I picked up my beloved Jazzy’s ashes from the vet last week. 
I was dreading doing this. It wasn’t easy. But once the beautiful, little carved wooden box was sitting on the seat beside me I felt a little better. I guess it was an element of closure.
I sat on the river bank that evening, listening to the roar of the river over the rapids far below, and experiencing the forest all around me. Carpets of spring flowers and long green grasses grew exuberantly beneath the trees. Pines and Aspens spilled down the walls of the canyon. Everywhere I looked I could see Life, I could feel the growth, the aliveness, the quiet ecstasy of nature doing her thing. Peace pervaded all my senses; the vitality and exhilaration of life in motion, especially in the roaring river. And in the middle of it all was dead and decaying matter: trees fallen, plant life from last year’s growth mulching this year’s growth, life and death co-existing in perfect harmony.
Resisting Change
We resist change. We want loved beings to live on forever. And they don’t. They too become the mulch for new growth if we are able to accept both their birth and death in our minds and hearts and allow the lessons from their lives to bloom.
Jazzy was a little being of pure, unconditional love. Now it is my turn to show, first of all, that same unconditional love to myself, to give compassion, forgiveness and kindness to me as I heal my heart. Then to open my heart to others by accepting them completely and totally as they are, with compassion, forgiveness and kindness.
The Greatest Gift of All
True acceptance of a human being includes the ability to see personality strengths and flaws and to recognize them as just that – personality strengths and flaws. True acceptance is the ability to see, hear and feel beyond the personality into the depths of the soul, both in the self and in another. It is one of the greatest gifts we can give.
Such is my mission from the gift of my Jazzy’s life.
