Risking 1,2,3.....

I saw this young boy tring to skateboard on the railing overlooking Mono Lake on my way to Yosemite to camp.  I was on the way home from the Second International Symposium on Veterinary Hospice and Palliative Care.  I was really on overload and looking forward to camping alone in the trees at 11,000 ft.  I stopped and watched him, happy my Mommy-fear was not here because he was not my child.  I wanted to capture the feeling I had at that moment.  I wanted a picture of it to remember my feelings and all that had captured my heart.  This was the best I could do with my iPhone at sunset!

  At the moment I am feeling very tired and old, but wise-old.  I am so grateful that each time I risk a great deal, overcome some fear, I seem to reap rewards proportional to the risk.  I am getting divorced, trying to move out of the busy city of Phoenix up to the cool more cold and calm Flagstaff.  It seemed impossible, but I have convinced my soon to be ex to move too.  I think we need to share our daughter.  I am feeling like I am this boy: I am trying and trying to do the right thing.  I am trying so hard to do the job I am given: to advocate for animals.  I am tring so hard to overcome my physical difficulties and live in the moment.  To accept my limitations, yet take them with me to the next idea, the next article, the next action.  Ignoring pain either emotional or physical just gave it permission to grow.  Now I accept it.  I hurt, yet I can still write.  I try to take it slow and honor my problems instead of run away from them.  They are, afterall, part of what has made me who I am.  I have so much to do today.  I must do some of it!  But, I am aware of my limitations.  It is almost in naming the worst thing it goes away!  I think if there is such a thing as the devil, or pure evil it is not loud.  It is that quiet pervasive voice that says to you: "You can't do THAT!  They will LAUGH at you!  Who do you think you are to presume they will respect you? You are going to fail!" It is called the Itty Bitty Sh***y Committee in 12 step parlance.  A very wise man at the Hospice Symposium told me to tell them to "take a number, come back later, how about an appointment in 2 hours?".  I have been doing that and they do not show up at the appointed hour!  I can not see the road ahead, but I feel the right path at every moment if I will just listen.  I know what I am supossed to do and I think I am nuts for risking so much each time I do.  And...each time I risk It is testing new waters, and I am getting deeper and deeper into my dreams!  If I just keep trying to risk, and GO FOR IT and ignore the aforementioned IBSC then I am really rewarded with progress towards my dreams.  I do not mean to sound egocentrical in any way, because the more I accomplish, the more good that comes from my committment to the GOOD, the LESS it is me at all.  It is me resonating a tiny bit , for just a moment, hanging there near perfection before my imperfect mind intervenes.  Like the boy who showed me it was OK to take a leap, and do it over and over until you get it right, risk or no risk..Oh, yeah, and it is so much more FUN to take the leap.......I think I will keep trying it...Risking 1,2,3.......

The Vet Hospice Symposium is causing me to continue to change my life

I am at the Second International Veterinary Hospice Symposium at UC Davis's College of Veterinary Medicine.  Just like last year, this Symposium is again causing me to change my life.  I am completely taken over by the idea that our pets are sentient, feeling, soulful creatures that we are responsible for.  When an animal looks into my eyes, I DO know what they want, what they are asking of me.  I never really admitted that when I was a practicing Veterinarian.  Now that look, those eyes are the reason I must write and help Veterinarians and concerned pet "owners" to accept the death of their pets and participate in the process through Animal Hospice.  Finally, here at the Symposium, are some good journalists, this will be on the radar now.  I am no journalist, and am struggling to write and express myself.  I am driven, however, to try to get Vets and other caregivers, and pet owners to know about Veterinary Hospice.  Something about this subject, this idea is all encompassing and life changing.  Sharen Myers LCSW gave an amazing talk, and meeting her, I saw my new passion mirrored in her eyes.  She has worked in human hospice for many years and is starting Synergy a Pet Hospice in Oregon.  She quoted Cicely Saunders a Hospice pioneer who said "I did not find Hospice, Hospice found me".  She also said about Hospice that "It took me 19 years to build a house around a window."  Hospice has caused me to rethink first, my own life, my ideas about life itself, and then infused me with a burning desire to tell other people what the animals want.
   I thought, because of my health issues, I had to be at home.  Dr. Kathryn Maracchino told me last year to "work to your abilities, not your disabilities".  I came to the first Hospice Symposium.  Since then I have driven 5000 miles each summer with my daughter to help people in New Orleans, and to just have an adventure with her.  I think that has changed both our lives.  This lisence to GO that I got from Kathryn in one instant absolutely changed my life.  That First Symposium then changed my views of life itself.  This Second Symposium contimues to alter my basic values and views for the better.

  I have learned in our culture , especially in the USA, we AFRAID of death.  Sharen Myers quoted Margaret Mead who said "When someone is born, we rejoice.  When someone marries, we celebrate.  When someone dies, we pretend nothing happened."  Death IS the equal and opposite process of birth.  If we want to live well, we need to die well and vice versa.  We may try to ignore this for ourselves, but we are faced with death full force with our pets.  We love them so much and they love us so purely.  We are responsible for them, feed them and take care of them, but in reality  they take care of us.  I know there is an amazing spiritual, pure love connection with our animals.  I know I am being loved when I look into a kitty like Zoomi's eyes.  There is a message there, and now I am not afraid to admit that, and thrive in that knowledge.  The Hospice Symposium has validated the path and the truth that I feel in my gut.  I have found the courage to change my life from that knowledge.  Something about dealing with the moment of death teaches us how to well live our lives.  There is the very kernal of sacredness here, and the lesson is to experience it.  The speakers here have taught me that THE most important thing is to BE PRESENT and open to the experience.  This was presented about the dying process, but it has taught me about the living process.  This is what I learn when I look into those eyes: love is here, in the moment, and I must learn to live with this love first and foremost in my every moment.

Gratitude for hospice4animals

I am very grateful for the amazing events of the this last week.  I would not normally put my picture here, but I want to smile at you if you stop by.  I have begun to be an Editor for  Veterinary Medicine at About.com specializing in Pet Loss and Grief, Euthanasia Issues, End of Life Care, and Veterinary Hospice.  http://is.gd/2xHIz  This is an extraordinary opportunity to reach a larger audience and help more people deal with the very tough decisions surrounding the end of life.  I am also very grateful to all who wrote and are writing, about the article that follows "Why is it so hard when a pet dies?".  It has touched a nerve or struck a chord depending on your perspective.  I have been overwhelmed by the response and struck by their similairities.  MANY people need better ways to grieve for their pets, and memorialize them.  I do too.  I think we need more Pet Chaplains to mediate a Memorial Service, perhaps a PetWake .  We should light candles, honor our losses and then CELEBRATE the life of our pet.  If you have a friend who has just lost a pet, offer to coordinate a small PetWake.  Animals present, we gather to honor the life of the pet.  We tell funny stories, share music, say some special prayers, and then all pledge out loud how we are going to help animals by volunteering in the name and honor our fur friend.  Or how about a National Pet Remembrance Day? I am also grateful for the BEST summary on Veterinary Hospice by Rochelle Lesser at Land of Pure Gold a Canine Cancer Foundation http://is.gd/2yfBF. Lastly I am grateful for the Second International Symposium on Veterinary Hospice and Palliative Care September 4-7 at the UCDavis College of Veterinary Medicine.  You heard it here first:  I will BLOG live here, TWEET live www.twitter.com/hospice4animals, and REPORT at About.com (above).  Check here for great ideas and info as well as the Animal Remembrance Ceremony, holistic approaches to Hospice, and much more.  In Gratitude for the Anipals, xxxjmedvm

Stand By Me.

An AMAZING song made around the world:
playingforchange.com made this extraordinary collaboration of Stand By Me:
http://tinyurl.com/playingforchange-stand-by-me
an amazing effort street musicians,choruses,for Peace
(Hello Grampa Elliott I Love You!)from South Africa to New Orleans by way of Congo and Northern Ireland
this song will cut to the quick:slash through nationalistic/racial/sexual identities to that which is universal. This song speaks to our commonalities,not our differences. More songs can be found at www.playingforchange.com and will be released this month on cd. I felt an actual tear well up (I have met some of these street musicians from New Orleans)it will leave you wanting to work for Peace on our small green planet. The differences between us seem so much smaller then the best of our humanity;the love we can share through such beautiful music. L'chaim! Stand By Me!

Finding Meaning in Mortality (thank you Daddy)

There is something about being with my Dad and thinking about geological time that has made my mortality real to me. I suppose this is not very profound, nor unusual. My Dad will be 75 in May. He visited for my daughter's tenth birthday. I am having a hysterectomy in the end of this month and have a not insignificant chance of endometrial cancer. Attempts to biopsy my uterus non surgically were unsuccessful, so a diagnosis will be made intraoperatively. Somehow, all these circumstances have given me an out-of-mind experience.

OK, I can not really have an out-of-mind experience, rather I am thinking from the third person, observing my life from as much of a distance that is possible from inside my own head.

My Dad travels the world, and frequently goes to China for his Medicine In Public Health Initiative. I have always admired my father, and been afraid of him; afraid to stand up to him. Now, for the most part I can defend my ideas and viewpoint matter of factly when it differs from his. In the last few years I have grown to like him from up close; instead of just admiring him from afar. All of the admiration, though has not stopped me from seeing the less functional parts of my personality reflected back at me from him.

It recently seems as though I am walking around acutely aware of what I do not find healthy in my relationships. I have worked very hard to trace the lineage of my specific behavior patterns. I hope I am truly working even harder to change them. This hyper-awareness and classification does not tend to foster good relationships. It is an odd irony that dissecting my dysfunction and naming it gives a strange objective awareness of interactions even as they happen. I considered it some kind of victory to actually HEAR what I sound like. Oh. THAT bad thing is just what Mommy does! Oh, I sound just like Daddy! For some reason, not everyone else is just as interested to hear me name the negative behavior I have just understood, even as I take my part in it. This is especially true for my parents. I do not per se BLAME them for my behavior, I just see where some of it comes from. Now that I am a parent, this has been af high importance to me.

I can be a really negative critic. I have not only traced this behavior, tones and gesticulations included, but also have seen it played word for word, nuance by nuance by my daughter. Now that I have diagnosed it, it is time for the treatment. Like most medications, there can be a bad aftertaste. I know I will not live forever, but tasting my mortality, seeing it and accepting it, has made my behavioral redo much more of a priority. Now the difficult task has become to stop those words, change that tone and control myself BEFORE the words come out of my mouth, before my eyes roll heavenward, before that sigh escapes my lips.

I stand with one foot in Benevolent, Understanding, Unconditional Motherland, and the other in Mother You Know What Land. In a raft rushing down the B*%$ River I try to desperately steer my way to the Loving shore. I am so close. I am sure that this struggle will continue for the rest of my life, however long that is.

Which brings me to the point of the discussion. I have already lived over half my life . At fifty-one the probability of living fifty-one more years is infinitesimal. Even if I do live over ninety like both my grandmothers, it is only forty-some years more. Looking and listening to my Dad, I am suddenly overwhelmed with gratitude. Imperfect as he is, inherited outlook and all, I love him dearly. I love the parts of me that came from him, observed as well as unknown. I can see all of this unfolding before my eyes in my daughter. As I turn from his puns, to the quick older-then-ten understanding in my daughter, I can share in their laughter. The kind of jokes, the same ironic sense of humor, and lightening quick cognition is in all three of us, is in our giggles. I have been concentrating on righting my wrongs so much that I have stopped appreciating the already-good. I have learned something, and I have passed my Daddy's best to my daughter.

I have been thinking and examining my rationale for my life, what the God of my understanding expects me to do with it. I am trying to understand how He or She wants me to invest this precious capital minute by minute. Faced with death, confronted with this mortality, I am still expected to keep on going day by sweet day. The immortality, then of my family must be just this. The way my Dad turns and glances to see if we have caught that last funny remark, caught that sly astute observation, and breaks into a huge grin despite himself, lives on, reflected back at him in my daughter's twinkling eyes. I was listening to their detailed imaginary world game, and suddenly I felt an extreme deja-vu descending. I had a whole world of people we gossiped about when I was her age. The world that our imaginary friends inhabited was quite detailed. Forty years later, it sounds just as entertaining. I see myself relaxing and letting go.

Whatever it is: fifteen hours or fifteen years, my job is to love and enjoy. My catalogue of the unacceptable was long and detailed. It is time to reward all the good I have received with the highest compliment; emulation. I will strive to accept everyone around me as they are right now. I will thank both my parents by being the best they gave me to work with. I will temper the negative to the best of my ability, and strive to stop this endless rehashing of my bad behaviors. I will enjoy all these moments of clarity, and I will try to put them to good use. I will behave as the best I can expect to receive in this world. I will always endeavor to treat all those I come in contact with, ESPECIALLY my family, with all the love I can muster. At the end of the day I will look back, not to punish myself, but merely to learn for tomorrow, and then let it go. I will try to be the best of my relatives, TO my relatives, every day. I will honor my Dad, and show my appreciation of him by being the best HE showed ME. I only have this life, as far as I know for sure, right now. I can pray and meditate and reach the God of my understanding only now;not yesterday,and not in tomorrow. So, I will try to stay in now and live in now, and love in now. Thank you Daddy!

My name is Sparky

My name is Sparky.  Last week I was 22 years young.  I have a few things that I would like to say if you would please give an old man-cat a moment.  Please keep me warm and comfortable.  Sometimes I get restless because it is hard to get comfortable.  I would like a few places where I can get under a blanket or lie in the sun.Do not be upset if I get cancer or something.  It was nothing you did.  It was because you took such good care of me.  I got an old age disease!  If you think I am very painful please help me.  I can go to the-sacred-before-and-after moment by moment.  I may seem slow and dazed.  I am really meditating, it helps me.  I will spend more and more time there until I have to go. I will hum my mantra.  Sometimes I do not eat or drink very much.  If you think I am hurting too much I trust you to do what is best for me.  Try to find me a Veterinarian who practices Hospice care for pets.  If you want to speed up my journey, I trust you.  If you do not feel it is your right to end my life, that is ok too.  Thank you for loving me and taking care of me.  I will love you.  My spirit will be with you.  Some of me will stay with you forever.