Tag Archives: Loss

I remember

4 Replies

It’s been a rough, emotional week. I love many people who are actively suffering, confused, hurt, angry, and who can’t see their way out, can’t seem to get unstuck.

As someone who wants to help, to serve, it is incredibly painful to not be able to do anything, to not be able to fix it, to know that I can’t save them.

Even worse is that I can’t simply stand by and watch, untouched. Their pain, their poison seeps into me, into my porous heart, and I suffer too. I try to care for myself, but my chest and stomach cramp and ache, my heart and head hurt, I can’t sleep, and my right eye twitches for an entire day.

And within the past 24 hours, we’ve had difficulties with our boys. We discovered that Sam has Discoid Lupus Erythematosus, (a benign form of systemic lupus, a form of autoimmune disease, which manifests as loss of pigment on his nose, and dry, irritated, raw spots), and Dexter sprained his tail, (Limber tail syndrome, or acute caudal myopathy, a disorder of the muscles in the tail, usually affecting working dogs, also known as Cold Water Tail, Broken Tail, Dead Tail or Broken Wag).

It makes me so sad to see either of them hurt, but the real issue is that recognition of their pain leads to the realization, the remembering that they are mortal–some day they will die, and I will lose them. Our direct relationship, our time together is limited, we are impermanent.

And then there is another remembering, of those already gone and of the loss of them. Two years ago, Kelly was sent home from the hospital and those of us who loved her knew that the end was coming. We entered an awful season of waiting. It only lasted a few days, but it was also eternal, and in so many ways, it’s still happening.

Then and now, there is something so bizarre about the new life of Spring, the return to green, the flowering, the soft earth, the clear blue sky, the bird songs and baby animals, the soft warm new body of the whole thing in contrast with the blackness, the blindness of loss, the grief, the wailing and crying and disbelief, the emptiness, the suffering, the wreck and the broken, the raw of the rest.

That is life though, isn’t it? The horrific brutality and the precious brilliance. A cat smashed on the road, twisted, broken, someone’s lost soft love, and a butterfly resting on a flower, its wings folding and unfolding as it feeds, as it floats from bloom to bloom, drawn by their scent and their sweetness. There is bad in the world, life is brutal, and there is good in the world, life is beautiful–Life is precious, because it is both beautiful and brutal.

I remember…

Gratitude Friday

11 Replies

This post is a mashup of The Little Bliss List and Joy Jam, and as such is meant to celebrate: the little things that brought me hope and happiness this week, the sweet stuff of life, those small gifts that brought me joy this week. By sharing them, I not only make public my gratitude, but maybe also help you notice your own good stuff and send some positive energy out into the world.

1. Sunday’s hike. I wrote about it here, and am still riding on the high of that day, almost a week later. Something big softened and shifted for me that day, and I’m so grateful it did. It was magic. It was medicine.

2. The fresh start of Spring. Everything is coming out and alive again, and it’s early enough in the warm season that we can sit in the back yard in the evenings without having to fight the mosquitoes. A few nights ago, I sat on the back step in kind of a funk, until all three of my boys came out to play, ran around the yard, chasing each other and wrestling and rolling in the grass, and my whole mood lifted, and my heart felt so light, both full and open. It was magic. It was medicine.

3. My 6:30 am yoga class. I’ve been going for over four years now, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning, and even though people have come and gone (and then come back again), there is a pretty consistent group of people. If I am in a bad mood, they always cheer me up. If I am struggling, they always manage to help me shift things, soften me up. This morning in shavasana, with Deva Premal singing and our teacher moving around the room adjusting our shoulders, all of us relaxed and wrapped up in blankets, resting together after practice like naptime in preschool, my heart swelled with love and thanks. It was magic. It was medicine.

4. Video by Susannah Conway in my Blogging from the Heart class. She only makes a few during the course of the class, but it’s so nice to see her face, her smile, hear her voice (she has the most divine accent) and her laugh. She’s smart and funny and kind. This week’s video had me in tears, not because of the subject matter, but because of her–the way she reminds me to love myself, to trust my worth, to have faith in my dreams. It was magic. It was medicine.

5. The Universe says “yes,” again. I was having a rough morning, one of those mornings when the nasty voices of doubt and self-criticism swirl around my head like a nest of yellow-jackets. Then I turned on my computer and saw that one of my very favorite people, someone whose work, her life and her self, her way of being in the world, inspires me and encourages me, had subscribed to follow my blog. I was both humbled and excited, and it truly felt like a reminder from the Universe that yes, I am doing what I need to, what I should, what I have to, yes, this is the right way, keep going. It was magic. It was medicine.

6. “Contemplative Arts Teacher.” Practicing in the Shambhala tradition, contemplative art is not a new concept to me. And, similarly, the idea that there are teachers for each specific tradition isn’t a surprise. However, this past week, I stumbled across a website (can’t even remember how or where now) where the author described herself as a Contemplative Arts Teacher. It felt a little like it did when I was in the 2nd grade and realized that the books I loved reading so much where written by “authors,” people whose job it was to write. I became aware of this new possibility, and felt a longing, deep and true, felt like something I had always wanted without being fully conscious of it had been revealed and named. Gobsmaked. It was magic. It was medicine.

7. Another reminder that while everything is impermanent, and reality can be messy and hard, everything is also beautiful and brilliant. As Pema Chödrön so perfectly says, things “come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.”

I watched Rocky go last Friday, felt his heart stop, which brought me right back to having to let Obi go, and then losing Kelly, but in that grief is also so much love, so much grace. And yesterday, I watched this video, of Honey the Great Dane and her kitty best friend Lemon, born on the same day and raised together. The end of the story is so sad, with Lemon contracting a mysterious virus and passing at age five, but what is so wonderful is watching them interact and be friends, playing and lounging, being together so happily. It reminded me that while our time together is so short and loss hurts, there is so much love and joy, too. It was magic. It was medicine.