who now lives in Arizona with his wife Karen. They have two adult children, George Jr. and Jayne. Zoe had become quite fond of the Arizona McFarlands and had always thought of George Jr. and Jayne as her own grandchildren, she only wished we had been able to spend more time with them as they grew up.
My second marriage was for eight-plus years to Nancy, who had two young daughters, Debbie and Diane. We lived in Santa Monica and then bought a house in Culver City. We separated in 1983 when I was opening a picture framing business in downtown Los Angeles, and I ended up living in the artist’s loft building where my business was. I met Zoe a couple of months later.
Zoe was living in a tiny house rental house on horse property in Arcadia in May 1983, but we became fast friends and soon lovers. We spent most of our time together in my artist’s loft in downtown L.A. because Zoe was working downtown, and it was easy to drop by and spend time with me. She had a good Arcadia neighbor who took care of her Nuisance cat and another couple of cats she was caring for there. I had adopted a male polydactyl rescue cat with my son George, who named him Sparky Bigfoot and was my framing businesses mascot.
Because Zoe’s mom and dad were still living in an area of Seattle called Capitol Hill, we would go up to Seattle to visit them and Zoe’s other relatives across the border in Canada. Unfortunately, Zoe’s mum, Maggie died in 1984. I was so glad I got to spend time with her in Seattle, on a trip to visit the relatives in Canada and one time when she came down to visit Zoe in California.
Both of Nancy’s daughters were strong-willed and independent in different ways. They each struggled to make their own stand in the world and become independent successful women.
Diane found her way to the University of Washington where she met and eventually married Joe Moore. Before Diane and Joe had their son, C.J. (Christopher James) and daughter Rachel, we had the opportunity to spend time with them when we went to Seattle to see Zoe’s dad, Charlie. For a time, they actually lived quite near one another in Des Moines WA. Zoe was most happy to have Diane in her family, but was really thrilled to have the grandkids, CJ and Rachel, who she held and loved and watched from babies until they graduated from college.
Debbie stayed in Southern California and graduated from California State University in Northridge. She was always very good finding money as a kid, so it’s no surprise so got into accounting and started taking care of other people’s money at a property management company, and then at Amgen, and then back at the same private company. She married a fellow named Jerry, and they had a little girl named Ella. Zoe and I were proud to watch Ella grow up and graduate high school and is now in college. Debbie lives not too far from me in Thousand Oaks.
So back to the trip up North. The following notes went with items I took with me the Moore’s Christmas get-together last December. Because of Zoe’s extremely compromised immune system, we didn’t want to risk Zoe being exposed to all the sick people in airplanes and airports, etc. but wanted to take the opportunity to give the family members Zoe’s treasures. Because of the website I’m not including the pictures with the words. I will put a description, of sorts, of the item, and then let you read the story Zoe told about it. I may also include some comments of my own about Zoe and my adventures.
The Hummel baby and bee: I don’t know much about it. Dad and mother put it on or by my crib/bed in 1945 when I was tiny. From about 1- my teens, I called mother, mummy. Later I used both terms mom and mum. I was always most comfortable with Dad and Mum. Back to the story: We lived in Trail BC until 1948 when we moved to Seattle. Another funny story about my childhood in Trail, I wore glasses when I was small. I had an astigmatism. I wore them for so many hours each day. Dad told me I would bury them in the yard and not tell him where they were. When it was time to wear them again, I’d dig them up when he wasn’t looking. So, daddy never knew my hiding places. 😊
Gold Filled bracelet: My dad and mother were married in 1940. The bracelet is engraved V to M 1940. It may have been a wedding gift. V is for Vernon. M is for Margaret. My dad’s full name was Charles Vernon White. He did not use Charles until we came to the states. His family and some close friends in Canada called him Bud, short for brother. Dad was the second oldest and my aunt Alberta and uncle Emmett could not say the word “brother” so he became “budder”, then Bud.
As I said, until we came to the states, he used the name Vernon, never Charles. When he went to work at Boeing, he had to use his first name. Story goes, he would get a call from someone asking for Chuck or Charlie (dad was not a Charlie or a Chuck. If anything, he was a Charles.) Anyway, if I answered the phone, remember I was 5 when we came south, I would say “no one here with that name” and hang up.
The names played out over the years. Charlie became a joke. When I was away from home, if I called and said, “hi Charlie”, he knew all was well. If I asked for Daddy, he knew he was in trouble. Dad’s big sister was Zoe Beatrice Cousins (nee White). I was named for her. The hyphen Zoe-Anne indicates that I was also named for my mother’s sister Anne. Mother was known as Maggie by most friends and family. At work she was Margaret.
The peridot (light green stone) is my birthstone. When I was 16, Mom, Dad and I visited my family in Vancouver BC. All my family are either on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, or Winnipeg and Brandon Manitoba. I have no family in the states. I missed having family nearby. While we were in Vancouver Dad and Mom took me to a jewelry store to buy me a birthday present. When we headed home and went through the border crossing at Blaine. Dad told me to put the ring on and not say anything. Why, I’m guessing that he didn’t want to declare it and maybe he thought we might have to pay something. All worked out well.
Pearls: David Carter was my first love. He lived across the street from us. After high school, he joined the Navy. He bought them when he was stationed in Guam. He was a hurricane hunter if I recall correctly. The pearls were my first gift from a boyfriend. This would be the early 1960s. I can’t remember where I got the second string of pearls, but this time brings back memories: The Beat generation, Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Reed College, Ken Kesey later flower children, always Jazz. Later Civil Rights. What a decade. The energy of the 60s energized the early 70s. I marched for the ERA, facilitate assertivenesstraining workshops for women, then more marching. It was a good time to be in Boston.
The amethyst ring: It’s the first ring I bought for myself. I think it was in the early 1990’s. I saw someone who had a marquee-cut engagement ring. I couldn’t afford a diamond. There was a strip mall not far from our house in Santa Clarita where I found a young jeweler. I’d just gotten a tax refund and decided I deserved to treat myself. I had the ring made for my right index finger.(because we weren’t yet married, Zoe bought the house in Santa Clarita in 1987, and I did a room addition to the main house and added a laundry room to the garage in 1993)
Zoe-Anne’s first husband was Larry Fitzhugh. Zoe and I were together for about 17 years when we decided to actually get married in 2000, and because so many people knew her professionally as Fitzhugh, she wanted to keep that name, which was OK with me.
Zoe had a life with Larry, going to college at Cal State Los Angeles, and later moving to Boston with him to go to Boston University. She was ABD (All But Dissertation) on her doctorate. Things got in the way, and she was never able to complete the dissertation, so returned to Los Angeles (she was also not thrilled about shoveling snow).
When I was taking things up North, Zoe had a particular book she wanted me to give to Hunter, Rachel Moore’s boyfriend, now fiancé. She wrote this to Hunter about Larry, and it tells a little bit about her too:
Larry was a theater person. We went to Boston for his graduate program in film. He was admitted to NYU and BU. We flipped a coin and Boston came up. I know you asking why did we left LA and USC for New England? It just felt like we needed to move. Boston was perfect. The east is very different from the west. Limited person space, New York is worse. Could live outside the downtown and had train service into the city. Cheaper than NYC,
Anyway, Larry joined a theater group called the Fisherman’s Players. When we moved home, we started the Fisherman’s Players West. It was a Christian Repertory Theater. We were based at the Episcopal Church of The Transfiguration in Arcadia, CA. The actors included Mormons, Catholics, representatives from Pentecostal Churches and several Episcopalians. We did some musical theater and the traditional Passion Plays. A couple of times, we also participated in the mass doing both liturgical dance and music. It was a very creative time.
Hunter, this is why you are reading all of this. One play we did was A Cup of Trembling. A play about Dietrich Bonhoeffer. His Fate: he was hung April 9, 1945, about 8 days before Flossenbürg concentration camp was liberated by the US Army. As you may recall, when we met in May, I was astounded that you knew about Bonhoeffer. I will miss the conversations we might have had about civil rights, fearless leaders like Bonhoeffer and other what many may say are esoteric conversations. On a visit to Germany, Bruce and I visited Dachau concentration camp. We didn’t make it to Flossenbürg.
Travelling was something that Zoe always wanted to do, but neither one of us had travelled very much outside of the US or Canada for Zoe. My family took vacations by car with a tiny camp trailer nearly every year for many years until we got a pickup truck with a camper and bought a boat and went water skiing on weekends and on annual vacations. We went to many national parks in the Western US and many lakes in California, but Zoe had missed out on many places. Fortunately, I was able to take Zoe to Yosemite, Kings Canyon, Joshua Tree, Death Valley, and Sequoia National Parks in California as well as Glenn Canyon and Montezuma Castle and the Grand Canyon in Arizona. We also saw a lot of the great Southwest scenery in New Mexico on our several trips there for the Santa Fe Opera or the world renown Indian Market.
Zoe mentioned the trip to Dachau Germany above. That was a trip Zoe wanted to do with Larry because of an every 10 year celebration called the Oberammergau Passion Play. Being a non-Christian, I really didn’t know anything about a Passion Play, but they are generally a play depicting the last days and hours of Jesus’s life.
To quote Wikipedia: “According to legend: an outbreak of bubonic plague devastated Bavaria during the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648). Bad Kohlgrub was so depopulated that only two married couples remained alive. The village of Oberammergau remained plague-free until 25 September 1633, when a man named Kaspar Schisler returned home after working in the nearby village of Eschenlohe. Over the next 33 days, 81 villagers would die, half of Oberammergau’s population. On 28 October 1633, the villagers vowed that if God spared them from the plague, they would perform a play every 10 years depicting the life and death of Jesus. Nobody died of plague in Oberammergau after that vow, and the villagers kept their word to God by performing the passion play for the first time in 1634”.
“The Oberammergau Passion Play (German: Oberammergauer Passionsspiele) is a passion play that has been performed every 10 years from 1634 to 1674 and each decadal year since 1680 (with a few exceptions) by the inhabitants of the village of Oberammergau, Bavaria, Germany. It was written by Othmar Weis, J A Daisenberger, Otto Huber, Christian Stuckl, Rochus Dedler, Eugen Papst, Marcus Zwink, Ingrid H Shafer, and the inhabitants of Oberammergau, with music by Dedler. Since its first production it has been performed on open-air stages in the village. The text of the play is a composite of four distinct manuscripts dating from the 15th and 16th centuries”.
We saw the play in 2000, but it had quite an anti-Semitic reputation and I almost refused to go. As it turned out, the producers of the play (perhaps at the insistence of the government of Germany) felt the anti-Semitic parts of the play shouldn’t be included, and they were reduced over the years, and I think eventually removed altogether. So being a non-Christian, it probably wasn’t as moving to me, but I do love live theater, so it wasn’t that bad.
We started the trip to Germany in Frankfurt and drove South through a lot of medieval towns with lots of castles without elevators. Oberammergau is in the Bavarian region, not too far from Munich. We saw a few of mad Ludwig’s castles and the cave where he listen to Wagner. We drove on through the Italian/Swiss alps with an unplanned stopover in Strasbourg, where the streets got strangely unswept, but the food started tasting delicious.
We continued driving to Cologne, Brussels, Ghent, Bruges, Antwerp, Rotterdam, Den Hague, and Amsterdam. It was surely one of our best trips, but all our trips were good. We had so much fun planning them. We spent months looking at maps and guide books and web sites, narrowing down the places we wanted to see. The planning was almost as much fun as the trip. We were great traveling companions too. We each supported each other’s wants and desires while traveling, which were different for each of us, but we found a way to make it work for each other. We always made it a win win when we went on a trip.
I’d love to tell you about every vacation we ever went on because they were all so special, but let me just say that we went to Mexico City, Miami, the Everglades, the Florida Keys, Nassau Bahamas, Turkey, Israel, Canada numerous times including two weeks in a lodge North of Churchill on Hudson Bay to play with the polar bears, Italy, Spain, Portugal, the inaugurations of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama in DC, and numerous other locations in California, Arizonia, and New Mexico.
One trip certainly worth a special mention was for Zoe’s 60th birthday in 2003. She hadn’t forgiven me for not making a big deal for her 50th birthday, so I knew I had to make the 60th special. I told her she would need her passport up-to-date and gave her some vague instructions and what clothing to pack. I told her we were going to be gone for two weeks. She didn’t know where she was going until we were in line at LAX.
Zoe had been taking voice lessons from a someone who’s father was international lawyer. I got in touch with the voice teacher and then her father to help me make the arrangements. So while standing in line at LAX, the voice teacher called me to talk to Zoe. Zoe couldn’t understand why her voice teacher wanted to talk to her at the airport. She asked Zoe, “do you know where you’re going?” Zoe said, “no, Bruce hasn’t told me anything yet.” The teacher said, “You’re going to Paris.” Her father had an office there and he helped me make sure I had a decent hotel in a nice area, and I thought it would be nice if she got to tell Zoe. It was a great surprise.
We had a wonderful adventure there and on her actual birthday, we went Van Gogh’ place of residence, Arles and saw so many places he painted there, including the cornfield with the crows flying out of it, where he shot himself. His grave, and his brother’s grave, was just across from the cornfield.
Also, that same day, we went to Monet’s studio and garden, where he built his water lily pond and made so many wonderful paintings. I think I redeemed myself with that birthday. It was another great B&Z trip.
So back to reality a bit. The house is very empty, if I didn’t have the cats here, I don’t know what I’d do. I promised Zoe I would take care of them until they die, which means I have at least another 8 to 10 years left to go. I remember the day we got them at an event called Bow Wows and Meows, we were volunteering for a group called Pet Assistance that helped people that couldn’t afford it get their pets spayed or neutered. The Bow Wows and Meows Pet Fair was an annual event that brought in numerous animal related organizations including the county animal shelters. Pasha and Presto were sisters that were from a Los Angeles County animal shelter, but not the one nearest us, and I was walking around the park looking at everything and fell in love with Pasha’s coloring. When I took Zoe over to look at her, Presto was reaching out of the cage, as if to say, “don’t forget me, I need a home too,” and Zoe said that because we were introducing a young kitten into a home with two adult cats, we should get them both so they would have each other to bond with in case the older cats shunned them.
We didn’t name the cats for several weeks. Pasha was Kitten 3 and Presto was Kitten 4. We wanted to see their personalities before we named them.
Zoe-Anne was taking voice lessons and singing in a choir then, and we were also L.A. Philharmonic and L.A. Opera subscribers, so music was a part of our lives.
We named the new kittens after their musical personalities, Kitten 3 was extremely beautiful and a little reserved, so her official name was Dolce Appassionato, or Pasha. Kitten 4 was more spirited and light-hearted, so we called her Presto Allegro, or just Presto.
There was a big pause in the writing of this memorial as I was getting rid of one website, and getting started with another one with different rules, so I was spending time editing pictures and scanning pictures and calling people and talking to banks and credit card companies, and taking my driver’s test, and basically keeping very busy, so now I’m getting back to the main story.
If you are reading this and gotten this far, I hope you’ve enjoyed the read, but wait – there’s more. I’ve been working on writing and on putting up this website, so because there are not two or three of me, the work is not done. Come back late and there will be more.