Born Before the Wind.

“I am. That I am.” ~ Exodus 3:14

Our beloved cavachon, Henry, passed of lung cancer yesterday afternoon. He would have turned twelve today. There’s not enough space or time to describe the golden halo he cast on us or the spell of gratitude in having befriended such a sweet, gentle soul.

I’m called to move my body. The exhaustion as a doula of death during his transition has caught up to me. I walk through the house, mindfully removing the objects that he used to ease these swelling emotions into the reality of his departure; and, I am reminded of the way the furniture was displaced to facilitate my father’s pathway when he moved in for his rehabilitation - or the way I tried to put things in order when my mother bumped into unreliable memories.

With each object I touch, I pause to remember each “last” until I settle at the edge of the family room. The afternoon sun calls my attention to the outline of Henry’s body still present in the microfibers of the lime green chenille sofa. When I look just so, I see a shroud of his life force. And, though his soul may have finally risen from his body, the fear around death has not returned with the functional wisdom needed to harmonize with these emotions - to let their message bring us home to the heart of the matter.

Henry departed at 3:14 pm. No more time together. It began to snow.

He was swaddled in a blanket and crystal snowflakes kissed his lips. His smile was peaceful - content, calm, cared for, connected to our family and conceived through eternal love.  But these emotions, they were anything but peaceful, could not be contained.  As I carried his beautiful, sacred body in my arms toward the Doctor waiting outside (each son resting their hand on my shoulder), these emotions made the deepest sound.

Wave upon wave, sorrow thrashed against my soul like a battered ship.

One might think that it was the sound of a mother losing her child - my love conceived as my dog representing my inner self - and that may hold true. However, this sound came from a place of loneliness, from a longing to remember the love that I am.

Each time I forget, I am confronted with death or the threat of death (or the preparation for death for myself, or for the impending death of others, or to protect the process of death) and the truth feels challenged by the thoughts that come to save me. Save me from what?

… from the fear that “what I am is merely mortal” - that this love I feel is conditional and might leave me. That I may never feel this radical love again.

I listened closely.

And, as I did, I noticed that to do so, I was independent from the thought or any emotion. I was alone and this kind of “alone” wasn’t painful. I noticed that it was a result of knowing love through Henry and everyone else that was near.

When I could be with this truth, all attachment lost its power.

Each time death comes near I am presented with an opportunity to learn more about this confusion - how these words in this sequence and with this frequency, become a golden thread to the Eternal where we can finally be with our emotions.  

And when we arrive with the intention of what is most holy, we find that at the core of our deepest fears, desires and unconscious mind, is not a beast, but the capacity to solve problems inter-dimensionally through multiple solutions, and under many conditions.

• It’s not a “doing” but a way of being that informs what we “do”.

• It’s not a “grounding” but a way of rooting to universal qualities that ground our “choices”.

• It’s not “phenomenal” tolerance but a noumenal acceptance that favors consensus and healing.

Birth and Death are a weft of possibility traveling through a creationary loom, creating patterns and paradigms of mutual responsibility.  When the weft of emotion gets tangled, the weaving process is interrupted, causing uneven fabric with holes or gaps, and increases the opportunity of potential snags on the warp threads, making it difficult to shuttle.

As my friend Wayne said, “Being an angel is easy. Being human is hell!”

This is why, as human beings, we are so very sensitive to the waves/weaves of emotion/motion - why we avoid the consequences of our sins by repackaging them as wins. When we live in emotions we are trapped in the samsara of that story - “I am _____ and Henry was _____.”

As emotional beings created from the tension of Love, between Gaia and Uranus - the sky and the earth - we can’t escape the reality that everything born within this phenomenal biosphere is born from thought and emotion and action, exists within the fabric of a noumenal universe.

In light of this realization, any drama is a form of clutter - the kind that causes us to seek the truth outside ourselves in the loss of someone we love - in outer space where there is nothing for kazillions of miles - to inhabit mars, where there is nothing but death, while degrading the natural resources that harmonize the emotions that support overall wellbeing.

Our greatest fear is the Power that exists before and beyond any thought, and our effectiveness in communicating this power depends on our relationship with our thoughts and the process that habituates those thoughts.

There is no deeper intimacy than being in the presence of birth and death.  

I mourn what I no longer have. In seeking Henry through the senses I am not including his presence through the eternal - the spatial awareness that lets me know he is here.

There is no death, only transformation and wisdom. He is infused in me, not in the food bowl, or in the memories, he is in the motion of the walk, not in its purpose. He is not in the story on my media, he is here, in my heart, conceived as my dog but representing an inner wisdom carrying a message of remembrance and freedom.

This is a series of lasts that are open to a series of firsts. This loss opens my world to the importance of my community. My husband and I now walk our route searching for him, and I intuited that soon, after the initial memory of him merges with the sun, sky, trees and grass, he will be with me eternally.

So I asked myself, “Who would I be without this habit – this coping mechanism – this thought that calls upon these emotions that connect me to that memory that causes my hand to grab that (drink, toke, food or belief), that has lost its initial healing quality?

And, what are the lies that we continue to tell others when we are unable to be honest with ourselves, when we can’t rest or don’t trust that we are enough?

We give excuses, we make apologies and often, we start to avoid or downright ignore them as we get more and more focused on the goal - get the right person, job, position, house, education, car, whatever! The point is not “what” it is that you want. The point is that the wanting gets so intense, we become so attached to what that goal means - that we miss the opportunity altogether.

What does this have to do with losing my dog?

Everything.