Tag Archives: Loss

Three Truths and One Wish

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1. Truth: A walk is magic, medicine. If you can go longer and take a few dogs along, even better. It clears my head, gets me unstuck, lifts my mood, gets me moving, reminds me to breathe. It brings my mind back to my body, gets my feet on the ground, holds both my mind and body in the present moment, in the same place at the same time. A walk softens the hard edges, relaxes tension, releases strong emotions, dissolves discursive thoughts.

2. Truth: Surrender, letting go of control is really, really hard. This morning in my meditation, I set an intention to invite surrender and let go of control. It arose naturally, those two things, the choosing of them specifically felt genuine and right–for about three minutes. Then I thought to myself “what have I done?!” I felt myself wanting to struggle with surrender, to cling to my sense of control. And yet, I know this is the edge I need to lean into, move past. Courtney Carver just put up a new post on Be More With Less, Let the Monkey off the Chain, that is helpful. And from my Inner Pilot Light today came this:

You may feel like if you let go of the reins, all hell will break loose, you won’t get what you want, and everything will fall apart. But what you may not realize is that grabbing the reins and trying to exert control is actually sabotaging all the blessings the Universe is trying to bestow upon you. So darling, please, let go. Surrender. Trust.

I’m trying, kind and gentle reader, I really am.

snowobi

3. Truth: I miss Obi. I was watching videos of him this weekend, and it made me so happy to see him again, but so sad too, the hard fact that he is gone, that while I’m alive I will never see him again. That grief only gets heavier knowing the same is coming with Dexter, that soon I will be missing them both.

When they are, I can watch videos like this one and remember when we were all here together. They had just gotten a bath, which always makes them go a little crazy. When they would play like this, we called it Dog Fu. It’s hard to believe that this was Obi three months into chemo (if you look close, you can see the bare spot on his leg where they shaved it to put the IV in), which clearly wasn’t slowing him down.

One Wish: That we find ease, that we find the courage to surrender and let go, that we are lucky enough to love deeply and be loved.

Just One More Minute

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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