Joy

Nico and Joy 2008

Although my lifelong love of dogs drew me to this week here at Cesar's, I also recognize that I am living in less than perfect harmony with my current pack.  I am certain that the sadness I personally feel around of the imbalance and lack of harmony in my own pack most certainly fueled my unwavering choice to go as soon as I could.

Along with an amazing amount of physical activity and an abundance of information to fill my hungry mind, each day after lunch we are lead through a meditation.  And each day, a different style of meditation is offered for us to experience.  Guided meditation and singing bowl meditation have been offered, and today it was meditation to chanting.  I used to meditate regularly.  I have not been following that practice for many years.  I feel a dawning recognition that I will return to the habit.

Today's meditation was difficult to ease into.  I don't really know why, but then without noticing, I was in a meditative state.  Images of a beautiful fall day with trees the colors of the harvest--golds, oranges, reds, and greens--came to my closed eyes.  I recognized it as the image of the most incredible, sweetest, gentlest, fall day I can remember experiencing in my life.  It was November 29, 2011.

The beauty of that day was deeply moving because not only was it almost the last day of November, but I recognized then, and still remember that every day since the beginning of Fall that year had been kind enough to my little corner of the world that the leaves were preserved in all of their splendor for weeks beyond when they ordinarily survive the gathering winds and early rains of fall in any other year.

All of this detail and these bits of memory washed past me in only a moment as the chanting continued.  The colors and the beauty and the absolute gift of that day tumbled over me, and in another moment the rest of that day did, as well.  That was the day I last held my beautiful Joy.  The day she took her last breath; the day I last smelled the smell of her velvety ears and cradled her seventeen-year-old body in my arms.

Joy was my beautiful soulmate.  She and I had every bit the relationship that Cesar has with his own beloved Junior.  We could communicate without a sound.  She knew what I wanted and I knew what she needed.  Harmony was my blessing in the life that Joy and I shared for seventeen years.  In that moment, I knew that flash of memory and the image in my mind was truly a reconnection with my precious Joy.  It was there to remind me that I have, already, experienced harmony and balance with a dog, and that it is within my grasp and my ability to achieve balance and harmony with my pack now.

As I came out of the meditation, all of the pieces in the meaning of that image made sense.  Before we adopted Sunny, Sonja and I and the rest of my pack (which included Jeff, my husband, and our oldest dog, AJ) were nearly perfectly balanced.  Where we were out of balance, or not in harmony, I can name, and I know why.

We fell out of our pattern of forward progression towards a harmonious pack when we adopted Sunny.  It's no fault of Sunny's, of course.  We just added her to the status quo, and believed she was getting what she needed to help her understand the boundaries and the rules of our home and our pack.  And, of course we two humans were the ones who needed to claim this and handle it, but, we missed that beat.  I recognize that every action since has really been a reaction, trying to get us all caught up to where we want and need to be, but aren't.

This week I have experienced many moments of sudden clarity, and this was a critical one for me.  Not because it revealed to me all of the answers about how I will restore harmony and balance to our pack, but because I was pulled back to a time when I had these things, and had created them myself, with my dog.

Joy was named for a fictional dog I placed in a story I wrote many years ago.  That fictional dog was modeled on the dog who had my whole heart at that time.  That dog, Tina, was the inspiration for the dog in the book, who I named Joy.  The story was never published or read by anybody, and since I wanted to continue the lineage from Tina to the next beautiful soulmate, I bestowed that name on Joy when I found her at the Woodland Animal Shelter as a 6-week old puppy.

Three years passed after I said my last goodbye to Joy, and though I knew I would have another dog, the loss was difficult to recover from, and I held off finding another dog.  I kept dreaming of Joy... she was so deep in my heart and my soul... Finally, I realized I was ready, and with almost no effort, I found my way to my beautiful Sonja.  Sonja is a shortening of the word Sonjadore--"dreamer."

I won't allow three years to go by again, even if the loss crushes my heart.  The harmony that we can have in our lives, living with creatures who love us so unconditionally, is too precious to squander on grief.

Nico and Tina - Big Sur, CA - 1988