Take Three Steps

“I sometimes forget that
I was created for joy.
My mind is too busy.
My heart is too heavy
Heavy for me to remember
that I have been
called to dance
the sacred dance of life.”

Hafiz

Last quoted a year ago when I created my photo blogs describing walking the Portuguese Coastal Camino last May, this excerpt from Hafiz aptly describes me since my last post. Two weeks ago today we said goodbye to our beloved Annie dog. It’s a day reminiscent, with its dark skies, rain, cold and wind, just like that Sunday and the two that followed, then giving me cause to say we were being held in a sheltering sky. That then, on the third day, the skies glowed with colour as the sun set, offering something, somewhat, holy in it all.

So yes, in the last two weeks I have forgotten I was created for joy. My mind has been too busy, my heart too heavy with memories of Annie. Yes, all things considered, Annie had a “good” death. She was alert, conscious, knowing we were with her in her final hours. She was tended to with loving kindness by the vet clinic staff. In grief’s waxing and waning rhythms, I’ve come to realize that my loss is acute for all the ways she loved being with me. Our loss is the realization that for the first time in twenty three years, our quiet home is all the more so for the absence of the love, lessons, and joy our dogs gave us. Dogs that except for Annie and Torch, our only male setter, died as their lives diminished with age and declined with health. Annie, despite having had that first stroke, gave us the gift of six weeks of unique and unabashed presence. To have that so suddenly gone…

Life in its way has a way of reminding me of joy. Just two days before we knew we had to make the “no choice” choice for Annie, I learned I was the grand prize winner of a raffle. My $20 investment had garnered two round trip international air tickets. That same morning, I took my first deep water aqua fitness class, a good cardio workout that isn’t aggravating my foot, allowing me to train for my September trek. I mustered myself to return the day after Annie’s death, and have persisted because it has no associations to her. This week, I’ll return to walking in the neighborhood, now and forever more without her. I’ll bring ear buds, downloaded podcasts and kleenex.

“I was in darkness, but I took three steps and found myself in paradise. The first step was a good thought; the second a good word; and the third, a good deed.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

May my walks be replete with such steps.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.