Again, I am sliced by my own words.
I have been, amidst the multitude of my blessings, in a Funk.
Are there moments of origin for such states? They seem more like phases, perhaps, although moments certainly stand out.
Like this morning's outstanding moment, lasting into always. Only, because a moment is still linked to its phase, allow me to set the stage.
It was a dark and stormy night. Or the night after, it won't matter in years to come.
At dinner, I had mentioned being angry, triggered somewhat by the recent confirmation and unnecessary presence of lymphedema in my left arm and the wonky schedule addressing it would give me for the next several weeks. Glen rightly predicted that beneath the anger lay tears, and I agreed, adding that they might not stop, and that is what kept me from them.
I went to bed when the girls did, dishes undone, even though I knew they would undo me in the morning, no matter how much I willed them not to matter.
One piece of my baggage is an extreme sensitivity to disorder. I also have matched sets of inertia and resignation, selfishness and resentment, learned helplessness and false independence. It is awkward, if not impossible, to carry everything at once, and it is a challenge to live as a solo relay runner and the mother in a family of five.
I could have stopped on page 92, after reading it over two or three times for the beauty of it, but I finished A Wrinkle in Time before I went to sleep, losing myself in the tale of darkness, angels, light, love.
So I was up too late, slept in too late through an ongoing restless nightmare about how to pack and move all my scattered and disparate Stuff, and got up to a dirty kitchen. Even with a rarely-heard intentional prayer for God and Goodness to Please go before me and shepherd me through my day, all things being infused with Your Love in its myriad of forms, and please help me to be who You created me to be, I was beyond snappish and way into my own story within minutes of waking the children. Glen emceed me for my comedy club debut, because my filters were d.o.w.n, and I was waaaaay outside the Window of Tolerance.
The usual school-morning bickering set me off, and my monologue did include the words, “I just want something, SOMETHING, to be different today!”
And with all my inside chores done and things gathered, I went to feed the animals. I took great pains to slam the metal quart measure (from the upper shelves of the basement at 44 Wellington Road Delmar NY) back into the dog food can and slam the lid on, and stomp to the cat food and repeat the process.
Except that on my way to Dog's food, I saw a fflufff of her hair in her water bowl, which I had never seen in the five years she's been with us, in all the fflufff that has been combed and pulled and wisped away on the wind. And as I went to the cat food can, I realized that Dog hadn't lifted her head when I clanged her food can, or even come to greet me as she does every morning, tail wagging, brown eyes beseeching.
Ohhh, so not good.
Ohhh, my Flora Jane.
Ohhh, not today.
Ohhh, this is not what I meant by Please please please God I just want today to be different. Though I begged it aloud above the bickering, and inwardly repeated it as a mantra, this is not what I meant.
Glen came to my quivering voice on the back porch, looked at me on his way to her and said the words. Together we walked, and he confirmed it, and we turned around to see Flora, Dog's other person than me, looking at us from up the driveway. What, Mama, what?
There was no blurring, no obfuscating, no softening. Flora Jane, Dog is dead.
And thus our morning pauses.
And thus begins our mourning.
Wails. Hugs. Tears upon tears upon tears.
For it touches Universal Loss, Universal Sacrifice.
My dreams had been unsettled, sweaty, prophetic. When I wrote them down, intent on retrieving their messages, I could see it being time to leave this earthly plane, and I recalled the words that had bubbled up without intent as I was falling into God to lull myself to sleep: Please, please, please take me.
Instead, Dog has gone.
While there is a great Welcoming on the other side of the rainbow bridge, there is a great Sadness in what is now missing from our our family, our home, our lives. A cold, wet, and loving nose, a playful bounce, an unending desire to be loved, petted, let inside.
Her last live brushing was spread as mulch for the first calendula to bloom here. Today's harvest of soft white undercoat fur will become a pillow for Church Mouse, and a last walk to the Stone Table with Dog.
She is wrapped in her blanket, a well-worn wool plaid of cream, red, green and black, with biscuits and the first purple aster of the year (star-flower, Michaelmas daisy, herald of Archangel Michael, Guardian of Our Time).
When Glen comes back from retrieving the children, we will dig a hole below the picnic table and elderberries, where the bear napped beneath the pear tree, where Dog used to lay, looking like a 1600s etching of a royal Pyrenees looking out from a rise in front of the manse.
We will say Bye, Dog! when we leave, and she will be there when we come home.
I will drop the star seeds of orange cosmos into the dirt between the rocks covering her, be delighted when they reappear as green leaves.
More than once, I will sit by her burying place and cry.
And because there is now another star, another portal to pure active love, I will close my eyes and open my heart.
Even at the grave we make our song, Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!