I Carry You in my Heart

It seems to me that many people know and love the e.e. cummings poem from which I took the title of this post: here's the full text in case it's new to you.

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in

my heart) i am never without it (anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling) 

                                                      i fear

no fate (for you are my fate,my sweet) i want

no world (for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

..and don't we all carry the heart of our dogs, our horses, cats, birds - as well as lost humans? Or maybe, we carry the heart of a non-human more easily, as they live with us in such simplicity and love, and ask so little, and teach so much. I will lose Danny soon; he will always be a part of me, I would not be who I am (that I feel good about) without him this past thirteen years.

many of you who read this blog will feel the same, I know, about their beloveds.

So last night, I was reading through the beautiful book Voices from the Stone:Life Lessons from the Native Way, by Ken Nerburn (I'm reading pretty much all his stuff these days) and a line jumped out at me, hit me so hard, I had to put the book down, let the emotions flood and let the message sink in.

The lines were these:
"I imagined a childhood alive with understanding, where the world is a vibrant, living place filled with lessons from the land and its creatures - where buffalo teach us about protection and calm by the way they surround the weak and infirm in times of crisis; where porcupines show us the humble use of strength and personal power; and where our dogs teach us about faithfulness by their steadfasts and unwavering love.

Had I been granted this way of understanding, my old dog's death would not have cast me adrift spiritually, but would have made my faith stronger and filled me with reverence and gratitude for the gifts she had given me.

She would have lived inside of me as a mentor and a teacher, not as a wound that would never be healed."

These lines, along with the author's description of putting his old dog  down (who had been his companion for 17 years)  triggered an explosive response in me; I knew that Lila lived inside me as mentor and teacher, and that Danny would always be my heart's peace and joy, but that Luke was a wound that would never heal - or at least needed healing as soon as I could address it. Luke was my first Ridgeback, I made mistakes with him, but adored him completely; his sudden death at 8 years old, from hemangiosarcoma, absolutely shattered me and I have always carried his presence in my life as a 'wound that wouldn't heal'.

So today, I'm thinking about loss - the dogs, cats, humans - the landscape, my former home -  I have lost, and how some of them remain as teachers, mentors and soulfriends, in my Inner Landscape, while others represents wounds, and therefore life lessons, which need to be healed. It all takes time...it takes a lot of time. But we owe it to them, and to ourselves...and all the world around us, to heal.

My spirit drum, decorated with sacred leaves from the trees around my ancestral home in Rupert, a loss I need to go very deep within to heal.

So today I'm asking - how do we transform the losses that live inside as wound, to the kind of grateful presence that a loss without regret will leave us? I'll share some of my own techniques along the way, in this blog, would love to hear from you.