Eulogy for Moonlight, entered our family Easter 2010 and “appeared” to have left us 1/10/18 11:11p.m.
I understand why people who have “lost” a loved one wish to immortalize the person or being. Feeling the desire to build a Taj Mahal for my beloved sister Moonlight. She came to us about 6 months after I had begun my deepest descent into the underworld of the egoic thought system, the false beliefs surrounding my deepest fear of being unloved unless someone outside loved me. I had to face being alone after 28 straight years in two relationships. I actually said no to getting her but thankfully and miraculously, my objections were overridden. She was ostensibly my daughter’s yet because I was often alone with her, my relationship moved from cautious acceptance to full-blown connection. Yet it is only a few years ago that I realized what an important role she played in my life. I realized how she was such a presence in my life that it mitigated the terrible sense of forlorn aloneness garnered by living by myself part of each week for the first time in almost three decades. Living in a very isolating rural area and all while facing my deepest demon of unloved made it more intense yet ultimately proved to be my salvation. Taking care of her and the feral cat we also care for was an antidote for my feelings of abandonment and unloved. Over time I realized that connecting to her, feeling her in the house was such a comfort. She became a powerful ally. I find it beyond coincidence she chose to pass before this 1/11 portal as I have the strong sense she is a harbinger of a great change in my life and our lives.
Her tenderness, innocence, faithfulness, gentleness soothed me through the most difficult time of my life. I see how divinely I was provided for, even against my own preferences as I hated the thought of leaving a pet alone during our extend absence every other year to Europe to visit relatives. I began to care for her ever more deeply. Yet now she is gone I see guilt would like to punish me for not paying more attention, for not realizing she was in serious decline until late in the game, for not taking extra care by being in denial about her decline.
Perhaps her greatest gift to me was seeing her as totally innocence. I became conscious of that view of her several months ago when she was diagnosed with arthritis. We did not even know she was old for a rabbit! It felt cruel to believe someone so innocent could suffer. I used my intent to access healing for her of that and it did seem to go away. I was so busy celebrating that I failed to see how she was declining in other ways. I thus made some unskillful choices about still having her go outside when she clearly wanted to come back in. I watch how guilt wants to drag me down. Yet one of her greatest gifts to me was how through seeing her innocence, I claim my own. In her name and mine, I refuse to believe the guilt, rather I let it be the old false way of reacting passing away as a ghost image. Synchronistically, I read in ACOL last night as I could not sleep about how these mirages will continue to form as they pass finally away from us. I bow to Moonlight and will be eternally grateful to her for assuming that role of helping me see and claim my innocence.
I am so proud of my daughter for holding vigil with her, inches away for 7 hours straight without moving unless necessary, not even for food. I know Moonlight served our family even though her death as many realizations and healing opportunities are piling in. She was such a sweet girl and it makes me dedicate myself even more fully, in her name, to seeing the innocence of all. Someone congratulated me yesterday for my ability to see an important political figure with compassion. It comes with increasing ease, partially thanks to Moonlight. I dedicate myself to the return of innocence for us as a species and any role I may play in that. I see how hard it is to say good-bye so I am now even more motivated to learn Nouk Sanchez’s message that there is no death. I can barely grok what that means but I know this. ACIM says that until we can witness our baby pass away in her sleep and view it with wonder, we are not done. I used to find that thought cruel. Only now am I able to glimpse the deeper meaning, the knowing of unity that would have us rest in the assurance we can never be parted from loved ones because we and they are both eternal and forever joined. May Moonlight’s passing continues to propel me to this knowing. May she be blessed, wherever she is now. May our tears be the nutrients to the soil of awakening. May this current feeling of being separated from her be the fuel motivating me to hurry toward the absolute knowledge of our inherent unity.
