in gratitude & love

heirlooms

Precursors

Just over a year ago, we said our final goodbyes to my most loyal companion of 13 years. He had been accumulating masses all around his body for some time by this point and it was clear that he was growing exceedingly uncomfortable. Though we had removed some when he was several years younger, it felt appropriate to spare him the stress of surgery unless it became crucial. At some point, and it’s really difficult to pinpoint when, signs of discomfort graduated to signs of pain. Making the decision to end the life of a beloved being feels like an impossible decision… until it doesn’t. I will always remember Dr. Andrea's gentleness in helping me make the decision, & the support of those who helped me see it through.  

Dreyfus was as stoic as they come- he was one of those beasts that wasn’t going to let go easily. He felt a great sense of responsibility for taking care of me for damn near his entire life. Perhaps not at the very beginning, when he first came home with me as a sort of surrogate child. But over time, he grew into my very own wise old Gandalf. Being of German Shepherd and Old English Sheepdog blood, it was in his nature to watch over his flock. I think even up to the moment the needle penetrated his skin, he believed he was there with me to keep me safe.

I remember vividly the moment his soul left his body - I could feel it in his fur. It is hard to describe, but there was an awareness at the time as I stroked his paw “I am petting Dreyfus.” This awareness shifted quite abruptly to the sensation of petting an inanimate object, like a stuffed animal or a fur coat. I could not feel him in his fur anymore. Just after taking note of this experience, the darling humans who were helping facilitate the end of his suffering confirmed: “he is gone.” What I really remember most solidly is the feeling of Karen's hand pressed against my back. 

We usually frame the limited lifespans of our animal companions as a wretched thing but really, what a breathtaking gift and honor it is to be able to see a creature through all stages of their life- to hold him at 4 days old and then again in old age as he took his final breath. To be a steward of the precious lives of animals.

Dreyfus / after Anne Brigman

The previous year, almost to the day of Dreyfus’ passing, Chorizo had become so mysteriously ill that one of our vets thought he may have had an aggressive cancer and might not make it through the weekend. He sent us home with medication for a lung infection “just in case.” When we arrived home that night, I brought Chorizo and Dreyfus down to the edge of the lake where we wrapped up beneath the stars in our favorite comforter. I let Chorizo know that if it was indeed his time, I would let him go. Neither of us was ready and he managed to make a full recovery with treatment for the lung infection. The experience of facing the possibility of losing him so suddenly jolted part of my consciousness out of a sweet slumber it had been lulled into under the false sense that there is any certainty in this life.

gratitude on 120

I believe these recurrent thematic conflicts are meant to prepare us for whatever is coming next. It did not surprise me when Dreyfus’s time came almost exactly a year after Chorizo got sick. It does not surprise me now that my mother passed exactly one year and one day after Dreyfus, or that my mother’s mother died in the same month five years earlier. I do not mean to center my own life circumstances in the lives and deaths of these sacred others- they are each their own centers. It is undeniable, though, that our lives are all tangled up together. Pattern recognition helps try to make sense of seemingly senseless things. It is through these experiences (and countless others) that I have come to the assertion that life is a series of cycles. Though nothing remains the same, all things return one way or another.

The sun never sets with the same configuration of clouds & colors, but it goes on around & comes back again each day.

***

reflecting & manifesting the love I always wanted

In addition to these personal obstacles I have faced over the last year, I made a pretty sudden & significant career change. Naturally, this transition has disrupted my sense of belonging as I shift in and out of known and unknown communities. Working in a different city has had a significant impact on the amount of time I spend with my innermost circle of support. Sometimes I think my identity must be suspended in the space between here & there, ambiguously strewn in the air above 385 like wisps of inconsistently formed fog. Anchorless, I could float away forever with no sense of how to get back to myself. The truth is, I am still learning the rhythms of this beautiful life I am creating and attuning how I harmonize with the lives of those whose presence I cannot imagine living without.

This is the backdrop against which I set forth with the intention to align with the rhythms of the universe and, rather than relying on convenience & proximity, become deliberate in how I foster a sense connection in my community. The Algorithm- the great they who knows us all better than we know ourselves- determined I needed a specific tool for achieving this alignment, thus populated an advertisement through social media for an astrological day planner with comprehensive information about planetary movements, aspects, moon phases & special lunar events (is this post-late-stage-capitalism? End-stage? Are the legs of this society mottling? will we live long enough to find out?)

*A note to my readers: I am terribly sorry about the content & structure of that last sentence (and much of the material to come).

The information in the planner goes well beyond my scope of understanding and is, admittedly, a bit “woo woo”, but name for me a system that dictates our lives that isn’t a little silly and played like a game? As far as I am concerned, it is none of my business whether the impact of these celestial events on our everyday life is legitimate. Nor is it my business if a tarot spread truly reveals anything about a person’s fortune. I play the game because it is a fun & insightful way to discover things about oneself and the world around us, even if that discovery is in opposition to what the stars or the cards are telling us. Consider it another framework for connection, goal setting, shifting perspectives, & reflecting in gratitude.

The planner offers a structured timeline based on the phases of the moon for manifesting desires through dreaming / seed planting, conceptualizing & focusing on details, taking action, refining, reflecting & letting go. Incorporating this study into my existing spiritual practice (meditation, yoga, and daily gratitude journaling), I called together a couple of my dearest friends and spent the first New Moon of the year together writing our intentions for the next moon cycle and reading each other’s fortunes.

My intention for the first new moon of the year reads:

“Draw in the love I desire by reflecting the light of others (as the moon does the sun)”

At this point, or perhaps at some point earlier in the writing, you may be wondering to yourself “what in the actual shit is she on about right now?” It’s okay, I totally get that. But, if you are still here, I promise to bring it all together. I do not guarantee that it will make sense, but there will most certainly be intrigue.

The night of the next Full Moon (a time for reflecting and letting go) fell on my mother’s second night in the hospital after her stroke. To be clear, I wasn’t exactly locked into “astrological planning” during this time. It has been through processing the ordeal that I have been able to notice certain connections. What happened to my family during my mother’s slow transition into the Great Beyond was actually quite astonishing. Everyone showed up and took care of each other in ways that we never have before. Our interactions with our mother were tender and loving, unburdened by anger or shame or guilt or any of the mess we humans cover ourselves in to cope with the pains of life.

In a manner more profound than I could have dreamt of, the love I had set out to draw in on the first New Moon of the year had settled all around and within me.

In the astrological day planner, there is a mantra associated with each new & full moon. For the second New Moon of the year, the mantra reads as follows: “I heal the depths of my unconscious mind with compassion.” It was on the day of this second full moon that we laid my mother to rest.

***

Flowers, Words, & Being Held:

expressions of love

It struck me during the funeral just how much we rush to fill in the empty spaces left by the death of our loved ones. Faces of people I love dearly, faces of people I hadn’t seen in decades, and faces yet-to-be-known to me all filled the room where my mother’s body lay. As overwhelming as it is to be greeted and embraced by so many people under this circumstance, it was a moving display of the love that our community has for my mother, my father, my siblings, their children, our cousins and close friends- the love we all have for each other. It was stranger than the strangest dream to see my third-grade social studies teacher, my first boyfriend, my college professors, people from every era of my life & the lives of my siblings & the life of my mother all commiserating in the same place. To be held by people I had forgotten I knew, or never even knew at all.

And the flowers!

I had volunteered to take care of the casket spray and intended to consult with friends that would be good at that sort of thing, but I had never quite gotten around to it. When the time came the morning of the funeral for me to follow through on my word, I just couldn’t do it. Showered, fully dressed, engine running and seatbelt strapped across my chest, I couldn’t make myself go (and besides that, I had no idea where the hell I was going). There in the driveway, I allowed myself to let go of any sense of responsibility that I needed to be doing something. It was a liberating moment that resulted in a return to comfort and a gentler easing into the day. This shift allowed me to engage in grounding practices that made it possible for me to saddle the fuck up and do the damn day.

About an hour and a half after I had abandoned my car for the softness of my living room, a stranger approached the front door with a pristine assortment of lilies, roses, carnations, ferns, dianthus, and blazing stars. “A delivery for Haley Floyd,” My brain could not comprehend what was happening, but I couldn’t make words come out of my mouth to respond. He could see my confusion and offered me this token of wisdom as he hurried back to his Flowers by D&L of 96 van: “There's a note on the card!”

What I am describing is probably a very normal & even expected occurrence for most people, but we didn't really grow up like that and I have never before experienced the death of a person so near to me. There haven't been many opportunities for my friends show up like this like this, not to mention, who deliver's anything out to Chappells except for, like, natural gas and mail?

Like magic, the arrangement was sent by the friends I had intended to reach out to in the first place. It was one of those simple gestures that had a profound impact on one of the most difficult days of my life, and I almost missed it. This is the floral arrangement that was later nestled in my mother’s saddle atop her casket during the service.

In the deluge of difficulties that have come to define my mother’s death, the full force of grief struck hardest the first time I went back to her house after she had been carried out to the ambulance. Anticipating the pain of seeing the empty space on the couch where my mother should have been, I was completely blindsided by the impact of seeing the confusion on the faces of her dogs. She had been in the hospital for days by this point and was still coherent- so even though we hadn't lost her yet, they had.

space between

My sister, Jennifer, had graciously volunteered to keep the dogs to help ease the burden on the rest of the family while my mother was hospitalized and I agreed to help facilitate the pickup. To fully grasp the generosity and irony of this situation, you must understand that Jennifer, someone with the very personality of a cat, has a complicated and somewhat traumatic history with dogs.  When I was a kid, she took one of our Shelties to live with her (I guess we had a few extras and she really liked how much he resembled her childhood hero, Alf). She thought they had a good thing going, but one day shortly after his arrival, he just took off from her yard and never looked back.

Standing in the kitchen working a large crusty bin of dog food with no lid into a 30 gallon contractor bag, I remarked between exasperated sighs, “you could have just done a meal train.” Despite the overwhelm of the moment, it was truly such a relief that the dogs were going to be with her family, especially her two little girls who are so wonderful with animals. The updates each day have been heartwarming- photos of Jack in his little diaper and Peanut snuggling with the girls at bedtime.

Though we are adjusting to a strange loss on ground that just seems to keep shifting, the generosity, compassion & understanding we have been met with has helped build a gentle & safe space for us to land.

In gratitude & love.

P.S.

Before I've had time to process one thing, another thing is already unraveling. It feels like walking on ground where the plates beneath the surface are constantly shifting in unpredictable ways and it doesn't matter how much efforting and calculating you do to properly land your next footfall, the ground you swore you saw a split second ago isn't there anymore.

Yesterday afternoon, I received this text from a dear old friend out of nowhere:

"spoiler alert; once you think you're close, a huge perspective change happens leaving you further away than before 😉"

I responded only with swear words, and she went on:

"plot twist; you don't mind though because now you have new perspective and insights."

"life's a dandy dance.."

Yesterday morning, my mother's horse wouldn't get up. The friend who had reached out is the very first horse girl I have ever known and also the person who pierced my ears with one of their new horse needles. We are talking about a Parent Trap style operation but instead of using an apple for backing, we used a lemon..??!?!??! Not a good idea, but look at us now.

"How lucky we are to experience all of the human condition. i could take this one step further and say since we're both a part of the universe and we both have the infinite inside of us we are practically the same person."

Onward.