Dharma Dog

 Dog Dharma 

Dear Ian,

 An evolution has happened.

Saturday I left Henry at home and took Phoebe to Luckenbach for your Aunt Nita's jewelry show. I thought I did it because she is a young dog and gets restless at home with old Henry sleeping most of the time. I thought I did it to get her out into the sway of the world and to give her some novelty. Also to feel her presence in the back seat makes me feel safe; makes me feel more whole.

It was a really lovely day; one of the best since you left....much to my surprise. Of course there were scores of happy families clustering heads together...sticky handed toddlers. There was familiar country music playing all day long and people were drinking beer. I heard the occasional chinking of empty bottles hitting trash cans. All types of humanity walking by looking at my sister's art, joyful and fitting.

All the stuff that I now seem to loath to my core. Determined goings-on of happy connected humans, something that is no longer real for me. It is where I used to live too, in that zone of belonging.

Before I lost you, baby; before I became a former Mom; before my life turned a different way with a sudden groan and jerk.

Before the stillness.

Before grief.

Before my bell was silenced leaving me to sit mute as others clang and ring with life.

The thing is, dearest boy, that a small stubborn part of me still wants to be a part of the din.  Driving through Fredericksburg Friday night, I noticed the first tug of it. A detour through town lead me to a parallel side street to avoid the downtown Christmas parade. One street over, I stalked from the dark, seeing glimpses of twinkle lights, people dancing about, colors and forms moving in and out of the canopy of decorations all in a colored tapestry of symbolism and merriment. I felt a moment of yearning to join them; to be there too, but the pull to not be there was stronger, as it so often is.

...and that is the crux of it. I both want and don't want to be a part of humanity in equal measure.

So why hoist myself back up the next morning and go to the festival? Perhaps it was the pull of my sister Nita, who has the remarkable ability to coax me back toward life. Nita accepts me half alive,  filling in my missing pieces with remembrance of my former vibrancy. She grounds me and believes in my coming back, when even I have lost hope myself. There is a confidence and quiet calm in her patience with my wracked and railing grief. 

Often since you left, I have turned to her in desperation. I have turned to her in despair, and occasionally in hope. Nita is one of those rare people with enough love and strength to transfuse others without ego or judgement. Only a day before, Nita had finally released the creped hand of a dying woman to the Universe. She witnessed her light fading, never once looking away from the miracle or the horror. Now she was out in the living world again, going on with her art.

Showing me how to live, without speaking a word.

For shits sake, if she could do that with grace and mirth,  then surely I could dredge up the nerve to go, too. I dreaded all the happiness that might wash around and never touch me, but I went anyway.

Deepak Chopra was also on my mind as I drove, reminding me that there are no binaries in life, only one unified consciousness. Evil and good are one; life and death exist in mutual interdependence. We are all acting both with limitless freedom and complete predetermination.

It is either-and, not either-or.

God or the Universal Creator uses us to recreate reality every moment. I love this idea, because it allows me to imagine that you acted both in freedom and within a chosen, thoughtful plan when you  leaped  away and gone. 

As Phoebe and I walked around Luckenbach, I noticed that tickle of newness when thoughts and experience mix in a different way. I sort of felt myself both becoming one with her and also feeling transfused with her essence. She is such a pretty and friendly dog, and people are drawn to her sweetness everywhere we go. Oddly,  I found I could tolerate people more because she was my buffer. Such a magnetic girl she is.

As I am sure you know Ian, I cannot look at a young boy anymore without sadness and panic. Every little face is your face; every soft pink hand is yours, too. Every innocent expression and matted head of hair takes me back to you. It is anguish. Jealousy and rage populate my heart and I feel  a terrible shame in it. Most days I literally look away from them, as if from a car crash. But not this day.  found that I could squat down really close and let a little boy rub Phoebe's coat with my hand over his, and I felt nothing but the joy of it. I could witness without pain as he explored her exquisite celestial spots. I also found love for the Mom, looking down in adoration at her little boy the way I once looked at you. through the insulation of her, I could then watch husbands, grown kids, couples and all sorts of tribes being together (something I suspect I will never have for myself again). It was ok. Phoebe was my conduit and shield, as she endured patiently the hundreds of hands, hundreds of hugs. She was the totem, completely in the moment and being her lovely self.

Things shifted a bit, just as Chopra promised happens when we expand ourselves to recognize Dharma as it happens in real time. It wasn't perfect, I still needed some beer to take the edge off, but I felt the certainty of an evolution in me.

Then, on my drive home, there was the shocking awareness that I felt good.

Now at home, I am thinking of my sister again; of how she has managed to build bridges in her life through her lust for wonder and courage to connect. I am understanding that we have been together since the beginning and before, just like you and I, Ian. 

We are all from the same star, I guess.

And Ian......I am thinking of all the dogs you and I have loved....Benjie,  Bailey, Ollie, Henry, Paisley, Skyy, Tiger, and lovely Phoebe. The miraculous way we find just the right ones. The free will and predetermination of all this.

And I have a soft knowing that I saved her so that she can save me right back.

Love,

Momma

Visitation Dream

Dream Visitation

I am climbing a vast, steep cliff. 

Seemingly endless wall above me and a chasm beneath.

Alone ascending, exactly how long I have been here or where I am going is indiscernible.

 Around me is a smear of mist or fog. All I can see is the vertical.

My body is so very tired. I cannot tell if it is physical or emotional.

I am utterly spent. There is no more effort that can be drawn from muscle nor will; 

I don't want to climb anymore.

I want to let go and drop.

I hear all around certain voices speaking softly to me, but one is actually physically present. I see no human forms. Whispers of love and encouragement telling me to climb higher.

Perhaps they are the voices of souls, I think? Above the whispers I hear the  a louder, closer, familiar voice of Cokie Roberts from NPR. In my waking mind I remember that she died recently and that I liked her...but beyond that I have never really thought about her before. She urges me to climb, to keep going...not to give up. There is warmth, strength and a bit of sternness in her voice. She coaches me to go on.

The climb is so so hard. There was that  agonizing feeling when there is not one more step that can be taken, one more pull or lift; when the effort is endless and muscles are jello.

I freeze in place and cling. The voices of souls are all around, above and below, encouraging me to keep at it; I look up and see them looking down and me and maybe reaching out hands from the top of a ledge or mesa? I could now see it,  and always Cokie is around me telling me I can do it. There is a tremendous awareness of not being alone...of being helped and loved.

(I say the entities weren't human and were clearly not from this plane of consciousness, but it was just a feeling I had; an image or intuition sparked by an article Carrie sent me yesterday.  It was called "Fifteen ways to develop one's 6th sense",  or "third eye" as Elijah has called it. The ability to remember that we all possess the ability to see other levels of consciousness if we try. Combining, in my mind, in the middle of this strange dream are thoughts on transformation versus change that I have found lately.  Change, that slow, slogging march....which takes so much effort and is exhausting, while transformation is immediate, magical, God-fueled. It offers the possibility of not just surviving, but transcending: 

 Deepak Chopra's promise of true alchemy

  Elijah's glimpses beyond the veil

 Kingsolver's reminder that a hermit crab can still feel 

  high tide after being taken 500 miles from the ocean

   Jesus's misty metaphors that stir my heart....

All swirl together and I wonder if this is how I can again have a living, thriving relationship with Ian again in real time. I know I need to live the rest of the days God has given me, but if I do it by the traditional way, "by the books", it will only be survival. If I figure out a way to transmute the pain; to transform myself the way two poisons can bond to create a miraculous and life-giving new thing....like water.....then that would feel worthy. That would be good and right and true.

These thoughts are happening in my waking mind as I remain in my dream state...clinging to that cliff as if I am processing all this as it happens. Drinking it in and making sense of it while still sound asleep.)

So back to my dream..... I am still climbing, nothing left in me but the will now borrowed from the voices in the mist.  At last, I pull myself up and I make it. I climb up onto the platform with a flood of relief and to the rousing  joy cries of the others around me, now touching and congratulating me.

I am surrounded by love.

Suddenly, out of no where, the souls move aside and Ian walks toward me, his usual golden self-light glowing. He comes to me, he is about my height so I guess he is around 13 years. I remember him so well at this age, when he started birding with me. It was the age when he got certified to scuba dive. He grabs me and hugs me so tight. Not uncomfortable or restricting, but firm and deep and complete. He wraps himself all around me and every cell in my body can feel him holding me. 

I am enveloped in his arms and it feels so good;  We blend together like the mystery of carbon and oxygen that combine to form something altogether new. Water..... In my dream I feel the comfort of this knowing and I am reassured that there is another path.The multiverse (along with Cokie Roberts, oddly)  promises to send provisions. 

Lovely boy you are here, there and everywhere with me.

I wake up sad at having to come back to this world, but at least I have the feeling of your arms around me and what may now come.  

I thank you God for my eyes that see.

I love you Ian.    

                             Momma

The Essence

The Essence

of all things is emptiness......

              love, 

                                  Momma

silent witness

Silent Witness

                                    Dear Ian,

I read somewhere:

 "Hearing truth is like breathing air from a forgotten world."

 I think this is true, baby.

 So today I am reading through

 some of the embers of truth

 that I find in this fire; 

This hell.....

"Something Unknown

Always

Wants to be known....."

"Sometimes I feel entirely defeated.

And then I come to a place like this (in nature)

And a small courage takes hold of me,

And I feel fitter for things."

"You will notice that you only have a self

When you are in trouble."

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation, and die with their songs still inside them."

"As you do not know the path of the wind

Or how the body is formed in a mother's womb

So you cannot understand the work of God,

The Maker of all things." 

"The story writes the life....at the same time the life is writing the story."

"I feel like a part of my soul

Has loved you

Since the beginning of everything.

Maybe we are from the same star?"

"I am Leeched by loss."

"Mom, thank you for everything you do for me.

 You are the best thing in my life.

 My life is a half-circle right now, but with you in my life it is a full circle.

 Everything you do for me makes my heart shine. 

 Love, your boy Ian." 5th grade

"Nothing ever goes away until it teaches us what we need to know...."

"I wanted to talk to someone, but who?

It's in moments like this, 

when you need someone the most, 

that your world seems smallest."

"And Now there is just empty space

Where

A

Vibrating human used to be."

                                                    Love,

                                                                     Momma

Thanks to:

Ecclesiastes

Deepak Chopra

 H. D. Thoreau

Emily Dickenson

Pam Houston

Emery Allen

Ian Ray

Dostoyevsky

Pema Chodrin

Rachel Cohen

Death all around

Death all around

Dear Ian,

Today I saw a dead grasshopper in our river bed, nested within a ring of dirt piled up by fire ants who were busy harvesting the meat.   His colorful gold, black and orange exoskeleton still intact. I was struck by how organized was their process. The ants always seem to me like a construction crew, but this time, I imagined that they were the team that breaks down sets when a play ends. People are filing out quietly to go home or to dinner, or to kiss their kids goodnight,  and the workers tear down the story; tear down the dream.

  

   

 Never mind the ants were feeding themselves and their colony, for a second I overlooked that detail, when in reality I guess it is the most important thing.....Hunger rules everything.

 I have been seeing fire ants in my house again, as I usually do this time of year when other food is scarce and the sun bakes the ground dry. They probably have quite a respectably large colony under my house and are sending expeditions in search of toast crumbs, bits of lettuce and dry dog food. Anything at all that my broom and sponge have missed.

I kill them but I don't like it.

Last month when I was rescuing minnows from the rapidly shrinking puddles in our river, there were fire ants waiting along the edges of the water for death to come. Puddles were almost gone, in fact so shallow that the tiny fish had to lay sideways and gulp for enough water to keep cheating the end. I frantically picked them up by tiny tails or whatever I could grab onto, and flung them into the salvation of my red bucket. I got every one I could see. I checked again and again so that none were left to the ants, and all the while they waited for death because it brought them food.

I can't hate them for that.

Death is all around me lately, Biggun. I was driving home from work Friday night and hit a family of raccoons. I missed the Mom and killed two babies, barely enough time to see the green reflection of my headlights in their tiny eyes. 

I screamed with rage at God for the first time since you died. The first time. I screamed at the pointlessness of random fate that put my wheels there just so...at the perfectly wrong time. I screamed that I had had enough. I told God I could not be haunted anymore by the fucked up thoughts and memories of yet another ridiculous waste of life. I shrieked...."Stop...enough Goddamnit." I ordered God to help me not obsess about the babies all night, just to make me let it go. Let it go.

And He did, and it was OK. That is some small relief.

Death everywhere.....a beautiful cedar elm fell in my back yard, green leaves going dull and wilting all week until Chris and Payden came and acted as my ants and cleared the set. From under my house, the smell of a dead (probably) cat filled the air all day while we worked. I am waiting for the poor thing to decompose before I crawl under my house to put out fire ant bait. Death everywhere lately.

Death everywhere. Friends. Friends of friends. Clients' children, Andi's brother-in-law, a black man in Dallas killed accidentally by a policewoman who is going to jail; Mrs. Kunz.....baby foxes....grasshoppers and crawfish. Poignant notorious deaths and some so small only my finger on my kitchen counter knows that an ant has died looking for crumbs. Deaths big and deaths small. Deaths that are pointless and deaths that allow others to live. Death so neutral it seems robotic.

Deaths that change the color of things.

And then there is this other death whose humming pulses forever in my veins, my precious boy. It is the death of the most lovely story of my life. Death of a chapter, a memory; a rich and fantastic slice of my time. You were here, and we were sharing wishbones, jack-o-lanterns, advent, and piles of spaghetti. I got to hug you so tight, and feel that hug come back to me; 

When I had you with me for real and true.

For real and for true.

Before death came to break down  the set and end the play.

                                                                                                      Love,

                                                                               Mom

Heart Sutra

Heart Sutra

Gone, gone, gone beyond.

Gone altogether beyond.

No Coming  no going;

No After, no before.

I hold you close to me.

I release you to be SO FREE,

Because I am in you and you are in me.

Because I am in you and you are in me.

                                                                                                 For my precious Ian with love,

                                                                                                        Mom

                

After Crying

After Crying

Dear Ian,

After crying

I sleep hard

And on awakening I lie in a warm spot

Very still.

I don't move,

Dug in deep,

Hesitant to accept that time is still running along.

In a crib of suspended animation.

My eyes move only, and note what is the measure of darkness around me....1 am? 4 am? The quiet inhale of 5 am?  That oddest of hours just before the stirring of morning world. I lay still and wish this could be my final place of being,

Wish I could stay and stay and stay.

After crying

Mornings come with a slower gait;

Raw senses,

More effort to be quiet

Because noises hurt.

I find that I am still in some sort of delta state, moving very slowly 

Making tea or feeding the birds. Eyes fuzzy raw from swelling

My body moves to the least small measure so as to confirm acceptance of another day here,

Alone again.

I am without you.

I have poured this out again like poison from a cup.

I am emptied. It is not a tiredness so much as surrender; not defeat so much as a retreat.

I have taken a slow and deliberate plunge; a going down below the water line, down into the other world.

After crying

I observe with silence.

And secrecy

I can hear and see and sense what goes on above

Within a blessed veil of hiding. 

All sensation and perception are muted and warped and warbled. I float not apart exactly, but beneath the rest of the world in a cool and dark and different state. The dreaminess of sleep still a cloak.

Light is changed.

I drift slowly sipping my tea;

In the quiet..

No TV

No people 

None of the prattle that betrays the comings and goings of the normal world.

Safe and apart. 

My swollen eyes and blunted movements might work better down here...beneath all other things. I am altered, morphed, remade into a being that seems amphibious or mercurial, a temporary but delicious place.

I cast my gaze up through the backward light

and watch

and breath

and wait for a while.

A place where on one will even come for a while or notice or interrupt my will to be apart. 

Where I find again my Holy Stance;

My worship posture.

This body crying her

Remembrance of not having you anymore.

The most deep and sad truth 

And thus being alone in knowing it,

Willing to sit with this knowing.

After crying, my body wants to be invisible and my heart rues the coming of day. But come it always does. It is the closest I ever come to making peace with death, until I have to once again shoot to the surface for air.

Love,

Momma

  

Yielding to the bigger

Yielding to the Bigger

Dear Ian,

The river is leaving again, and I knew it would make me sad.

I hate another death.

I dreaded the drying, having seen it before, and I thought I would just look away for the month it took to happen, stop my walks, stay inside and let death have dominion without me. The dogs need the walks though, and so do I, so I kept walking along it anyway, witnessing the shrinking pools withdrawing water line;

until nothing remained but isolated puddles and great blue herons, watching. Water warming slowly and the color changing from emerald to chartreuse and eventually a muddy taupe as the river bed around bleaches whiter. White as the occasional belly-up fish.





Big fish get eaten first, then the smaller ones, and at last go the water bugs, minnows and craw fish, who escape for a while in the muddy reaches of the banks. Life giving way. Life taking. Perhaps it was the heron that shifted my perspective a little. 

Instead of just rage and grief, my two most common companions in the days of these last two years, I felt instead, a softening.

I seem to have found more than just these feelings have been ignited by the drying of my river. What a surprise.

Quiet resignation, scientific fascination.... a softening again. 

A yielding to the bigger.


All I have left to do with any of this is yield to the bigger.

So, I bowed my head in deference to another great mystery unveiled at the ending of  another thing I love.

I am a witness again.

I found myself, as I walk, watching the indifferent heron, finding her life in these deaths, and quietly notice that every death actually is another beginning.

Ian, do you remember our trips to the drying pools every August, buckets and nets....

or sometimes just your baseball cap and an empty can?

I see you now,  your exquisite blonde head facing down close to the pool, intent and poised to scoop up some pale blue glimmering minnow;  enacting another small miracle. We barely spoke, so intent on the mission. We did it as often as we could, on the years when you were young and still with me, rescuing some, our buckets bubbling with little guys, all scared and freaked out by the turn of things.

Turns out a slow, gradual death is less of a surprise than sudden salvation.

We'd take our catch back give them a new life in our metal fish pond or in the big Blanco river. I know that at the moment of release both our hearts were full of joy and relief that at least these few had a chance.

It was one of the most beautiful tasks I have ever shared with anyone. I miss it with a fierce burn, baby.

So this morning I took my bucket and net again alone, my throat tight with grief. I walked back to the place where the water makes its last stand; the deepest, shadiest place. The last pool. 

I was alone as I mostly am, save for the memories of you, blonde, beautiful and completely perfect. Even without you here, I began to scoop and recover who I could, and they went wild trying to avoid my net. as is their custom.

As I scooped and stomped and made my way in the water that was quickly becoming too silty for me to see the wriggling lives, I thought of you, around 8 years old, by my side. When I do this, it is almost too painful to bear. My longing and regret choke me, but I did it anyway. I saw us side by side, as we always were, a team of two odd misfits in this death-torn world, saving a few other tiny shimmering misfits. Doing what we wanted. Doing what we could. I can't honestly say whether it was more painful to think about than not, but I can tell you that I felt softened by it all. I felt softened by the reminder that the ebbs and flows; the beginnings and endings of everything, and our brief and enthusiastic stand (with nets and buckets) means something to me.

Ian, do you think God is like us with His net? Does he try to scoop up who He can as we humans freak out and hide (to our own demise?) This is a Christian metaphor; one that sometimes I imagine, but mostly think is yet another story. I don't know....The timeless battle between free will and the possibility of something better somewhere else.  

The only truth is see is that fleeing and fearing is a part of everything. Free will is a part of everything.

It lays us open for the blue heron and can be our undoing. How are we to know; how are we to fight our own natures as the pool gets smaller and life gets harder? How are we supposed to know when to hide and when to hold still and surrender to the net?

So today I took my faith and my questions again to the river.
And I thought again of you, and why you left me.
Why your free will robbed me of you.
Why the river fills or the river dries up.
Why perfectly beautiful creations have to die. 

And.....Why that same free will compelled us to clasp hands and hearts and go engage in those acts of cosmic disobedience as the river dried each year. I don't know why.

What I do know is that you and I have hearts to save. 

And that is something.

And it was good.

Love, 

Momma

Last Christmas Eve

Last Christmas Eve 2018

     Were almost passed it, right? You and I just walked to the river and I jabbered on about all the things you used to do here, the things we shared and I did feel you. I felt light and lifted, thank you darlin, you are still such a good son.

     My mind is so weak and I lose focus. but nonetheless your presence was strong and warm. I told you about Irene and I reminded you that Chris and Kenzie love you; told you all the stuff I am mad about-and you listened. You know my heart and the ebb and flow of my imperfect soul.

     I said you and I were never going to lose each other and I felt the certainty that turns a wish into reality. I said, "You are the strongest, most loyal person that I ever met.....and once you and I love, we never let go. It is our natures. That combination keeps us tight through all the ups and downs and in betweens. Through eternity. Who knows what our incarnation will be next, baby?

    We might be in a tribe together on an island off Africa, spearing annoying Christian intruders. We might be in a pod of whales pluming the depths where humans cannot go. We may be the smallest and most intricate lacewings buzzing about in the night together on some random back porch and then sleeping all day in the cracked skin of an old oak tree. We might be twin wallabies arriving together and sharing some warm mother's pouch-bit feet pushing out and then endless pounding play on a red clay savanna....We might be mother and son again, or two soldiers in a Hummer telling dirty jokes and hating the war; two astronauts, two canyon wrens with fantastic mud mansions constantly colored with the reflections of the water below.

     Where ever we end up next, we will be closer than ever because of the tears that have marked this particular life. Not that often do two souls figure out how to keep hands clasped on different planes of consciousness-not many still speak to each other so clearly or hear so well as you and I. this is at least something, right baby? And as I slowly shake off my shroud, perhaps there are even more angles to our love yet to be seen.

Love, 

Momma