Being with Mystery

The Mystery within...

My daughter’s cat; my daughter’s Facebook words:

“Rest in peace Sophie.  Sweetest cat I've ever known.  Very sad day.  She will be dearly missed.”

We never expected to lose Sophie this past week.  Her death brought us closer to Mystery and reminded us control is an illusion and change is inevitable.  She was thirteen years old and was treated a couple of months ago for a lame front leg that got better overnight.  The lameness suddenly returned, much worse, now in her opposite leg.  Treatment was ineffective and the next day she was still in major distress.  The vet suggested it might be best to put her down.  So we took her in and mercifully she was put out of her misery while we stood by her.

I had suggested to my daughter that we could bring her back home with us for burial but she was reluctant until the vet mentioned home burial was one of our options.  I thought Sophie would also have wanted to come back with us. 

Clearing a spot for her burial, digging a deep enough hole, sawing away large underground roots from nearby bushes was hard work.  But when I watched my daughter gently wrap Sophie in the cream colored sheet, carry her to the grave, and nestle her in, I knew it was the right thing to do.  She put colorful flowers upon the sheet, and sprinkled some of Sophie’s late buddy Ben’s ashes around her and then lit some sage.  That little ceremony reclaimed our connection to Sophie and Ben and all things beyond.  Life and death are so inextricably linked.

What if we could always reclaim the life and death link to everyone and everything? 

Death and Taxes

God is...

This first month of the New Year has passed in a flash.  Little did I know when I lightheartedly wrote my January 6 blog titled Pre-funeral Luncheon, that I would come face to face with the death of my sweet boy, Yellow Lab Ben, less than two weeks later.  How quickly death can show us what is truly important in life.  They are inextricably linked.  I closed the month of January with taxes on my mind and Benjamin Franklin’s quote:  “…in this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”

I’ve gone through a lot of Kleenex with Ben’s passing, and now as I start the dreaded task of getting my tax information together, I have opened a bottle of Tums for the first time in a long time.  Every year I tell myself I need to better organized the information I will need at tax time.  I do have a bunch of manila envelopes in which I attempt to keep the many pieces of information I will need at year’s end, but it still looms as an overwhelming task.  What if I kept a monthly ledger of all the  information?  Balancing my checkbook each month is something I do faithfully; for besides promoting good money sense, it clearly shows me how many different ways I can be wrong.  I don’t think I’d need Tums to summarize year-end tax information if I kept a monthly account of all those numbers.  What if I could make that happen for next year’s tax time?

Just as life and death are joined, so too are death and taxes.  When going over last year’s paper trail I saw a mini life review in my work, doctor and volunteer miles driven, household expenses, charitable contributions, purchases made, presentations I attended or gave, books sold (by county) and current inventory, postage, supplies, and the training I needed.  People nearing the death experience often do a life review.  What’s important becomes clear, the ego diminishes, and the goal becomes unity as we prepare to return to our Original Nature from which we came.  So too there is grace in taxes.  The goal is unity for the common good.  (Benjamin Franklin knew the importance of unity among the thirteen colonies.)  To support the common good gracefully we willingly need to let go of some ego. 

What if we could all come to embrace the grace in taxes?