I haven’t posted in a long time. Over three months to be exact–not since early July. It’s been a period of stagnation and lack of inspiration. So I have put myself on an indefinite leave of absence, from work, from life, from who-knows-what.
It’s a time for being quiet and hibernating. It’s a Bear time. In Native American tradition, the introspection of Bear medicine takes us “… to the place where all solutions and answers live in harmony with the questions that fill our realities. …… Each and every being has the capacity to quiet the mind, enter the silence, and know.”***
Little did I know when I named my magnificent Great Pyrenees yearling “Bear” that her untimely and tragic demise six years later would catapult me into one of the most painful experiences of grief, introspection and seeking in my life.
I should have noticed the signs weeks before they became so acute as to be irreversible—a cruel cancer invaded my girl’s system, making her last month one no dog should have to live through: not being able, literally, to eat—a high point in every canine’s life, and most certainly in Bear’s. Specialists and advanced diagnostics, meds, herbs and homeopathy all got us no closer to resolution, so it was just a few days ago that she and I agreed it was time for her to go.
But she has not left—her spirit woke me up in the middle of the night last night poking my shoulder firmly, twice, with her nose to check on me, like she has always done when I took a nap during the day. Yes, that kind of thing can happen. So we talked for a while.
As for me, I have been plunged into such a deep grief that it’s as if her loss stirred up a stew of all the sad events of my life and brought them all bubbling to the surface at the same time. The grief is so strong I can’t even pull apart the pieces in order to examine and make sense of them, much less try to process through them.
Perhaps on some level I did sense what was to come, as the beginnings of her symptoms coincided with the disappearance of my energy and creativity–in early July. So perhaps, subconsciously, that is why and when my life’s trajectory veered straight into a head-on collision with one of those painful but unavoidable cycles of introspection we must all go through from time to time.
So I now try to be patient and just “be” in Bear time, hoping this stew of bitter grief will eventually reduce down into a palatable blending of life’s flavors that will bring me back to days full of enjoyment and appreciation. I’m listening to a lot of music, hanging with the horses, and shedding lots of tears.
As for Bear… I am using the same techniques I employ when I check on clients’ animals who have passed on, to make sure they don’t hover here too long, and that they go on to the light where their soul can expand and venture forth into new dimensions and new opportunities, just like ours do.
I talk to Bear every day, and one day soon I’ll know she has spread her angel wings and flown. But true to her breed, she was and is still my guardian, so I think she’s waiting for me to emerge from this well of confusion and grief I have fallen into before she takes flight.
I don’t want to be selfish, but saying ‘goodbye’ to Bear still feels unfathomable to me. But I’ll make it, I know I will!
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***Medicine Cards, by Jamie Sams & David Carson, Bear & Co., Publishers
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