the temple of the mountain

the sky again hangs close, its promise of water cooling and heavy in the dance of grey and white, curled and coiled into and through each other.  it was the bright sun that warmed me to waking after a cold night of not-quite-sleep had passed in the watchful embrace if the star filled sky.  this sky, my eternal beloved, holds a perfect peaceful space for me unknown in human relation, witnesses and receives me, guides and chastises me, guards and exposes me in the continual dance of becoming we dance together.  creation, my mentor, is the essence of truth i hold space for in human relations.  and i am so blessed, i find it so often.  

animal relations are yet more pure, bereft as they are of the artifice of the word, the politics of mind.  the absence of speech is such a soothing gift in relating.  and animals hold the knowledge of time very differently in the mind - their minds are not biased against healing, attached to trauma.  what they experience, they learn from, but they allow to change with time and presence, being ever available to loving communion once the communion has been established.  that's what they remember.  love.

i am not yet this gracious.  so from my beloved animal companions i learn.

i was walking across the barnyard of my great grandmothers farm fifteen years ago, when she was still alive and the farm was still a sanctuary in my world, when i first encountered the most blessed heart i've yet to know in this world.  michie (whose name was blackie at that moment) was laying in the dirt, her tail languidly thumping the ground and that perfectly serene expression on her face, gazing into the hills with all of the wisdom of creation perfectly balanced in her being.  everything about her spoke of peace, elegance, deep knowing.  i was instantly in love, and asked my mom and grandma if she could come with me.  she's been with me ever since.  it is amazing what she's taught me, by the very nature of her being, over these years.  she has travelled all over the country with me, lived in more houses that i can even remember, been a gauge for all of the relationships of my life that have passed through her knowing field (she knows when someone isn't a good fit for me, and when someone really is), nourished and nurtured me in my challenges, received all of the elation of my ascensions, been the cutest thing i've ever had the gift of cuddling, sat with me in ceremonies and rituals, healed me and my friends, gracefully withstood the annoying gracelessness and jealousy of our other cat, triumphed with miraculous equanimity over sicknesses that were supposed to kill her, and been the most magical and yummy blessing i could have ever asked for.  when i went to australia for three weeks, she slept on my pillow the whole time, occasionally leaving the room to wander the house and see if i'd come home yet and she'd missed it, then went back to the pillow.  when i lived with david, she would lay down between us when we were in a state of unbalance and offer her belly as the unifying field that would help us to remember what was really important.  when i was sick, she would lay with me, rest her head near mine and do energy medicine on me, which always served to expedite my healing.  we used to sit for long moments with our faces touching, sharing deep breaths and soft tides of loving wisdom.  sometimes when she would be cleaning herself or eating something, afterwards she would look up and look around and the little pink tip of her tongue would be pressed out between her lips in her little black face, and i swear she knew it was cute and would do it when i needed to laugh or she wanted me to get my face out of whatever i was doing and give her the good loving.

totally amazing animal.

when i came back from california this last time, she was especially attentive and always looking for cuddles.  being that she had always been very independent, that caught my attention.  i first thought that maybe she just missed me, but then i started to feel that maybe she knew that her time was coming to closure and wanted to share as much love as possible before her journey over the threshold.  i wouldn't quite admit that to my full awareness, however, because michie is my baby, and for her to leave this world was a concept too strange and unpleasant for me to imagine.  life without michie?  hasn't she always been here?  won't she be here forever?

my mom came up and said that she'd become incontinent one day, and so after it happened twice, i took her to the vet.  at that time, she was still the bright, beautiful michie-love that she'd always been.  when i took her to the vet, the vet found a tumor in her bladder that was big enough to be the real deal, and we talked long and seriously about what that meant.  i was already emotionally taxed, and that pitched me over.  i was scared and so...  saddened.  i got on the computer and checked out everything i could find about animal cancer and possible treatments.  the allopathic options were traumatizing, limitedly effective and extremely expensive.  alternative treatments were for animals whose cancer had not progressed that far as to having a huge tumor already established in the body.  but, health worship in hand, i got a plan about fasting, superfoods and reishi mushroom supplements.  my mind was in total turmoil because everyone around me was saying she was going to die, die, die, and i was working to be clear that she may be able to move through it in the way that i'd seen her do before.  

so with my plan in place, i had her fast for one day before beginning her on the supplements.  that day that she fasted she was fine, bright and cuddly and beautiful.  the next day i woke up and she was laid out, curled up in a box, her vitality low and her eyes just staring.  i fed her that morning and she threw that food up, so i began to feed and water her with a syringe.  she laid in my arms most of the day as i sang and prayed with her, passed the hawk feather over her, filled her with light, touched her with loving healing, just pouring myself into her to aid her process in whatever way i could.  i had decided that if miraculous healing was going to take place, i was totally available on every level to support that, but it had to be her choice.  i wasn't going to pump her full of prescription medicines if all they would do was lessen the symptoms and prolong the process.  

she totally stopped drinking and eating, and then started to just throw up no matter what.  her body began to shut down and her soul really started to leave.  my mind was racing, grasping at possibilities, grasping at everything in an attempt to hold her life in the body in place while simultaneously working to be equanimous with the reality that she was totally done and that was a natural reality of time and physical being.  i grieved and grasped and prayed and blessed and dropped into a transdimensional state that lasted for the last few days of her life.  i sat with her in vigil through all the nights, holding my hand back from "ending her misery" by taking her to the vet for sleep.  it's curious to me that me that we have the option to end an animals life if it is suffering unnecessarily, but we are tabooed against that same grace with humans.  one more of the examples of how differently we value these modes of life.

it was my work, my honor and my place to hold space for her transition, as long as it took.  the only other death i've directly experienced was my great-grandmother whose decline was so steady and long that it was no suprise when she died.  she was also in her nineties and just tired.  she would say she wanted to go be with god and be done working so hard in this life, and i wanted that for her.  she was one of those women who took care of ungrateful people all her life, worked hard for everyone and everything and was the most purely loving being to embrace and be embraced by.  michie, having come from grandma's farm, was an emissary for her spirit in my life.  all of that being gone, the prospect of michie leaving had a spectacular significance of rending my last roots from the ground and casting me into the wind with no highstory to source for my  physical life in this world.  all of my childhood is gone, all of the eras of my life are gone, everything is gone from my physical experience.  more often than not i feel like a spirit that only occasionally solidifies to experience this place.  i do not feel fully incarnate in the world very often, and it is place and relationship that helps me to feel that incarnation.  it is also a part of why i gather the mystical ephemera of my rituals and travels to save in glass jars around my altar, it is a part of why i have tattoos.  these things root me in physical experience and time, give my body longevity and help to hold the fact that i have existed in place. 

so to behold michie leaving her body over the course of days was an incredible journey.  she was, as ever, completely graceful.  she was in so much pain, yet would rest her head wearily on her paws and look steadily into my eyes where i laid next to her, emanating that pain but through it a love so vast and pure it still and shall always lesson me as to the way of perfect being.  silence, stillness and grace.

oh, creation, it hurt so much.  i couldn't believe it.  i love so deeply the gift of that being in my reality, i so rest into her presence in the world as a nourishment and blessing, i so source her for the beautiful simplicity that i hold most dear in living this life.  i cried and cried, mourning the loss of so much, the loss of everything that she has always been there for as well as her.  i knew the day that she would truly go, and that morning i woke in dark morning to take her out into the grass and the sunrise, to be blessed and cleansed for her passing.  she laid down in the grass before me, a small cry leaving her lips as she searched creation for freedom, and rested her head softly into her steadily decreasing breath.  the sun rose over us and saturated her beautiful body with warmth and light, and she tenderly licked dew from the grass.  we laid next to each other there until the morning dogs and everyone else began to come.  i took her home and laid down with her, where we lay embracing each other for the rest of the day.  abruptly she stood up and walked over to lay down under my altar, and then i realized that she wouldn't die while i was with her, she wanted to be alone.  so i blessed her, stroked her fur that i have loved so deeply with it's last breaths still warming it, and walked out along the river path to stand in the river singing before i went to be with my friends for my best friend's last night in town.  

i felt it when she left.

when i returned to my house, she was in the same place, completely still.  she had laid down to rest on my ceremonial dress, and her claws were in it when i picked her up, so it lifted and then fell at my feet as i drew her to my chest.  i put it on and held her, blessing and thanking, wailing and rocking silently.  i shook the rattle over her form and prayed to, with and for her immortal spirit before wrapping her in a blanket and putting her in my bed where she had loved to lay with me.  i was so exhausted, so we laid down in sleep together.  

the next morning (was that just yesterday?) i woke up and began to clean the room, so that our final rituals would be in clear space, cleared of the energy of mourning and free for the transmission of energy and information that happens in life's movement from one form to another.  we had good ceremony all day long, and i learned much.  then in the evening, we went to the temple of the mountain for a ritual fire.  we went as the sun was leaving this day to make day in other places to the meadow where the quartz sits in a stone circle, and the aspen groves surround a small stand of pines, two ridges flowing down into each other with the bright pure stream running in the crevasse.  it is a holy place, so rich with juju and time's gifts of experience, and it has held me more than once to receive my prayers and to be my special place.  there are piles of fallen aspens below the meadow, ready made silver firewood that cracks with a deeply satisfying sharp sound when one is breaking logs with their feet.  i gathered a huge pile of wood as the light was disappearing, made the stone circle for the pyre, blessed it to contain the ritual, and as night came fully on and the stars emerged from behind the veil of daylight, the fire spirits came to assist me in the relinquishment of that beloved body to spirit and space.  the fire burned long through the night, steadily transforming that mode of flesh and bone into ash.  i had thought it would be more tears and difficulty, more releasing attachment, but the feeling of it was quite something else.  in being present for the whole journey, through the pain of separation to the peace of completion, i honored her, our kinnexion, myself and all of creation.  fifteen years ago i took responsibility for the life of another being, and at the end of that life, i took responsibility for her transition to the spirit world.  i looked into the fire as that body disappeared, marveling at the transformative nature of that most miraculous element while singing songs to honor her, to bless her spirit, to assure our kinnectedness, to thank creation for our time together, to honor my grandmother, whose spirit rolls with me still, to express the deep and awesome gratitude i have for the blessing of her in my life.  so many songs.  so much wood for the fire, so much heat and flame.  and when her body was finally completely transformed, i prayed four rounds of prayer with the last of the flames: one for me, one for my kin and friends, one for my world, and the last for celebration.

so i have completed that journey of ours, and in that completion, i do not feel bereaved.  i feel complete.  i feel that i have completely honored our journey, spirit, love and being.  i have completely honored creation by holding the whole process in my own hands, and making the journey our journey.  michie is the most beautiful spirit i have ever had the blessing of immersing into.  she shall guide and teach me always.  i feel her within me as i feel all of my animal guides, all of my spirit kin, all of my blessings.  

there is a great peace in my spirit in this moment, for having come to closure in a cycle that may now blossom into the next phase of this life's being.  it is a peace that i have earned through presence and right action, and i am grateful for it.  i am grateful to michie for this final lesson that she has given to me.

so grateful...

bless