Sometimes we reach a point where there is nothing else to do...

...and that is OK

I am a veterinarian, a veterinarian who specializes in alternative treatment modalities. I frequently have people seek me out who have “tried everything else” and are looking for the one thing that will miraculously cure their beloved animal, or at least give them some extra time - and yet many cannot bring themselves to even say those words - because saying those words may mean that time with their animal is limited, is finite.

As Shakyamuni said, “Nothing is permanent except change.”

Our modern society has become highly adept at denying death, denying the one fact of life that is inescapable, the fact that it will not go on forever.

As Jim Morrison said, “ No one here gets out alive.”

We go about our day-to-day lives, mentally feeling we are the same person as we were yesterday, denying that we are one day older. And those days add up, until pretty soon we are several years, and then decades, older.

The grains of sand in the time-keepers of our animals’ lives flow even faster. If we are talking about dogs and cats, their lifespans are less than a quarter of the average human.

By the time many of my patients arrive at my doorstep, they are often in the palliative care stage of their disease process. I keep them comfortable, sometimes extending their lives a few weeks, months, or years if lucky. And I walk, hand in hand with them and their humans, towards the threshold of the Void to eventually let them go.

The animals themselves “know how” to die. I say this because in some sense we have been programmed to believe that animals must be euthanized, as if they were not able to die on their own. Sometimes euthanasia is a gift that relieves them of their suffering early, but sometimes there is almost a rush “to do something” as if hastening death will make it any easier. I could write tomes on this topic alone, so I will let it lie here.

My days of practicing veterinary medicine are not the only time in my life Death has stood in the path before me. Death has been nearly a constant companion walking beside me, whether it be human or animal. Long days in the euthanasia room of shelters, sitting bedside in cold hospital rooms holding vigil, roadkill put out of their misery in the dark of night, rainbow trout resuscitated in the kitchen sink.

I have found succor in my spiritual path which has helped me to embrace death, primarily Tibetan Buddhism with some Dark Goddess devotion and shamanism in the mix. Even so, it can be overwhelming at times.

Nature moves in cycles, and one of those cycles is the cycle between life, death, and rebirth. Another cycle is that of the seasons. Life is reborn in the spring and grows and matures in the summer. The fruit and grains are harvested in the fall and the fields lay fallow in the depths of winter.

Our lives follow these same cycles and depend upon them although that is not so obvious when most of us just drive to the local grocery store for food vs. growing and harvesting it out in the fields. Just as we are removed from our food source, so are we removed from the cycle of life and death, and it is that much easier to deny death its rightful place.

Right now we sit on the cusp of Autumn and Winter, the holiday known as Samhain, Halloween. It is the time of the last harvest, when the life force begins to turn downward, into the earth, while life on the surface dies off. The veils between the living and dying become thin. Death is on our doorsteps, like it or not.

It is a time in many cultures to remember and honor our ancestors and those who now reside in the land of the dead. It is where the rituals of Halloween and Day of the Dead originate.

In this particular season of Samhain, as the days get shorter and the sun moves into the sign of Scorpio, we experience two eclipses, supercharging the energetics of the season.

The intensity has increased. War has broken out on another front, a war that stretches back through centuries, one that is felt in the bones of many, all around the world. There is more death and dying around us these days than many of those now alive have ever experienced. We have the ramifications of the pandemic at play as well. Random deaths of young, healthy people not expected to die, but who received an untested injection with numerous side effects.

Death is rearing its head and demands to be heard. At this time. In this place.

As Marcus Aurelius said, “Death smiles at us all, all a man can do is smile back.”

It is the season of Death, after all. The season of letting go, of clearing the decks, of lightening our load, just as the trees drop their leaves. This is a passive action, a surrendering. Where we are headed, into the caves of the earth, below the frozen ground, we do not need all of the old baggage.

If we are given the opportunity and blessing to care for a beloved animal or human who is preparing for their journey into the Bardo, we will come to a place when there is nothing left for us to do but surrender. The doing part of the journey is over and we enter the time of being, being fully present, sitting within another one’s presence, holding vigil.

In this stage, from outer appearances, it seems as though very little is going on. But energetically, so much is happening. For those sensitive enough to feel, and even those who are not, the atmosphere around the dying one changes. The light shifts, and time dissolves. Night becomes day and day becomes night. The veils become thin. The gates between matter and spirit open. Spirit is felt and sometimes even seen and heard.

And here, being present is all that matters.

As we head into winter, we bury our dead, honor our ancestors, and crawl into our own graves, our winter caves, to finish processing and composting the old, into nourishment for what is to come.

We need quiet, empty space to grieve, to shed the tears that will eventually water the seed. We need quiet, empty space to sink into and to enter the dreamtime. To gather the dreams of a new world and allow them to coalesce into the seed that will germinate come spring.

Honoring Death and making room for it at the table allows us to realize just how precious life is.

As Jimi Hendrix said, “I’m the one that’s got to die when it’s time for me to die, so let me live my life the way I want to.”