Imbolc and the Full Shadow Mountain Moon
Under the full Shadow Mountain, at the age of 12, Gertie died. I cried a lot, didn’t go in with her. Only Kate. Too hard for me. Not sure why, but it is.
On the drive couldn’t get Jan and Dean’s line out of my head: Gonna take that long, last ride. I feel relieved, certain this was the right decision even though I could not have carried it out. Kate said it was very peaceful.
Seoah believes Gertie will watch over us, help us be happy. I choose to agree with her. Gertie is an ancestor in that sense, I guess.
Sometime next week we’ll have a combined birthday party for me, 73, and a celebration of Gertie’s life. There are so many Gertie stories. If you have one, send it along and I’ll make sure it gets shared.
paragraph deleted. jen says it was untrue. I apologize.
The sun is out, the sky is blue, the snow is white and copious. And Gertie is no longer suffering. All good.
While I was waiting for Kate, I said the most important line of the Shema: Hear, o Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. I’ve been saying it regularly now since reading Art Green. He reconstructed it to mean: the one is. In saying it I remind myself that we are part of the one, that the one is that in which we live and move and have our becoming.
As I did, I felt Gertie and Kate. I saw with clarity that Gertie’s death was her life which was my life which is your life. That the cycle of emergence and reabsorption, the turning of the Great Wheel is another way of saying the Shema. Life, death, birth and decay, all one. All.
The Mexica, the Nahuatal, the Aztecs saw this life as a dream, entered into between a sleep and a sleep. Death brings us back to the real world. That’s why the Day of the Dead has a joyful overtone. See Coco. Death takes us to a world more real than this one full of illusion and pain.
The Celtic Otherworld has some overlap with this idea though it includes the realm of Faery, a place both wonderful and terrifying. Neither is like heaven which in the popular portrayal involves spending eternity in the 1950’s. Everybody’s polite, delightful, having a good time.
Though I find the rainbow bridge (stolen from Norse mythology’s Bifrost) corny, it does say something to me. It speaks to the purity of a dog’s soul, of their unending love, their affection. If any mammal deserves a privileged spot in an afterlife, it is the dog.
That’s why I choose to believe with Seoah that Gertie will look after us now.
One of my children left this opened on my computer and I was enjoying reading until I got to this post. You have a lot of nerve to post on here that I am sad and don’t know the needs and desires of my own child? I didn’t say no. How could I? No one asked to come see you. Jon didn’t ask to have the kids on your birthday. The kids didn’t ask me if they could be with you on your birthday. You have no right to speak of me in any of your posts and certainly no right to slander my name.