I awoke to purring, my kitty had leapt up onto my pillow during the night and was snuggled down really close to my head. This morning, the sky is bright blue, but it is still quite cold. Now, as I sit wrapped in a blanket and in my meditation shawl, he sits near me, purring away, occasionally rubbing his head against the screen of my computer, beckoning me to love him instead of this plastic device. So, I reach over to him, and love him. He is my truest companion, and without him in this last year I don't know if I would have made it.
As I sit here writing, my heart steps back in time one year ago today. Right about now, I was sprawled out on the bathroom floor, trying to comfort my dying kitty as he struggled and howled. I wept, I tried to love him with my hands, and I talked to him about how much he had blessed my life for thirteen years. He would lay still, and I would look really closely to see if he was still breathing, then he would squirm and moan again. It was the most heart-wrenching thing I've ever witnessed, and the taste of my sorrow is still palpable if I allow my attention to settle there for long. He died one year ago today at a little after 11am.
One thing I've learned in the last year is that the more I grasp to hold on to those beings who have touched my heart, the greater my suffering is when they leave. Another thing I've learned is that while choosing to numb out and love less is appealing in the face of imminent sorrow and loss, the one thing that brings true meaning to life is loving with utter abandon, without holding back. And I've spent much of the last year vacillating between feeling truly loved and held by those who care about me, and feeling utterly alone in a world that doesn't have time to even acknowledge my existence. This inner struggle persists even today, on occasion, when I fall out of the present moment awareness I have worked very hard to cultivate, when I am sucked in by the mind's questioning undertow.
In the last year of my life, I have felt greater loss than I have ever before known. I have felt my own body betray me, I have felt the world crumble around me. I have wondered if I would live through these challenges, and both collapsed into the despair and hopelessness of living a life that is full of loss, and have scrambled with sheer terror to escape from the hungry maw of my own mind's fear. Death became my greatest fear, having witnessed it for the first time one year ago today. Death stalked me some days, chased me some days, and sat breathing heavily down my neck for more nights last winter than I care to speak about now. And the harder I tried to swim away from death, the more tightly I became enmeshed in his nets. I was caught. I would writhe a while, trying to get away, and then, exhausted, would collapse into despair once more. All the time, my mind spinning in its questions, wondering "what is the point of it all" and seeking with ferocity to find some kind of answer, any answer at all, something to hold on to to prove to myself that I could stay afloat. I became a refugee within my own life - running from death and despair, always running, trying to escape the inevitable.
There were a few things in this past year that were utter saviors, and without them I don't know if I could have had the wherewithal in myself to make it through the year. Weekly acupuncture was a miracle, and my acupuncturist showed up for me with strength and compassion and really helped to give me my ground again. I began seeing a counselor, and the months I spent going to her weekly or biweekly really helped me to face my inner demons and to understand myself in a whole new way. In January, too, someone really amazing showed up in my life, and his love and kindness brought healing to my heart in ways that I could have never imagined. And finally, I returned to work with the Medicine, which has helped me to heal my anxiety and sorrow and despair more deeply than anything else can. My community, too, has been an incredible support system ... from taking my panicky phone calls, to listening to me, to opening the door to me after yet one more insomniac night of anxiety and fear. The kindness and generosity that I was offered in this last year have touched me so deeply. Whereas once I believed I could - and should - be able to handle anything and everything on my own, in the last year of my life I learned that I truly cannot, nor do I have to. I can allow other people to hold me, I can trust them and allow them to love me as much as I have tended to love them. And now, my heart is open wider than ever before. The slashes of loss have healed a great deal, but they have allowed me a far greater capacity for love than I had before. And maybe that's one of the key lessons of this Earth plane of existence ... to allow loss to open us beyond our ordinary capacity to love, and to move it into a realm of infinite loving that is our true nature.
And now, I have survived a year of loss and mourning, and have come through the other side of that year with a heart opened wide to the sky. I have spent so much time sorting through the content of my life, facing the dark parts of my psyche and personality, observing my patterns and habits, noticing my resistances and fears, and dismantling the questioning mind - at least a little - that causes all of my suffering. I have found that much of what used to matter to me just doesn't matter anymore. The simplest things bring me the greatest happiness: sitting on a rock in the river, reclining in the sun, listening to the wind in the trees, making a pot of soup, sharing the company of my loved ones, listening with my full presence to those who have something needing to be heard. And love. LOVE. Love matters the most of all. At this point in my life, it is my most sincere wish, from the depths of my heart, that I finally meet the love of my life. I have so much love to give, so much kindness and compassion to offer. Spiritually, I feel like this is a frontier that will offer me so much opportunity to grow and deepen my capacity to love and serve. And I am finally able to receive love, too, to allow love's intensity to penetrate my walls and pierce me, to transform me. In this year, I have met several men who truly touched my heart, and yet it seems that none of them are truly prepared for relationship. I pray with all my heart that in the next year of my life that I will find my love. If one thing has been true throughout this year, and is still true today, it's that I don't want to do this life alone. Not anymore. That is my most sincere prayer.
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