Strongheart: In Memory of Mac: Reflections on Love and Loss

Matthew & Mac, after a good swim in the river, August 8th, 2015

In Honor of Mac and the Gifts of Life and Death

Hiking Latourell Falls Trail

Mac died shortly after 12:00pm on Saturday, August 29th. Matt, Ron, and I all held him as he slipped from this world to the next. Mac was 11 years old. Less than one month earlier, he had been diagnosed with bone cancer, which we were told was progressed and aggressive and terminal.

Mac graced us through many seasons, many adventures, many large and also simple joys. As our four-leggeds so often are, he was a great teacher. My heart is full with gratitude for all of Mac's obvious and subtle gifts, and with grief that Mac's loving physical presence is now gone from our lives.

Mac's ashes now rest in a special place in our home. Soon our family will gather in ceremony and celebration of this precious being, spreading his ashes at his favorite beach along the Columbia River and burying more of his ashes at our hidden pet cemetery near Latourell Falls in the Columbia River Gorge. Mac and Kodi, and other doggies before them, took us to these places and many more to play and immerse ourselves the beauty and wonder and joy of Wild Places.

I have had retrievers since our sons' father and I brought home our first Golden Retriever pup in 1974. Now, Mac will be buried beside our goldens Brook and River and our kitty Smokey, and also near our golden Dillion, who is buried not far from Latourell Falls up on Larch Mountain. Their time with us is so short.

We humans, and other beings, all know loss. Life and loss are intimately connected, and grief and gratitude are often woven together. The challenge for many of us is to learn how to develop the skills and increase our capacity to consciously stay open to both, knowing that this is how we sustain and deepen connection with our own hearts and with the Great Heart that is woven through all of life.

As I grow older, I am able to recognize and receive more of this sweetness of love and life and simple moments. I reflect on Mac and his ear to ear smiles, the feeling and smell of his fur, and the sounds of his heart beating and wagging tail as I would curl up next to Mac and nestle my head into his body. So many other spontaneous past and present memories... The sounds of my brother's slippers on the floor of the Michigan hospital when I last saw him eight months before his suicide. The feeling of tiny pebbles between my toes and minnows nibbling on my ankles as a little girl wading into the waters of Orchard Lake. Holding my babies when they were tiny. Holding my baby grandson today. Tender loving embraces with my husband. The gentle breeze rustling through the leaves out my window. Looking into my mother's eyes and seeing love rather than rage and rejection. My father's gentle heart. The joy of shared laughter. The gift of tears. All impermanent, all fleeting, all precious.

Death is that great reminder that all that is alive will die, that each moment is one which can be held with remembrance of its value, whatever it may bring. Holding consciousness of life and death, embracing laughter and tears, allowing vulnerability and the tender-raw moments of our lives to be what they are, these are the experiences that touch and open our hearts.

I give thanks to Mac and to other beautiful four-leggeds who have been part of our family. There have been lifetimes of joy and play and love, and many tears when death comes - always reminders that each tear is a small jewel of shared love. There was a time when life and death had hardened my heart. I did not even know how high the walls were that I had built. Then, with help and support, the walls began to come down as I found the doorway of my tears and entered new territory. With time, this doorway into my sorrow also turned out to be the doorway opening my heart to joy. And love and Life.

I am so grateful that I can cry today. And that I am able to know deeply the sweet tenderness, vitality, presence, wisdom, and love that our pets bring to us. They model such gifts, if we can simply open to see and receive them. Included in these gifts is the felt experience that the needs for connection and love and touch and play are to be taken seriously and demanded when not forthcoming. That loving is to be freely offered and received. That the simple joys of being alive are everywhere and can be readily immersed in. That the present moment and the flow of life is to be embraced and lived rather than resisted and denied. That our hearts can hold more love than any words can ever adequately describe...

This is certainly the invitation and the reminders that our four-leggeds offer -- to open our hearts, to love deeply, to wag wildly, and to treasure each moment. We can remember that all is impermanent. And that all offers us the potential to open, heal, and expand our hearts. And to be more present today, right now, to love.

Thank you, Mac.

With love,

Molly

♥