That without substance…

Obi on the snowshoe trail.

The softest thing in the universe
overcomes the hardest thing in the universe.
That without substance can enter where there is no room. *

In the last blog I wrote about how being contracted in fear, greed, or hatred leaves no room for love. Grief can be like this too when it is all consuming. Grief is natural and takes its own time and needs to be honoured, but when it is harboured or unacknowledged it can also squeeze out love. It can turn into a reason for hate or overindulgence.

I just spent five days meditating at home as part of a zoom retreat. The teacher would end every session by sending love and kindness. And as much as I talk about love, I had to acknowledge that in those moments I wasn't feeling it. What was coming up instead was grief. (You never know what's going to come up when you sit down and be quiet and look at your mind for days on end.) It seems I had been ignoring a growing sadness about not spending time outdoors and in physical activity the way I used to. Simply by acknowledging this grief changed it, released it, and reconnected my heart.

By chance, the story I had lined up to share in this post is about grief. And a dog.

Obi was a black lab and often like that without substance. He flowed like the water he was so at home in. He was not aggressive or overly eager to please. He was calm, sniffing the air and not reacting; he was happy to see whatever or whomever came his way. He was happy to go anywhere; he even loved going to the vet. And he could tell when I was emotionally worked up about something, sit in front of me, and paw my leg as if to say, “Calm down, it’s okay.”

Not to romanticize him; he was also a regular dog with quirks and who rolled in smelly things and chewed stuff.

I have a clear memory of puppy Obi’s little ears flapping in the wind and the like memory years later while walking with him on a windy day. It’s all so timeless — past and present can collapse into one moment, like all the years in between never really happened. How the woman who could walk and walk, and snowshoe, far and fast, and who could later walk a kilometre with twelve-year-old Obi — with ski poles and on a good day, is the same woman who now needs a walker full-time. Obi’s aging and decline mirrored how MS was transforming my body. We all feel like the same person even though we are, in turn, or all at once delighting in a puppy and the wind, remembering that sweet moment, then remembering a beloved dog long gone. Delighting in our youth and limberness and then, seemingly in the blink of an eye, struggling to stand up straight.

The Haliburton vet who saved Obi’s life on one occasion, helped us say goodbye when the time came. She wrote in her condolence card, “he was a true gentleman.” I knelt in front of Obi with one hand petting him and the other hand in front of his nose. As he breathed his last breath, it was remarkable to suddenly feel that he was everywhere. Like he was released into that without substance, into the softest thing. It was a release for me as well and I felt relief and comfort. His ashes went into the river because he loved to swim. From there he could swim all the way to the ocean. Maybe this is where we all go, and also where we came from and still are: in the all, the womb of possibility, the ceaseless rising and falling, the fullness of Life. In the Tao, flowing where it will, both yielding and overcoming.

Two summers before this, my sister, Rebecca, gave me a planter of morning glories. I fell in love with this trumpet-shaped periwinkle blue flower that blooms in the early morning. I kept the seeds from that morning glory and I planted them the summer my husband, Michael, and I were finally settled in our new house. The plant grew huge with leaves almost as broad as my hands. It had flower buds all over and I was getting impatient for them to bloom, but it was soon September and it seemed they were never going to. I brought the plant inside, determined to see it open in all its glorious glory.

Obi was one of three dogs that I had been sharing long-distance for five years with my former partner. When Obi was gone, I decided it was best for all of us to leave Riggs and Rios with my ex and his new family. Maybe this was a mistake, but in the end Riggs became a little boy’s best buddy and Rios came back into my life. At that time though, giving up my dogs was the hardest thing I’d ever done. The morning after I dropped them off for good, found me unable to get out of bed and laden with grief. I had been crying for hours and for the first time ever in my life I felt seriously offended that the sun rose. I finally dragged myself out of bed by midmorning and wandered into the living room … that morning glory had bloomed! Over a dozen of those flowers were open in a shower of purple-pinkish-blue. It was like Obi looking at me in his way and pleading with me to calm down — ”it will be okay.”

And then, maybe it was my mother. I’d often felt she’d been there in very tough moments in my life. I certainly felt a distinct absence when it seemed she was no longer there. Or it was the Tao — the softest thing in the universe, a blossom, overcoming the hardest thing in the universe, grief. Cumulative grief flows together and releases like Obi so at home in the water. Like buds finally releasing into bloom. Something without substance made an opening where there had been no room. Last week’s retreat offered that for me too.

This is a long post (I thank you for reading to the end) and all to say that: I don't know, but if you have time to sit softly and quietly long enough to glimpse what might be unacknowledged or held too tightly in your life, maybe there is something that can be released so life and love can flow where before there was no room.

~

*from Chapter 43, Tao Te Ching, translated by Jane English and Gia-Fu Feng, Random House 1972 and 2011.

“It’s okay, calm down now.”