On April 20th, a friend and I helped put our beloved friend, Roxy, to rest.  Five years of joy, a few months of decline.  Not too bad.

Roxy was a good girl, a goofball, a gentle 75 pound being.  So many people responded with compassion, adding they were sorry for my loss.  I bless them all for their warmth and care.  In the days since, I’ve sincerely asked myself: Did I lose something, and if so, what?   Certainly, I’m adjusting to the fact that Roxy no longer appears to me.  I miss the way we’d gaze into one another’s eyes.  And she isn’t on her lead, walking beside me. I don’t hear the sound of her foxy tail thumping when I enter the room.  I cried off and on for three days.  Had to put cucumbers on my eyeballs, they were so swollen.  Sometimes Love shows up in wet form.

But I cannot say I’ve lost anything.  Strange?  Maybe.  What I experience around her “disappearance” is a depth of gratitude that’s palpable this very instant.  It struck me that wanting more time with her means overlooking the abundant gifts we offered one another.  There is no “more” to be gotten.  It’s already given.  I may miss the physicality of her, though the gratitude predominates.

Once again, I see that Love is more precious than the body, which I honor.  Though what appears cannot remain; it’s the natural law.  Love, however, remains.  It does not reside in the body.  See for yourself:  bring to mind a beloved whose body is no longer present.  Do you still feel the love you shared?  Are the gifts you gave one another gone?  Love has not disappeared; the body, yes, but not the Love.  There is no true parting; a transition, for sure, but separation is illusory.  I think of Roxy and my entire being fills with the presence of Love, with or without her physical presence.  It’s the same Love.  That’s what matters.  I can’t ask for more.

Go deeply enough into it and you’ll find that all grief, at it’s core, is Love.  I talked about Roxy once at a retreat with Rupert Spira when something about her came up for me.  He asked: Do you love Roxy?  I said: Yes, I do, deeply.  Then he asked: Can you let that same love bathe the pain you feel now?  The answer then, as now, is a resounding yes.  I bow to this teaching, the re-orientation it initiated and the way it continues to unfold.  May it be so for us all.

During this dying process, I texted a friend, who wrote back about Roxy’s passage through the “bug gateway.”  She meant “big gateway.” A poem that honors these words and my dear friend came of the exchange:

Fortunate Error

I like bug gateway
better than big gateway.
I can see it clearly:

hoards of soft-bodied insects
practically fall over themselves,
while antennae, those sensitive
sensory wands, vibrate in
wild anticipation.

Suddenly, she arrives!
In unison, they buzz, click,
whir and strum, surround her
in insect-love. As she floats
through the shimmery gate,
their wings oscillate, washing her clean,
and their song, too sweet for us to hear,
envelopes her in joy.

Her spirit-body wags.
She bounds into an open field, leaves
scent of orange blossoms
in her wake.

That night, a dream:
I sip an ocean of nectar
from my cupped palms.
When I wake, teary love
envelopes me.

Krayna Castelbaum

Thank you, Roxy, for being my beloved friend.  For bringing so much joy to my life.  So much Love.  oxxo