Death. Having just written about the passing of my beloved Travis, I can’t get my mind off of death. Well, okay, I can, but I don’t want to. So there.

And so, fellow pilgrim, you’ve really gotten into me today. And so, once again, I write in response to you… and to one you wrote in response to… I’m assuming your post was a response to this post.

Which brings us back to death. I’ve been relatively sheltered from the experience of late. Yes, Travis is gone, so is Savannah, and Pam. Jim & Jerry left in 1998. Fran on New Years Day this year. I guess someone I’ve at least known and cared about has died just about every year for the past five years.

I know in the years ahead there’s a lot more to come. My folks are nearing that passage, I know. Sometimes a little cloud seems to come up and hint that my passage is approaching as well, but I generally discount that thought. I don’t fear it, I just don’t trust the message.

But I’ve noticed that death is effecting me differently than it used to. It really hit home with Fran. After the rosary (my family is Catholic, even if I’m not) I stood beside her casket with Mom. Mom got misty eyed… I know she’d cried earlier in the day. She’d cried lots. My eyes misted a little too. But I looked at the body in the casket and thought “That’s not Fran.”

I saw it in Travis too, even before he died. You look at the face of the one you loved and… it’s not them. That wasn’t Fran’s face, it wasn’t Travis looking back at me in those final hours. They were the faces of the bodies that I was familiar with, but there’s more. Gosh, I can’t put my finger on it… can’t get the concept out here.

Life is a journey, I’ve written here. Or a dance. But it’s culmination here on planet Earth is not the end of the journey… nor the end of the dance.

Is there an end? I don’t know if I’ll ever know. And I’m not sure I should even care.

I do know this. That we all come, eventually, to a place where we can not go beyond in our current mode of transportation… we come to a place where the shell that has defined us is no longer capable of going on. We transition to a different place. “Abraham” calls it the Energy Stream. I call it heaven. I really am not sure there is a difference.

It shouldn’t be something that makes us sad, either at our own dying or at the passing of our loved ones and friends.

Most of us do mourn the loss of others. I know in spite of these words I’ll mourn the passing of my parents. Christianity hints pretty strongly that death should not be a time of sadness for us, but of celebration. Celebration because the one who is gone has achieved the prize, is with God. I remember during my time with the Benedictines that they celebrated the passing of a brother. They put on their whitest garments, and they sang happy songs. They may tear up, saddened, but over all rejoicing. They mourned what we all really mourn… OUR loss of the one going. They recognized it for the innate selfishness that is what mourning truly is.

Death, where is thy sting? Only we who live are stung. Those who die are not. They are set free, transitioning from this earthly reality to another reality, one that I trust is happier than this one, but different, that’s for sure.

I’m weird. I have to face that little fact. I’m weird. I believe in that which we all believe, yet spend our lives denying. I just read this blog, by my fellow pilgrim. He emailed me earlier inviting me to check out his writing… and this isn’t what he focused me towards, but this caught my attention. My fellow pilgrim “sees things”. You know. THOSE things. I’m not telling. Go read his blog and find out for yourself. My first thought was a really more of a physical reaction. I rolled my eyes. But I shouldn’t have. ‘Cause I’ve seen that, too. Been there, done that, now I want the shirt.

So, pilgrim, I’ll share my tale… or is that tail… you decide.

In 1998, my partner and I adopted Travis, a 6 week old White German Shepherd Dog pup, and his sister, Savannah. These two quickly earned the mutual applause “Monster”, devouring in short order a full 5 piece sectional and it’s successor sofa, not to mention numerous other otherwise inedible substances. This isn’t about their shenanigans, though. When Travis was 1 1/2 years old, he began having epileptic seizures. His seizures almost always occurred at night, and I’d awake at the first sound, and sit with him through the night… In those wee hours I learned so much about my own humanity. I became comfortable holding his rigid form, cleaning up his vomit, his excrement… I didn’t mind being soaked in his urine. I knew his thoughts, and in time he came to know mine. My life, our life, became rooted in Travis’s patterns of seizure activity.

I know more than once I called him back from that other place, that place that seemed to call him inexorably to it. He returned the favor once. We had taken him with us on a road trip to Kentucky, and one night in the hotel “something” happened, I don’t know what, but it seemed I severely pulled, in my sleep, several muscles around my chest and rib cage. I never felt it, but at some point that night, I began to have trouble breathing.

Laying on my side, my breathing stopped. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t breath, I couldn’t do anything to rectify the situation. I lay there, silently panicking. Travis came to me, and pushed me over onto my back and that kick started my breathing again. This happened two more times that night before I finally decided to wake up Scott.

One year ago this coming Thursday, Travis could no longer battle the “monster” as we came to call his epilepsy. One year ago today, he had a horrible episode of seizures. I had to hospitalize him. His living body came home the next day (a year ago tomorrow) but that which was Travis was not in that living body. The following day, Scott and I held our little boy as we eased him on his path to that other place that had called him for so long, so relentlessly. We both knew he joined Savannah there, and Pam.

Twenty four hours after he passed, Scott and I joined my family for a week in Mexico. I didn’t want to go, but couldn’t back out. That first night in Puerto Vallarta, well actually early the next morning, I woke before 4 a.m. At first, I thought I heard his body flailing in the throes of a seizure, and when I realized he was gone, I wept silently. O Travis, my beautiful boy, I miss you so, I thought.

It was then I felt his nose on my elbow, and turning my head saw him briefly. Then he was gone. This happened every morning I was in Mexico, awaking feeling depressed, then his cold wet nose and a glimpse before disappearing. On our last morning there, I slept a little later than I had been, and I awoke feeling relatively happy. As I crawled out of bed quietly so as not to awaken Scott, I saw him. He sat quietly looking at me, his tongue hanging out, that expression of happiness and bright intelligence on his beautifully radiant face. He thrust his nose at me then walked to the door to the balcony (we were on the 6th floor) and looked back at me. I opened the door for him and he walked out, and just kept walking until he disappeared from sight.

I didn’t think about it much. Until last night, when I had that vague sense of a shadow in the room, and Nikki stirred and started wagging her tail. Then it was gone, and instead of making me get up, Nikki just rolled over and went back to sleep.

Yes, sweetie. I know. You’re so much happier there!

So, yes, pilgrim, the reality is I DO believe you saw and experienced what you wrote about.