{"id":11067,"date":"2026-08-09T23:45:56","date_gmt":"2026-08-10T05:45:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qualityofmercy.com\/blog\/?p=11067"},"modified":"2026-08-10T00:50:50","modified_gmt":"2026-08-10T06:50:50","slug":"81-days-81-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qualityofmercy.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/09\/81-days-81-years\/","title":{"rendered":"81 Days, 81 Years"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Last year I wrote<\/a> that I might wait a few months before listening to John K. Samson’s last two songs in his serial of the cat named Virtute. I\u00a0finally bought the album containing them, Winter Wheat<\/em>. I didn’t cry, tho’ I should have. “Virtute at Rest,” ambiguously, maintains the cat’s nagging, I swear you can do it, while the human marks the 21st day at the “17th Street Treatment Centre.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like I said, I should have cried because today is my own 81st day drinking nearly nothing, sans treatment, centre or self-help, and I’m not white knuckling. On May 21 I had a pivotal CT scan that, unlike previous borderline liver scans, nudged me to regroup. Like a cocktail, the scan was the sum of its parts: ostensibly requisitioned for a kidney stone but with seven further findings. I’m haunted by what a listener said about Virtute, quoted in my comment<\/a>: “This song series might have saved my life, more than once, over the last two decades.” It didn’t save mine, because I heard only half its parts until today, but, as the commenter says, it “might have” or, rather for me, “still might.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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