A few months ago, I shared a diary about my girl Teka, To Celebrate the Ol'
Girl. On Wednesday afternoon, Teka, my Alaskan Malamute pal of 14 years, was put down and buried. It was an extraordinary time.
She kept an eye on me as I stood in the yard with her, at her house. She didn't want me to slip away. She knew something was up. I'd been crying for two days, and while she wouldn't know "crying", she did know I'm different in an uncomfortable way.
So, she watches me. I am watching her, filling my eyes with the beauty and luxury of her coat, the strength and hugeness of her stature, her bones debilitated by arthritis. A strong runner, curious, and very social, she could have been expedition material had the opportunity opened up for her. I thought of this, and many things, but then, I looked up.
From the moment I awoke this morning, I have been in the grip of the present moment. This is the extraordinary of the extraordinary time. But, in truth, it really started the evening before.
There is sheer magic to a summer spent at the N64th parallel. The evenings, especially the evenings and dawn hours, are totally still from human activity, and what's left is this present moment by moment unfolding. The sun is up for over 21 hours at this time of year, and it's evening angle puts this peach-violet-pink light onto everything. It's this color, the color of the trees and their sway in the gentle breeze, against THAT blue sky, that really help to create this magic. I breathed this in and looked at my girl, snoozing. By this time tomorrow, she'll be in a grave and I'll be trying, somehow, to deal with it.
The magic of the evening wore on throughout the night and into the morning.
Now, it became vigil time. I couldn't leave her. I tried to get to my morning classes, but the car turned around and brought me back, barely a block away from home.
There are so many teachers in life. For many of us, dogs can be wonderful teachers, and for me, trees are teachers, too. This morning, they showed the way to understand the present moment. I watched and listened and let nature do her thing before my eyes. And they were opened.
How much Love is there in the Universe? What if there is an infinite amount of Love, that Love is all there really is, that we are held, our planet is constantly held, in the Breath of Love? If we were offered a glimpse of this, why would we ever want to turn away and have a day visiting fears, angers, doubts, resentments--all those things that are so powerful in their own way--but are just cover-ups to the real story? I watch and listen, the trees showing me the web that holds all of creation together. I watch how the sun fills the web and listen to the birds singing the divine song.
I breathe in with this, and breathe out with it, too, and just keep watching. Everything has it's place; spruce bark beetles, carpenter ants, voles, and they do their thing to the tune of the divine song. The birds keep singing the tone, and all is held in Love, held together by Love.
My cat, Zena, walks out into this amazing scene, and decides to follow the rustle in the grasses. She dives in and in a moment, comes into the open with a vole, squeaking in protest as she carries it to the porch. I wonder if she eats her prey. I learn she doesn't. My other cat, who is old enough to lose interest in hunting, but apparently, still has an interest for fresh meat, sniffs the vole. She approaches Zena, who is wanting to play with it. Zamboni snatches the vole after this little charade of sniff-sniff, purr-purr, and devours it on the spot. All that's left of the squeaky little vole is a forepaw.
I look up and the puffy clouds are just rolling by. The present moment unfolds in so many ways. How do my thoughts shoot the action into one direction or another? I look at Teka. She is eyeing me, then decides to close her eyes.
Time moves forward and I vacillate between present moment and totally losing it because my heart is simply breaking. The flowers' blossoms catch the light, and they reflect this something I can't describe. Light. It perhaps, goes back to the Love thing. I hear birds singing, the earth smells of green, growing things, the light is reflected off the flower blossoms--I look up at the clouds and hear George singing, All Things Will Pass-----I look at my girl.
In time, the vet arrived. Teka sniffed her out and what she came to do immediately. Yet, the dirty deed was done. She asked me if I wanted help carrying her to the grave, but I really wanted quiet. The present moment had me. I wanted to hear The Tone, that divine song, as I lingered by her, combed some underfur, and just listened. I knew it was my job to do. In time, I put her onto a hardy piece of fabric and pulled her to the grave. She fell in, I positioned her, covered her up and sobbing, shoveled the earth over her.
What happens to a house after the death of a loved member? Something happens to the atmosphere. It fills with Peace, totally joyful Peace. Flowers and light. I kept watching and listening. Do dogs have souls? Look what's happening at this moment--
The rest of the day was filled with both this wonder and sudden bursts of sobbing. Little by little, I'll get used to her not being around, the freedom of no longer cleaning up after her as she loses control of her bowels, the ease brought about because my neighbor no longer hears her. What would I do to hear my Teka bark that arf-ARF, right-NOW? I haven't heard it in weeks. If she picked one paw up for the arf, she fall over before she'd gotten to the ARF, the NOW bark.
At this present moment, it is again evening. Human activity is closing down. There are more clouds in this evening's sky, and the sun is behind them. I hear voles in the wild roses. My cats are quiet, sharing the big chair, all is apparently forgiven and forgotten. I wonder about my re-entry into the world of doing things, have today's events really changed me? Could it be, Teka, in her closing hours of life, had set the stage for me to learn to pay attention to what's really important?
Two dogs who live down the road rustle through the shrubbery to scope out the yard. They burst into it, explore and leave. They've never shown up before, ever. They have always stayed at their driveway's boundary.
Next morning as I'm preparing to leave for classes, I observe that my morning is less intense. Then, I looked out the window to see that my days of cleaning up are far from over. Dogs had come by and scattered the garbage about. Maybe they were doing Teka the Marauder's biding, a message fulfilled from another world. Oh sigh. I deal with it and drive down the hill. A car steers into my lane a little early, cutting me off. At the stoplight at the bottom of the hill, I read her bumper sticker. It says, Trees are the answer.