For the Love of Bunny

For the Love of Bunny

Joan loved me and her bunny, and I got to keep the bunny when she went away. I gave it the tricky name of Knuffle, but Joan called it “Bunny.” One time I asked, “Do you remember Bunny's name?”  Joan didn't like the question because to her Bunny's name was obviously Bunny, but she liked to please, so she guessed, "Kerfunkel?"  Bunny and I thought that was hilarious. She was Bunny's mother and didn't know its name. Joan gave things simple names. Her kids are Mary and David. Before Knuffle, I had a stuffed Bengal tiger with no name until one day Joan said, “How's Bengal? That'll be his name. He'll be Bengal the tiger.”

The first two photos are of Joan and the Bunny.
Joan even gave a simple name to herself. Her dad and mother had the easy names of John and Louise, but when they had their first child, mom got creative and blended their names into elaborate “Jonalou.” At seven, Jonalou kicked and whimpered for a normal name like the other kids, and became Joan Louise.

Joan liked kale and lotion and easy names. She used hand lotion and leg lotion and oatmeal lotion, and urged me to follow her example rubbing on goo. She considered it her personal mission to help keep Ulta the cosmetics store in business.
Three years ago I brought a big load of Utah apples to Tucson. They took over my kitchen and Joan helped me put them up. Two years ago I did the same. After a long period of work, I said, “Will you wash up this next box of bottles?”

As she baptized one Mason jar after another in the sink, she laughed, “I was going to ask who your slave was last year, but then I realized. Oh, I was!"   Later she said, "We work in an applesauce factory, and we don't get any breaks.”

I gave Joan the bunny for Easter the year she went away. I never could think of a good gift, so I asked her what to buy. “Nothing. My place is full and I keep cramming it with new stuff. I don't need your help.”

In the store I looked at an orchid so pretty the day stood still. Then I looked at Joan. ”No orchid,” she said, “I'll just kill it.”   

“But that will get it out of your house,” I said.

She stepped over to stuffed animals on shelves and picked one up.“Let's get it,” I said.  
Photo below is of Joan and me.

She darted away. Next time in the store she made a quick stuffed animal inspection and fled to the lotion aisle. Day before Easter, I went to Target. On top of a pile of stuffed animals was a plump, floppy-eared, cute-eyed, cute everything Bunny. It was plumper, more rounded than real bunnies and those other gangly stuffed bunnies. The roundness made it as cute as a button, not hard since even a gangly bunny is cuter than a button in the first place.

The bunny was good, also, because it was small. It could have fit into Joan's purse. Of course there was never any room for Bunny in Joan's purse. About twice a month--or was it twice a day?--she would lose her car keys or cell phone. After she was ready to scream, I would mine the depths of her purse. If luck held, I would dig out four lotion containers and five tubes of lipstick and find the keys or phone gleaming at the bottom of the mine.

I bought the Target bunny and took it home in a brown paper sack. I slipped the brown sack into Joan's house. She didn’t notice. On Easter morning I handed it to her. “What's this?”

“Merry Easter.”

“I don't need a present,” she took the bag.

She looked in and pulled out the bunny. “Oh, what a fun bunny. Is it for me? Oh, how nice. Where did you get it?”

“I got it from its mother. Her name is Target. There's a whole litter. Since you like it, I'll bring you two more.”

“I don't have any room.”

We watched Charles Osgood interview Mo Willems, who wrote a book named Knuffle Bunny. “We'll name the bunny Knuffle,” I declared.

Much later the Bunny told me by telepathy, "My full name is LongEars Knuffle.because I have such pretty long ears."

Bunny quickly became dear. A couple of days later I noticed that she had taken it to bed. “How's Knuffle?”

“Bunny is sweet,” she said, “I love it. Her. She's a girl.”

A couple of times she brought Bunny along when she came to my place. In the first picture above, stylish Joan sports a yellow shirt, yellow gloves and a yellow hat band, and is goofing off like a good retiree.This retiree rarely smiles for her picture but is happy here to show Bunny off.

I left the Tucson heat for a long trip but Joan wouldn't go unless I went to San Diego. I made a big mistake and went to Utah. She called my answering machine, “I made my doctor's appointment. This darned year has been, uhh, not good, but I'm going to make it better. I know I haven't been much fun because I'm a spoiled brat, but I'm gonna get better. If you're on your way to Salt Lake City, I hope and pray you'll be safe." Then Joan said in a high-pitched slow little voice like a bunny, "The Bunny says to be careful. Pleeeeeeaze be careful.”

A month later Joan stopped answering the phone and lay for two or three days face down on her bed before I got people in to check. The apartment manager smelled a bad smell, saw her lying there dead, and called the big maintenance man, Joan's friend. He, too, could see she was dead. They called medical genius number three, the cop. He saw the dead old lady and waited hours for the coroner. The coroner did something—nobody ever told me what--and Joan moved. That got the paramedics. Joan remembered the ambulance was noisy and knew she had had a stroke, but knew nothing of the time she lay on her bed.

The first day I visited her in the hospital, she couldn't move her left side, but understood every word we said and talked most of the day. “I want my bunny,” she whispered.

Bunny came and stayed loyally at her side. On a fateful early July day I saw Bunny had a better future with me than with her. Joan later told me in a dream, “I had a choice to stay or go, [live or die] and I was fighting to stay with you, but someone came to me and said it was okay to go with them. My body was a lump that couldn't do me any more good. I just popped out of it and stood there and waited. My mother came and I left with her.”

That's how I understand Joan went away. 
In this photo Joan wears classy black and white, and pulls a face for a certain pesky photographer (me) who haunted her.  She poses as the cutest, happiest witch we know.