October 30, 2010 Day of the Dead: Buddhist Style led by Peggy Rowe Ward aka A Day of Mindfulness hosted by Organic Garden Sangha

 Dharmacharya Peggy Rowe received Lamp Transmission from Thich Nhat Hanh in 2000, 

and has a Doctorate in Adult Education and a Master’s in Counseling Psychology.  

She has also studied and practiced with many wise Native American elders. 

The day begins in silence. We meet in a Quaker Meeting House and arrange ourselves on mats and cushions and chairs in a semi-circle facing an altar - a table covered with a colorful cloth - on which we are encouraged to place photographs of our beloved dead. Pictures of mothers, fathers, grandmothers and great grandmothers, and dogs join Martin Luther King and Mother Theresa and the Virgin Mary, Thich Nhat Hanh, the Buddha and other spiritual heavyweights. I am early and choose my place at the front of the semicircle and close my eyes. When next I open them, there are about thirty people in the room, seated quietly, already meditating. So we continue like that for a while, until Peggy strikes a big bowl and says, "Be aware you are breathing in" and then a small bell, the sign to stretch our legs. We stand and introduce ourselves, saying our name and the ancestors we have brought with us today. Peggy urges us to name them: "they like to hear their names." There are many mothers and fathers, a great grandmother, a smattering of grandmothers. Many foreign names, Japanese, Turkish, German, Russian. A man says quietly of his parents, "I called them Momma and Poppy." The atmosphere gets heavier and heavier as we go around the room.

We sit down again and Peggy tells us not to get stuck in grief. "Let it flow through you, keep coming back to the breath. See if you can follow your breath all the way in, all the way out. Below the grief, you may find other remembrances - which is not the same as nostalgia. Remembering is felt in the body." She tells us, "Be alert to who appears today: it may not be who you think." 

A young girl standing near Peggy adds, "I think we have some tricksters here today!"

Both of these sits are effortless, physically. Nothing hurts, not my knees or back or any part of the body: how rare to note what isn't there, for a change! There are no clocks in this quiet room, and no watches that I can see, so I have no idea how long we sit. It is so peaceful. The two bells sound and we stand and put on our shoes. We are going to do a walking meditation to a little park down the road. First we sing a few songs, which everyone knows except me. Then Peggy instructs us to walk as if the ground were sealing wax, and our foot a seal. The object is to step as carefully as possible to make a clear imprint of our foot. She tells us we can hold hands if we want to. We don't have to, "but it's nice." And off we go, a slow silent caterpillar of humanity. The people in front of me are holding hands. I glance next to me and see a woman's hand hanging free, so I reach over and give it a squeeze. She immediately turns with a "Oh! Hello!" But I just smile down at the ground. I don't want to put on my social face, I just want to feel what it's like to hold hands with a stranger while walking to the park. I like it so much that when another person heaves into view on the other side of me, also unattached, I reach out and take her hand too. Now there is simply a sensation of warm hands and mindful feet and knowing breath. The woman on my right sighs deeply and her sigh travels through me somehow and I sigh too. We hold hands down two blocks, while waiting for two traffic lights and all the way into the park. The sounds of the city ebb and flow, cars mostly, mothers calling their children, a baby crying, a child laughing, someone playing drums. The sounds are just that: sound, as hypnotic as the ocean. 

When we reach the park, we string ourselves along a low wall or on the ground, close our eyes and meditate. Since introducing myself, and saying I brought my mother today, I haven't said a word. Now I feel the sun on my face, the stone wall cool from the earlier rain under my backside, the woman next to me unselfconsciously leaning her thigh against mine, as casually as a child. I smile: I feel like a child. Life is uncomplicated and safe and good. The tiny bell rings: time to stand. I experiment on the way back. I purposely don't take anybody's hand in order to compare. I feel ... singular. Much more aware of my separate 'self'. I miss the hand holding and the blurred boundaries. Now I know.

Back at the Quaker House, we hold hands in a circle in the driveway. Peggy instructs us in her father's prayer: "Squeeze and pass!" and the squeezed hands flash like lightning around the circle in both directions twice. Then we do her father's universal grace: "YUM!" (intoned like Ohm, but happily). We can't help but smile. We are instructed to eat slowly bearing in mind the five contemplations:

This food is the gift of the whole universe - the earth, the sky, and much hard work.

May we live in a way that makes us worthy to receive it.

May we transform our unskillful states of mind and learn to eat with moderation.

May we take only foods that nourish us and prevent illness.

We accept this food so that we may practice the path of understanding and love.

-- Thich Nhat Hanh

Peggy says if, in spite of our best efforts to slow down, we still 'woof' our food down, the next thing on the agenda is nap-time. This is my kind of retreat! Eating slowly and in silence, I end up playing with my food as I always do during the All Day silent retreats. I count my baby tomatoes; I count the seeds I can see in my bread; I break my banana into bits and sit them on the peel, little men on a raft. Their fuzzy insides look like shag carpeting. It occurs to me that children play with their food because they don't have a treasure house of thoughts or memories or facts to get lost in. So they have to improvise with what's at hand.

Into these musings a tiny feather, a baby bird feather, blows straight across the table and into my peanut butter sandwich. After my peacock experience on the retreat, I am alert to all things avian. I look around. I don't see a single other feather around. That this one came straight to me I take as a sign.  But of what? Or who? I remember my cousin Brigitte, who died of breast cancer maybe twenty years ago now. She hated birds - could it be her? As her name crosses my mind (and really, this happens so fast), I hear a voice clear as a bell in my head, "Eh oui! C'est moi!!" and it's not Brigitte after all, but her sister Francoise, who died just two years ago, after a long hard dance with cancer. I see her face, laughing, as clear as anything. And here I'd been thinking of my parents and my grandparents - but no, it's Francoise, my funny, fun-loving cousin. Tricksters are among us indeed.

My spirits soar. I put the tiny feather in my pocket and appreciate the day: the sky is deep blue, no clouds, a tiny smudge of moon like a white inkblot in the sky. Warm. Perfect. My thin peanut butter sandwich, eight cherry tomatoes and six pieces of banana take thirty minutes to chew. I have a mug of Yogi green tea with a message on the tea bag: "Speak the truth". That's what I'm trying to do this very minute! I contemplate eating the apple I have in my bag but - as I do on every retreat - I can't bear the thought of eating it mindfully: it will take half an hour all by itself. The apple stays in the bag, I eat a home-made brownie on the snack table in a quick and guilty two minutes, and return to the main room.

I am one of the first (!), so I get out my notebook and start writing what's happened so far. Slowly the others drift in and settle themselves flat on their backs with blankets and pillows. Peggy leads us in a guided meditation. She begins: "Get a sense of being on your island. Imagine you're on a big lily pad, the sun is out, there's a little breeze, dragonflies are in the air and you're safe there, just drifting a little bit. Imagine your fingers are just touching the water. We are doing such a great job of stopping together today. I'm very proud of us. It's not easy to stop. To slow down. But here we are."

This is where I set my notes aside and settle on my own lily pad. Peggy stops talking and starts to sing to us in a sweet, clear voice. Lullabies and chants.  A lot of the lyrics have to do with coming home, going home, being home. Home. Well, this is just bliss. After walking to the park hand-in-hand, my cheeky cousin appearing out of the blue, a brownie and now nap-time with lullabies? No wonder many of my fellows fall fast asleep on their islands. Snores began drifting up here and there, including someone quite near my head, quite loud. Peggy comments, "If you're not one of the snorers, perhaps you can just lie back and enjoy the magical zoo!" Muffled laughter snorts around the room. 

Again, no idea how long this lasts, but like all things, good and bad, it comes to an end. Gently, gently, we slowly get to our feet and began tapping the heart, our arms and legs, to get the blood flowing and wake up again. We twist from side to side, arms flopping against our kidneys: Peggy tells us she visited a village in China where the inhabitants are 120 years old and healthy and spry. She says their secret is that they do this movement for fifteen minutes every day. She says, "I do it for five. I'm in pretty good shape for an eighty-five year old, aren't I?!" 

Next she leads us in a delightful qigong sequence of highly symbolic moves. We begin by embracing the tiger of life, and throwing open the big wooden double doors to our life with both hands, saying 'Wah!" (Chinese for "Wow!" she tells us with a smile.) There are elements of fire and water and gold and wood. It is so beautiful, we do it twice.  When it is over, we walk around the room and gently bump into each other's shoulders, saying, "Thank you!" to each other. A clear illustration of the truth that every adverse situation you meet is here to teach you something. 

We have done sitting meditation, walking meditation, eating meditation and lying down meditation. Now we are at the heart of the day: the Touching the Earth ritual. It begins by standing tall and imagining our mothers standing behind us on one side, our fathers on the other, their hands resting on our shoulders. Behind them are their parents, and their parents' parents, back and back through generations, the idea being that we are not alone. Our ancestors are ready to support us, if only we would remember to call upon them for help. We get down on the floor and touch the earth while invoking them. We do this five times, summoning different teachers each time. It has a powerful feel.

When we are done, we sit once more on our cushions and Peggy invites us to the Sharing Circle. We can share anything at all: a song, a poem, an insight. We sit quietly for a while and then a small man to my right, gray-haired, stands up and says, "I would like to sing for you." His song is from the Broadway musical "All American"; he tells us that in the play, the actor sits on the edge of the stage and sings facing the audience. And with that he launches into "Once Upon a Time", such a romantic song he sings with such unabashed feeling, he has me in tears.

At the end, instead of clapping, everyone waves their hands in the air, the applause of the deaf. It retains the container of mindfulness that we have cultivated all day. 

There are stories of mothers and fathers and children, of hurts and wrongs revisited and steps taken towards acceptance. There are many more tears from us, the listeners. One that makes an impression on me comes from the woman seated behind me. She shares a beautiful story about how it wasn't until she joined a Vietnamese Buddhist Sangha that she understood what it means to love. She tells us how if it weren't for her practice, she would be in a mental asylum by now, for this year has been wave upon wave of disasters.

"Finally," she says, "I phoned my mentor, a Vietnamese nun and asked her what do I do? My husband is dying, and my daughter has a severe brain injury. She has sudden extreme rages and I am afraid she will not survive - what can I do?"

The gentle nun said, in her hesitant English, "Do you think you can see your daughter as she was when you saw her, two days old in the hospital, new, fresh, unspoiled? When all you felt for her was uncomplicated love?"

The woman continues, "I'm not taking credit for this, you understand. It's the practice. But I made that tiny change in the way I saw my daughter, and she responded with about a 90% change of her own. She's much calmer, she's started driving again, she's getting better. It's a miracle. And it's thanks to my mentor, who taught me how to love."

We nod, we bow our heads, we are moved. This is advice we can all use. To see the difficult people in your life as infants: how could you not love them?

More stories. Then the woman on my right says hesitantly, "I am Turkish, but I also speak French. I used to sing French songs and I would like to sing one for you now by ..."

Edith Piaf, I think.

"Edith Piaf." She pronounces it the French way - Ay-deet Piaf. She begins to sing "La Vie En Rose." Well, from the French side of my family, I know the songs of Ay-deet Piaf too and pretty soon I'm singing along quietly with her, watching her face.

 

Her eyes widen in the beginnings of panic, she's forgetting the lyrics and she's looking right at me, beseeching me with her eyes. So I sing a little louder, enough so she can catch the words, not wanting to muscle in on her song, but she smiles and relaxes and nods her head and is altogether encouraging, so I turn up the volume and so does she, and suddenly it's Life as a Musical, one of those rare and wonderful moments where people actually, spontaneously, burst into song in public. It's happened to me a handful of times in my life, all of them memorable. And here it's happening again, in a Quaker House at a Buddhist retreat honoring the Day of the Dead with a Turkish stranger singing in French with an Englishwoman - me! By the end, we are belting it out, and I can see those hands waving madly before we are even done singing.

We finish, grinning broadly at each other. Later, the woman will say, with tears in her eyes, "I'd forgotten how much fun it is to sing. I've been so busy saving the world, I forgot this thing I used to love. I'm going to sing more now."

For now though, there's a pause. Then I smile. "Of course you chose that song! The cousin I told you about. Francoise. With the feather... from lunch... in my pocket. She knew all of Edith Piaf's songs by heart too. I have sung it with her. It was one of our favorites." 

Now it's the end of the day. As a group, we sing one last song together, with such sweet and simple words: we are the sea, we are the stars in the sky and we are home.

And then the day is over. My park partner makes a point of thanking me for taking her hand. We busy ourselves putting away tables and tidying up. I am sorry to leave these kind people. Big hug to Peggy. I thank her for making me feel like a child again. "Oh!" she says, "You have no idea how I had to restrain myself when we got to the park! I had all these games in my head that we could play, but I thought no. But it was hard!" Never mind, I say, my little girl had a wonderful field trip. 

I think about my little girl, about Francoise, about Ay-deet Piaf. I realize that one of my greatest fears from the Three Day Retreat has been soothed. I had written, in a bit of a panic, "How can we ever communicate with each other? Our experiences are not - will never be - the same, and on top of it, they are changing inexorably every moment, as we are changing." Now I saw that while our shared experience held very different meanings for us both, that wasn't the important thing. That it happened at all is what matters.

Victor the next day quoted Bodhidharma:

"The wise one trusts to things and does not trust to self, and so he has neither grasping

nor rejecting, neither opposing nor agreeing.  The stupid one trust to self

and does not trust to things, and so he has grasping and rejecting, opposing 

and agreeing."

Trusting to things and not the self seems counter-intuitive, said Victor. But I think this little anecdote illustrates the concept quite well: the Turkish lady and I had very different stories in our heads about the meaning of our performance. Someone else could have joined in, coming from a third angle. They are all stories, the "dramas between the ears", as Victor calls them, and they can change at any moment, as we reflect, think, analyze and come up with other stories to layer on top of the event.

But the event itself? Ah! That's irrefutable! Thirty people were there to witness what happened: we sang from the heart and people smiled. That's all. And it's enough.

The next day, as I was driving, I had the strangest sensation. I felt hands on my shoulders: on my right was my mother, on my left was my dad. I felt like I was receiving a ghostly pat on the back. I felt protected and loved. My ancestors are with me. As yours are with you.

Prologue to a Blog, Part 2: Death of a Dog

Five weeks ago I had to have my little cockapoo of twelve years, Snuffy, put down. I was fully expecting to be a wreck. People had told me back when he was my adored puppy, my first and only dog, that I would be a 'basket case' when his 'time' came. His dog sitter joked that she wanted to come back as my dog in her next life, I spoilt him so ...

The days leading up to the fateful event were extremely hard - how do you 'decide' to schedule the death of your baby?? I felt like a murderer. So the screaming child got quite a work-out during that time. But not only then. There had been tears earlier - weeks earlier - the morning his legs failed and he toppled onto his back trying to jump in the car; the day he stopped a few yards in on his favorite walk and wouldn't budge, looking up at me as if to say, "You've got to be kidding"; this last week, when he lost interest in rides in the car and turned his nose up at a forbidden piece of ham and exhibited some awful physical symptoms. His vet told me it was over and to think about the humane thing to do. He spent his time sleeping on the bed. If I let him have his way (and I mostly did) he'd work his way round so his head would be on my pillow, even though his breath could fell a rhinoceros.  This didn't seem to embody much of that elusive 'quality of life'. I got the name of a vet who would mercifully come to the house to do the deed and it was scheduled for Friday evening between 6 and 7. 

All that last day, Snuffy didn't move, not even to lift his head - but his eyes were plenty alert, watching my every move. Talk about mindfulness: he would blink, open his eyes, focus on me, blink, and so on, over and over, all day long. He was so anaemic, so weak, he had spent the last several days in deep sleep - but not that day. He knew something was up. Eventually, when we knew the vet was on his way, we lay down, my husband John, Snuffy and I, and he rested his head on my arm and we stared at each other, eyeball to eyeball for that last hour. And finally, finally, he closed his eyes. By this stage, I was willing him to die before the vet came, he seemed so peaceful, but who dies on cue, apart from buddhas?

So the vet came and gave him the shot, and all I'll say about that was that it was astonishingly quick. I broke down, of course, when they left, taking Snuffy with them. But it was no worse than all the other breakdowns that had happened along the way and it was a perfectly appropriate reaction to what was happening in that moment which was unutterably sad. And then - John and I both remarked that there was a lightness of spirit in the house. It was palpable. I was so afraid I would bring it down with my grief. But I went and sat for half an hour and I didn't cry and the lightness stayed. Slowly a fragile feeling within me started to grow that astonishingly, maybe, it was all okay.

Saturday morning I joined Long Beach Meditation for our first ever early morning meditation on the beach. What a perfect thing to do on my first dog-less morning, so cold and grey, yet surrounded by friends, held in silence.  I was still mostly fine, except when people said afterwards they were sorry about my dog. Tears were still very near the surface. After the sit I slept a lot; watched TV with my daughter; did two and a half hours of very hard yoga; wrote and sat and went to bed early. But I haven't shed a tear since Seal Beach. This, for me not to cry over this particular death, is so extraordinary that I've been trying to understand it ever since. 

Ta Hui's words made a big impression: what IS the use of this practice, if it doesn't help in 'real life'? We all know the person who says 'when the children are grown, when I retire, when I move into a bigger house, when I get my Masters, blah, blah, blah, THEN my real life will begin.' Missing the fact completely that this IS real life; as Ezra Bayda said, "The obstacles ARE the Path." So THIS obstacle, the death of a little dog - what to do with that?

I could collapse. It is what I thought I would do. It's what people do, after all. I could make a big drama out of it, I could get teary eyed over other people and their dogs; I could avoid doggy TV shows, and friends with dogs, and avert my eyes from people walking their dogs on the street. The pain. I can be very dramatic. And I always thought being dramatic is just who I am.  I do love to be noticed. 

So then I thought some more and realized that this is the great gift of a great dog: a great dog DOES notice you. For instance, if we all came home together in the car and I was the last one in the house, Snuffy would push through all those advancing legs to get to me. His joy every time at seeing me was unbounded. Even if I'd only been gone ten minutes. Conversely, if the others were headed out the door to get in the car, no matter if they called him to come, he would wait, quivering, watching my face for the signal - only my word mattered.

For someone who grew up at a time when children were seen but not heard, when my opinions and thoughts were routinely ignored, can you imagine how healing it is to have someone really SEE you, to be so attuned to your body language it's as if they can read your every thought, to think you are so wonderful that whatever you do is just fine, as long as they can do it with you? Like the bumper sticker says, "Dear God, please let me be half the person my dog thinks I am."

So I thought if I carry on now in the way the world seems to expect me to behave, if I obediently fall apart because that's what people do when their pet dies, it is as though all of Snuffy's tremendous unconditional love, his hard work at making me feel worthy of being loved, is for nought. To the bitter-sweet end of his life, he was looking at me, saying literally with his last breaths "I love you" with his eyes. How can that be gone? I hold myself a little taller knowing that once upon a time, my little dog thought I was worth loving. Nothing can take that away: it happened and I am the better for it.

I did a lot of my grieving while Snuffy was still alive. I'm sure it would be very different, much harder, had he suddenly been run over, say, in the prime of his life. But Helen pointed out that Snuffy had not been Snuffy for months - the walks, the tricks, all the things that made him such a special dog had actually stopped months ago, but so gradually, that while I had mourned each little loss, I hadn't paid attention to the big picture. He was never in pain, as far as I know, and that was my gauge. Last night I felt a pang when I dropped a piece of food on the floor, knowing I couldn't call "Vacuum!" and have Snuffy come beetling along, nose to the ground, on clean-up duty. I stopped that thought, ("Beware the second thought!"), pointing out to myself that I'd actually stopped doing this while he was still alive, so to cry about it now seems overly dramatic and unreal. Like an actress making herself cry by thinking sad thoughts. 

How can I go on grieving him? The Snuffy I grieve is not the one who was living under my nose for the last several months. That Snuffy was smelly and decrepit and infirm, with so many ailments and pills and no hope of getting better - why, when I think of that Snuffy, would I feel sad? I wouldn't want that Snuffy to live an instant longer than he had to. Ta Hui quotes Layman P'ang who says, "Just vow to empty all that exists; don't make real that which doesn't exist." 

And this is where the practice itself of sitting on the cushion has helped immeasurably: if the idea is to see what IS, then what IS is that my old, sick dog is no longer suffering. The dog I miss exists only in my head ("...don't make real that which does not exist"); is actually an old version of Snuffy who hasn't been around for some time now. It feels wrong somehow to cry for Snuffy, when THAT Snuffy is long gone. What he gave me, ah well... his love will stay with me, as real as his collar and his tags. Surely after twelve years, I have folded all that love into my own heart and made it my own?

My daughter Helen commented, "I'm glad this happened NOW when you're doing meditation, and you're all weirdly accepting of death..." It IS weird, I do feel a little alien, not like 'myself', not exhibiting correct behavior for bereaved pet owner, not what society would consider appropriate. Perhaps I seem a little cold. Or perhaps strong and brave. It's none of those. 

More and more, I am coming to understand what Victor says, that whoever it is I call 'myself' is not some fixed identity, but a cobbled together mishmash of perceptions and life history and patterns, etc. that is all subject to change, if I so choose. Nothing is fixed! I can believe now that underneath all the 'drama between the ears' as VB calls it, is something quite different: Ta Hui calls it 'pure, clear, perfect illumination.' I am not saying my Snuffy story is anywhere near approaching that state, but I share it because it is markedly different from how I have ever reacted to anything like this in my entire life before. 

Today I sat for over two hours, and I searched my heart every time - where's the sorrow? It truly wasn't there. So I conclude, because I know how much I loved my dog, that we can choose our reactions. Just like Victor teaches! I am finding (to my amazement) that letting go of all that emotion, the highs and lows both, is tremendously freeing. We can hold things lightly, open our hand and let it all go. And it's not tepid at all, as I feared - we worry, don't we, about who are we without our feelings, our grand passions?  I am dimly beginning to see that the less identified we are with our feelings, the less caught up we are in ourselves and our abundant illusions about this life, and more likely, as Wally said, to be able to see what really matters, while filled with equanimity and compassion. Able to hear the other person without an agenda, for instance. 

It would be great to continue the discussion, not about the death of a pet necessarily, that was the catalyst, (dogalyst), but how does this practice translate for you in your daily life? How does it work for you in the 'hubbub'? (Ta Hui again)

Prologue to A Blog, Part 1: "Falling in the Black Hole", a poem about a dog.

Five weeks ago today, my little dog Snuffy was at death's door. I wrote this poem knowing the end was very near. Coming back to the breath, coming back to the present moment, helped me not get lost in grief. The Black Hole refers to an 'oft-told story' Long Beach Meditation's teacher, Victor Byrd, tells in his online book, The Bare Bones of the Buddha, http://www.longbeachmeditation.com/index.php/dharma_talks/online_book/

"about a guy walking down the street and falling into a hole:

Badly bruised, he climbs out of the hole and limps home.  Tomorrow arrives:  a new day, a new dawn! Out the door our friend walks as he or she heads down the street vaguely remembering that there is a hole somewhere along the way. He falls into the same hole!

Momentarily forgetting right speech, he climbs out of the hole and drags himself home, nursing his wounds. He vows never to fall into that hole again. Tomorrow comes: a new day, a new dawn! He heads down the street but this time he remembers exactly where that hole is. "I won't fall into that damn hole again," he mutters confidently to himself. Sure enough, this time he sees the hole up ahead and walks carefully around it. With a thud, he falls into the same hole! Crawling out, without even a semblance of right thought, he manages to limp home.

The next day, if he has a shred of good sense, he will take another route."

Falling In The Black Hole

by Alison Cameron

"…and then my dog is dying," I tossed out

 Just yesterday to my therapist.

"And you feel…?" He made a note on his yellow legal pad.

"Oh fine." I shrugged. "It's sad. Just sad.

Nothing complicated."

Of course that was before I fell in the blackest of holes

The one stuffed with Death,

The one I've been trying so hard to climb out of today.

It's not surprising that Snuffy makes me think of Dad,

Because that was the passing that played out in my arms,

And here it is again, dressed in the body of my little dog.

Snuffy's ribs sticking out through thinning fur

Remind me of Dad's bones jutting through white skin.

They share absolute stillness, distant eyes.

That quality of time stopped.

Oh, this impending doggy death

On a morning in July in California

Recalls a wintry afternoon in England

Five years ago,

Sitting beside that other bedside

Watching a chest breathe.

Dad's end was so labored, my sister said, aghast,

"It makes you believe in euthanasia!"

So I've called the mobile vet, the one who roams the OC

Killing pets. Death on wheels.

She is performing a rare service,

But when she gets to the part about choosing

Communal cremation, or ashes in an urn,

I have to hang up.

Not so long ago,

my little dog was wearing a tutu,

Performing tricks at the school for the homeless.

Was indulging his one vice, eating paper,

Stealing Kleenex from my friends' purses

And paper napkins from our laps under the dinner table.

Was sitting up in the backseat of the car,

Tacking the corners like a sailor.

Was sneezing his delight over most everything.

"Sneezing is how dogs laugh," his doggy daycare told me.

He laughed a lot.

Snuffy was supposed to be my daughter's dog.

But when he got 'fixed' and whimpered in the dark

for his mother,

I took him to sleep on the sofa in the living room,

My arm gently around his tummy so he wouldn’t fall off,

Murmuring, "Hush, it's okay now" all night long.

We didn’t get much sleep, but we bonded.

And now I contemplate killing him.

This little animal who is wholly good.

Who lives only to please.

Yay! You're home! Rapture!

We're going for a walk? Yay!

We're staying home? Yay!

You're going someplace and I can wait in the car? Yay!

You're going to the bathroom?

I'll just stay by the door till you come out.

Where are we off to now? The kitchen?

I'll come with you.

Wherever you go, let me come with you.

So tell me, how do I kill this?

At least thoughts of Snuffy have pulled me away

From memories of Dad. The one is not the other.

I begin the climb out of the hole,

One death at a time.

I gather the crying child,

Who misses her Dad and her dog,

And cradle her now in strong mommy arms,

"It's okay," I tell myself. "Hush.

Snuffy is not Dad.

He is still here.

Go to him now.

Don't waste these last moments."

I lie down beside my little dog and tuck my arm

Gently around his tummy. I match my breath to his.

I cup his heart in my hand and press my nose into his back

As I have done so many times before.

We are calm; we are out of the hole.

For now, we breathe together.

For now, it's enough.