Eleven Minutes Past 3:30 PM

Tahoe's concerns are delightfully simple: Breakfast. Dinner. Bed. Love. Outside. So simple. So everyday. So easy to follow. So satisfying. He has no need for books on mindfulness or classes on how to sit still in order to focus on his life. Nope. He's had it down from the minute he was born. He's not contemplating aging or wandering in the Forest or the Desert. He is questioning, though, why in the world I got a new car that he can barely get into, but over our many years together he's learned to make allowances for my weird decisions and always offers forgiveness for the more grievous ones. He's a very happy creature with little to no complaints.

However, even though he's not focused on getting older, it is indeed happening to him. Next January he'll be 91. He can't jump on the bed or into the car anymore. His back right foot does this little dangly thing when he gets up and he has trouble walking. A couple of weeks ago he felt so crummy that he refused a piece of apple. I thought he was near the end, but thankfully he got better.

He sleeps through much of the day and often offers his two cents when I'm on the phone at home with clients or talking with my Forest Dwelling group. He's always present. He's been with me since the beginning of this blog in 2009. I dread his eventual dying more than my own. When he goes he'll take my last connection with the life Rod and I shared. I see it coming and it makes me sad. 

In fact, there are many, many things that make me sad right now. At times I feel overwhelmed in measures I don't understand. There's no need to go into the list here, right now, today because all of us have the same list, the same concerns, the same pains. Mine are no different than yours. I have to wonder, though, how I got to this place of limited patience, limited resource, and limited energy. It's a matter for prayer and reflection. It's a matter of paying attention to what's happening just right now - not in 2 years, not in 1 week, not in 10 minutes. Just right now. It's all I have the bandwidth for anymore. I am aging, too. 

And here, right now, today Tahoe says it's time for dinner because it's 11 minutes past 3:30. 

What a delightful thing to do at 11 minutes past 3:30! To give my dog the same meal he's had for the past many years, twice a day, sounds fantastic. And he'll be grateful and happy and think I'm the best human being ever. That's a good feeling that eases all sadness and reminds me, even makes me mindful, that "in the end everything will be ok and if it's not ok, then it's not the end." Amen.