Tag Archives: Life

Day of Rest

2 Replies

dexterinstagram

Today has not been a restful one for me. Dexter has had a wonky belly for a few days and his nose has been bleeding more than usual. This morning, he refused to eat, wouldn’t even take his favorite treats, so I took him to the emergency vet. They have him now, giving him iv fluids, antibiotics, and anti-nausea medication. I just got back from a short visit with him, checking on the blood work results (high white cell blood count which indicates a bacterial infection), giving him some love, and dropping off his Little D to hang out with him. The vet said if he stays stable, can eat some dinner later and keep it down, we’ll be able to bring him home tonight. This is such good news, and for now we’ll concentrate on that.

bigdlittled04

Everyone here is feeling tender.  Even Sam seems a little sad. We know Dexter will be back with us, but the fact that our time together overall is so limited lingers, and makes this time apart difficult. We are all bumping up against what it’s going to be like to be a family of three, and it hurts. And yet, our guiding intention remains that Dexter doesn’t suffer, that his death be easy–even if that means we get his belly feeling better only to need to make a bigger decision because of his nose. The good bad news is that how much we love them is equal to how much we hurt for them, how much we’ll miss them, how sad we are to be separated. It’s like Susan Piver said at our retreat last week, “no matter what, every relationship ends badly.”

dexterkiss

To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
~Mary Oliver

Just One More Minute

10 Replies

bed

I slept in this morning. I typically get up at 4:30 a.m. every morning, weekdays and weekends, but there are some mornings when I just don’t want to get up, and I don’t have to, so I sleep in. All I have to do is say to Eric, “I’m staying in,” and he turns off the light, hustles the dogs out, takes care of their breakfast and Dexter’s medicine for me. When they are done eating, Sam (the baby of the family, but maybe the laziest of us all) comes back and gets in with me. This, the comfort of a dog sleeping next to me, makes it even easier to drift back to sleep, to stay in.

From time to time I wake up, always thinking to myself “just a few more minutes.” It’s so cozy and nice, and I don’t really have anywhere else I have to be right now. This “just a few more minutes” typically becomes at least two extra hours of sleep. On days like this, I’ll tease Eric if he takes a nap, saying I already took mine.

After I got up, I was thinking about this “just a few more minutes.” I was thinking about all the other places this manifests. I remember every kid I’ve ever known begging for a few more minutes of play, just one more half hour of TV, just one more book, just one more cookie. I was thinking of the other ways it comes up for me, just one more bite, just one more page, just one more mile, just one more episode of whatever show is on HGTV as I ride the elliptical at the gym, just one more day. Grief arises as I think of those I’ve lost, how we both wished for more time, another day, another moment, just a few more minutes here together, how those lives were over too soon, how there was so much more living and loving to do, how hard I prayed that they be given more time, how angry and hurt I still am that it was denied.

fieldofgrass

This is where we live our lives, in these few minutes. If we are lucky, we have a succession of them, minute after minute, moment after moment, but our experience is only in this single, small measure of time. One breath, one beat of the heart, one flash of experience, one chance, one kind act, one moment of connection and compassion. We long for there to be another that follows it, but the wisdom that lives deep in our soft animal belly knows that we must savor this one, the one just now, to squeeze everything out of it we can, to really see it, to notice, to open our heart to it, because this is all we can be sure of. In this moment, we can know that we are here, we can be here, brave and open and vulnerable and tenderhearted.

What do you plan to do with your one minute, kind and gentle reader?

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
~From Mary Oliver’s poem, The Summer Day