Love is forever…One woman’s journey with grief

Since A passed, there has been one being on this planet that has gotten me out of my head, has reached right past my grief and pulled me into presence in the now for a moment of uncomplicated delight, and done so effortlessly multiple times a day just by being himself, and that has been my very own dog. He has made me laugh when it was the last thing I felt like doing.

He shows up with his toy, drops it at my feet, and waits expectantly, his little brown eyes bright. Sometimes, I swear he smiles. He comes to me with complete trust, knowing that I will throw the toy for him, and even if I don’t, he knows that if he just waits patiently, and perhaps reminds me gently that he is there, waiting, I will yield. So I reach down, and I pick up the toy and fling it as far across the yard as I can. He hears it fall, but cannot always see where it landed, and I am delighted by the keen intelligence he exhibits as he looks for it, craning his little neck. I mark my book with a finger, and just watch him. When I throw it, he goes all out at top speed to get it, as if his only purpose in life is to play with me. And it may well be, at least for this very moment. He runs and fetches with all that he is until he’s tired. And when he’s completely worn out, tongue nearly scraping the gravel of the yard, he rests in the shade until he has the strength to begin the game anew. But the brightness of his eyes does not diminish. He is ebulliently alive, and perhaps is the only soul I know who lives in that space as a matter of course. Maybe it’s all that meditation he’s been doing, but I really think it’s innate.

For M, there is no tomorrow to consider. He learns what he needs to learn, but doesn’t bother carrying years worth of heavy books with him through his days. He mopes sometimes, but is easily shaken out of his funk with a bit of attention and a cookie. He does not take time to wonder what it all means, or whether it is meaningless after all. His efforts at analyzing his world end once he’s tackled the problem at hand; he lives in this moment, instead of reliving that moment over and over or rehearsing the next.

My dog gets it. But I don’t.

I’m not unaware of where my blocks lie. You cannot navel-gaze as much as I do and not find some lint. I know that patience is not my long suit. I know that learning to yield more would make me suffer less. I know that there is a freedom in not knowing, or rather, admitting that the knowing I cling to keeps me from the knowing I need. I think I can conceptualize the ideal, and yet in striving for it, I sabotage my chances of achieving it. If you can name the Tao, it is not the Tao. And yet I cannot accept that kind of simplicity, not entirely; not yet. Because when you have always thought you must be “doing,” the idea of just “being” sets you on the quest to figure out where the boundaries between apathy, fatalism, laziness, and Zen acceptance lie, or if there are any such boundaries after all, or if those, too, are artificial constructs of my own judgmental ego. Even if I’m going to “just be,” I want to do it right, for Pete’s sake! Oh, the irony.

Nothing matters any more than anything else. Nor does it matter any less. An afternoon reading my book will teach me something. An afternoon throwing my dog’s toy will teach me something. An afternoon nap will teach me something else. Even if my priorities are completely screwed up, if I’m paying attention, there will be a lesson to learn when I realize that’s the case, too, and likely a hard one. And even if my priorities somehow were to approach perfection, I will still have homework. There is no end to the lessons, and you will find them wherever you turn. You will find them even if you don’t turn; they will find you. There is no evading them.

There is a freedom in this thought for me, as if someone had opened a window in a stuffy room. It is a freedom that tells me that I have all the time I need, that I have all the room I need, and that I may lay down the whip at my back, astonished that my fingerprints are the ones embedded in the handle. And yet Ego voices its doubts loudly.

Are you sure?
Are you enough?
What if others don’t understand?
Can it really be that simple? What’s the catch?
But couldn’t you do it faster, better, and with more cleverness? And if you could, oughtn’t you?
If you don’t have a map, won’t you get lost?

To quote George Harrison, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.” And I don’t. I don’t know where I’m going. I have thought, many times, that I did, only to have an entirely unexpected detour shred my map and suck it out the window. The most recent detour was a sinkhole, and I fell right into it, as I must have done. And as I sit here beside it, peering into it, face streaked black with asphalt and sweat, arms and legs exhausted from trying to pull myself back out, I consider the possibility that I have never once left the road I was on; it’s just that I was never going where I thought I was and the map I thought I had was about as much use as a Burger Chef placemat.

I have been swimming in uncertainty for sixteen weeks and change. Uncertainty has always been my nemesis, because I, like everyone else, want to control things to maximize pleasure and minimize pain, and have been under the delusion that I was somehow special and advanced in my ability to do so. My inability to control the universe and make it conform to my personal specs has been made shockingly clear to me, finally. Slowly, I’m beginning to understand that impermanence it is not the enemy; rather, it is reality. I understood that on an intellectual level; but that is the point where understanding is only just beginning. My true education on the point only started when my world was rocked, I was tossed out of my boat, and anything I recognized as land was gone from view. And I begin now to ponder whether, rather than barely tread water, I couldn’t just lie back and float with it. The river will flow. Do I kick and wave my arms and fight it, eventually tiring myself out and drowning? Or do I trust it will take me where I need to go? Is it all this trying that is so trying?

Given that I admit I don’t have the answers, I begin to wonder about all this scribbling I do. I begin to look at it as some kind of arrogance, or foolishness, or both, which is why I’ve been quiet the last few days. I began to wonder if I had finally run out of words, or if words had finally been exhausted of their ability to frame what it is I’ve been thinking. Lately, my thoughts seem to emanate as feeling, from my gut, rather than missives from the gray matter between my ears, and articulation of them seems impossible, or at least improbable. And would it mean anything to anyone else if I managed it? Could it? Should it?

I don’t know. And I keep reminding myself I don’t have to, but habits die hard. The unexamined life may not be worth living, but the over-examined life doesn’t give you time or space to live. There is a secondhandness to everything seen with one eye to the microscope and the other closed completely. Does M consider what I’m thinking, or will think, when he drops the toy at my feet? No; he just does what he does because that’s what he’s called to do at that moment. That’s all he needs to know.

When we are young, we ask “Why?” and usually there’s an answer. The sky is blue because of ozone. Asking “why?” becomes a habit that follows us all our lives, and one day the question has no answer; in that moment is the end of innocence and the beginning of frustration, and, depending on the depth of the incomprehension, pain. And perhaps the moment we grow up is when we realize the answer is “I just don’t know,” and can still sleep at night.