LESSONS OF LOVE

I love my pets! The steadfast quality of these relationships shared day after day through the years has taught me more about love and compassion than anything else in my life. The gentle consistency of the steady, unconditional company makes being with my pets a continual Celebration of Life.

A friend of mine told me a story that speaks to my own experience. Parents of a little boy decided it would be best for the child if he went with them to the veterinarian to put his dog to sleep. Afterward, the boy seemed to be not as upset as his parents had anticipated. When asked about this he said, “I understand that dogs don’t live very long because they already know what people need to learn”.

When I think about it, I cannot even begin to list all the positive things pets have taught me. Under their guidance I have learned to trust, open my heart, care for and protect, cherish tenderness, and allow myself to be endlessly delighted and entertained. Loving people, while enormously educational on my life journey, has contained complications, disappointments, conditions, and ups and downs along with closeness, intimacy and happiness.

The love I share with my pets touches in me the deepest purest experience of unconditional love, without any confusion or struggle. No matter what kind of day I am having, they wait patiently, ready to connect, love and be loved. Our commitment to each other is invincible. I love them and they love me. Loving them is natural, straightforward, and simple.

I feel like an apprentice when the Universe brings me exactly the perfect dog, cat, (or person), to further assist and support whatever part of my life I need to master at that particular junction. When my mother and several other close family members were dying, a cat named Studebaker Hawk came into my life. He was a big, gentle Tom who would hang around with me until I felt comfortably attached in a safety-blanket kind of way. Just when I reached a secure level of trust, he would leave and stay away. The first time he was only gone a day. As time went on, his absences would last longer and longer. Like clockwork, at the very moment I came to terms with his not coming back--he would show up. In hindsight, I can see that he was teaching me about letting go. At the time, I experienced his lessons as inflicting more pain by amplifying my already agonizing process.

After all those people passed on I was submerged in grief. I got a Basset Hound that I named Tristum. The symbolism was clearly obvious even at the time. Tristum personified and embodied the grief that was too enormous and painful for me to carry alone. His being with me allowed me to project onto him my inner feelings of sadness and depression that I could not allow myself to feel or show. He accompanied me through some rough times.

When Tristum died, I was left alone to bear my anguish. I had to take back all of my grief projections and own my feelings. I pulled myself into a tight little cocoon. In my abandoned state I swore adamantly that "I would never have another pet". I lived this way, pet less, for almost 18 months. One afternoon I heard a knock at the door. When I opened it, there stood my son (18 months old) and my niece (11 years old). They were both bundled up for winter and the joy in their big brown eyes pierced my soul. They proudly held out an 8 week old puppy to me that they had gotten from someone at the Mall. Dumbfounded, I recoiled and burst into tears. "I can't! I can't!" is all I can remember saying. Then my son, in his tiny voice tenderly said, "But Mommy, his name is Happy Dog". How could I argue with the cosmic sense of humor of the Universe? I kept the dog.

I have a much better grasp now of allowing pets help me with my life lessons than I did when I was younger. The challenge recently presented to me is how to consciously accompany my pets through illness and their passing on. Within the last 6 months, I was told that two of my three dogs were terminally ill. My world felt as if it had been turned upside down. I could not talk about it at first because grief took me too deeply inside myself. It triggered memories of all the people and pets I had lost before. My mind raced to try to remember how I had gotten through the other times I had been faced with this situation.

I remembered Elisabeth Kuebler-Ross encouraging me to practice "letting go" of little insignificant things every day as a way of dealing with bigger griefs when they occur. An important and unexpected memory about letting go popped into my mind. It had happened during a time when I was a young adult, grieving the loss of a relationship, dealing with disappointment about my dreams for the future and struggling with redefining myself without all the things in my life I had lost. One evening I heard my son, who was almost 3 at the time, go into the bathroom. Flushing the toilet, he raced out the door and ran down the stairs where the pipes were, screaming with sheer delight, “Goodbye, Goodbye”.

When I got the news that one of my dogs and shortly after the other were dying, I felt as though I could not bear the pain. Needing to reach out for support with my anguish I called a friend. I just kept asking, “What shall I do?” With great compassion he said, “Make happy memories”. It seemed almost too simple. After several weeks of being in shock, the wisdom of the words "make happy memories" turned into a full-blown unexpected spiritual experience.

I was sitting outside with my dogs. The sun was shining on us and I was lost in dark thoughts of sadness, grief and impending loss. Suddenly, I was suspended in a moment of timelessness. In that moment, there was no past or future, no fear, no loss. Everything that had ever happened in my life, everyone I had ever loved, all pain, all joy, EVERYTHING was there. All my life was occurring in that moment. I could feel everyone I had ever loved. Even those who had crossed over felt like they were there. My senses were in such a heightened state of expansion that I felt the energy of my dogs snuggling against me as if we were one.

In that moment, I realized that loss had provided me over and over with the experience of separation. This experience made me see the world from the perspective of constantly being disconnected from others and things in my life without any choice or control. The feelings of angst, fear and despair that came from the illusion of being disconnected, kept me from being connected with my soul self and made me forget who I truly am. In this expanded moment of remembering and reconnecting with myself, the illusion of separation dissolved and was replaced with an awareness of Oneness.

In that moment I felt a new respect for death and loss. They have provided me with core spiritual lessons and given me the opportunity to remember and reconnect with myself. Reconnecting allows me to know what is really important in my life. Feeling connected with my pets was a safe way to form strong attachments. Loving them and the experience of separation (or fear of it) that ensued was my life lesson. Finding the meaning of the experience has shown me the way back to loving myself. Actually, it has expanded my love of everything and everyone. Life is vulnerable and precious. Being in every moment in Oneness enlivens the witnessing of being present and creates gratitude, deeper meaning and joy. That is what produces happy memories.

Ever since that day when "the moment" changed my life, the relationship with my dogs has grown sweeter. I feel more relaxed and open and have more appreciation for our love. I have new and heartfelt respect for myself and how much and how well I love. There is a certain peace in my life now.

In the experience of Oneness, I know the death of my dogs cannot possibly separate our souls.
When their time comes, I know I will not really loose them or their love. That is simply not something that can ever be taken away. Even though I know I will miss their physical presence and our day-to-day rituals, now I imagine them running joyfully through Meadowland with Hobbit, Little Dog, Tristum, Studebaker Hawk, Rose Hips, Mitzy, Happy Dog, Picalily and all the other animal loves of my life. Thinking about that makes me smile. I love the mysteries of life. I love loving. I love my pets.

GREEN GENES

My maternal grandmother loved her gardens. By the time I was 9 years old her peony, rose and iris gardens, vegetable gardens and orchards not only caught my attention, but drew me into a deep fascination and new way of being in touch with cycles and process. I am only now beginning to understand…

The first awareness I had of Grandma’s magical world occurred in April 1959. She was a brittle and cantankerous woman with practically everybody. I was scared of her. For some reason, that day, I stopped by her house. I was out on my Huffy seeking adventures that the safe little Kansas town made possible.

I could tell Grandma was home because I could see laundry flying on the clothesline against the blue spring sky filled with big white fluffy clouds. I parked my bike by a series of buckets that lined the garage. Later I found out that the buckets were there to catch rainwater for her plants.

She wasn’t in the kitchen. When I yelled out, “Grandma”, she called up from the basement and told me to come down. I had never been in the basement at my grandparent’s house before. I felt the dark dampness and a significant drop in temperature as I descended the stairs. I remember swallowing hard and feeling a tightening that was taking over my tummy.

She was bent in two, leaning over hundreds of tiny pots and trays of dark, rich dirt. “Watcha doin’?” was all I could get out. She twisted around in her cotton-print dress and snorted her reply, “planting.” It wasn’t a friendly “planting” but I assuaged my desire to run back up the stairs by reassuring myself that my mother and aunts had grown up to be adults with this woman and probably, I would too.

Then out of the darkness, she extended her hand toward me. Her body was still bent over with her head down. She didn’t look up. Some tiny seeds dropped into my trembling hand. I had received my initiation into her world. I’m not sure if anyone else in my family ever got to enter her gardening universe, but I know the lessons I learned in her domain turned my life upside down.

It took us hours that day, and several others, to plant all those seeds and place the pots carefully on little shelves she had built in front of the windows around the dank, stone basement. We worked in silence, which felt to my nine-year-old self like an ancient, sacred ritual. I followed her lead and because she offered no words or direction that told me what to do or how to do it, I became adept at watching.

Every day I found myself descending those stairs to be with my new master and her plants. Sometimes she would run her hands over the tops of the little green shoots and talk right out loud to them. She would tell them that they were wonderful. Beautiful. She said things to those plants that apparently never occurred to her to say to her own children, or grandchildren.

When school let out for the summer, I found that I wanted to go to Grandma’s as soon as I got up every morning. I didn’t try to explain this impulse to anyone, because I didn’t understand why it felt so important to me. There was just no place else I wanted to be.

One morning I arrived to find my grandmother outside, leaning over a flowerbed surrounded by all our little pots. She didn’t look up when I came into view but handed me a funny-shaped metal tool with a worn, wooden handle. I got down on my knees beside her and began to imitate what she was doing.

We transplanted the sprouts into the ground all morning. At five minutes to noon, she suddenly stood up straight and literally ran into the house. I followed her, a bit bewildered and perplexed. She pulled off her sweaty, dirt-covered frock and slipped into a clean, starched dress. This, she covered with a full apron with hand-embroidered flowers on the pocket. I wondered if handy-work was her wintertime garden, and if I would be old enough this winter to learn how embroider flowers on my clothes?

She stirred the soup that began bubbling on the stove. She took cold cuts and cheese out of the refrigerator and placed them with quick precision onto a turquoise plate. Beside the meat she put a pile of carefully counted pieces of thick, white, spongy Wonder Bread. She was moving so quickly around the kitchen that I slid under the table to keep out of the way.

Just as the teakettle whistled and the coco clock struck noon, my grandfather walked through the door. He sat down at the table without a word and began to make a sandwich. Grandma served him with grace in silent, slow motion. It was as if she had been in the kitchen, suspended in the same position he’d left her when he departed for work at eight. It was as though we hadn’t been outside digging in the warm earth all morning.

At five minutes to one, our secret intact, we both watched my grandfather pull out of the driveway. Before the back end of Grandpa’s Chrysler was even out of sight, the dirty clothes were back on and Grandma had her hands in the earth again.

These gardening years lasted until I grew up and went away to live my bigger, more complicated life. It’s funny how every winter I find myself looking to embroidery my feelings and stories into flowers on clothes or towels. When spring comes, just like the bulbs poised underneath the last snow, I feel something awaken in me. The old magic flows through me, and I can’t wait to get my hands into the dirt. I watch the flowers in my own gardens break through the earth, bud, blossom, and fall away. What wonderful gifts my grandmother shared with me! Feeling the cycles of life, and learning to tend life with love fills me with sheer delight, day after day, season after season, year after year.