Eclipse wandering
I feel an earthquake in my heart
I have lapsed for the first time in writing and sending these posts on a biweekly schedule. Life (and death) eclipsed my capacity for that the past couple of weeks.
I am with the ancients when it comes to eclipses. When total solar or lunar eclipses occur, I would love to hide as deep into the earth as possible, in a cave. When the life- and warmth-giving sun gets snuffed out, or when the magic portal of a full moon gets closed shut, it has tended to correspond with chapter-ending periods in my life. With challenging difficulty and loss.
Friday April 5: at about 10:20am ET, an earthquake causes my apartment building to intensely shake for a good 30 seconds, and I feel it deep in my body—and it happens right while I’m researching end-of-life providers to come to my home and euthanize my dear cat companion, Mr. B.
Saturday April 6: at about 2pm ET, I say goodbye to Mr. B for the final time, holding his frail old body in my arms as he slips away.
Monday April 8: at about 3:20pm ET, the sun here in NYC becomes about 90% eclipsed.
Tuesday April 9: at about 12pm ET, I learned that Goddard College, the beautiful and radically progressive school where I completed my masters degree almost two years ago, is closing at the end of the current spring term.
Divination and the tarot never cease to amaze me in just how obviously things show up on the table. But I am not surprised to see solar eclipses appear here. And death’s head in the Emperor’s hand. Mirroring mirroring everywhere. I’m especially drawn to how what is being held in the hand of the first figure becomes the skull in the hand of the second figure, and in the final card, the figure’s hand is held up empty.
In the weeks leading up to Mr. B’s death, I seemed to be receiving a regular teaching about control. It was showing up in my desire for conversations to have gone otherwise, in my wishing that other people had behaved differently in those conversations. And with Mr. B, who was gradually eating less and less, it showed up in my struggle with the question of “at what point does care become control?” On the one hand, trying to ensure that Mr. B was eating as much as possible felt important for keeping him healthy. And on the other, might my continual attempts to get him to eat actually be going against his own agency, his own bodily autonomy?
As I considered and became clear on my ethics around when/what situations it would be ok to euthanize him, it also became clearer to me at what point my providing him food would become force-feeding. In his final days, Mr. B was not getting enough calories or nutrition to be life-sustaining. He had gradually begun to eat only liquid treats and broth, and on his final morning, would not even eat those or drink barely any water. The only course of action to take, to keep him alive, would have been to put him through regular injections of subcutaneous fluids and/or surgically fit him with a feeding tube. Though it was incredibly painful and emotional to make the appointment with an in-home euthanasia provider, it was not difficult to know that he would not want those alternatives.
Not the daring of emperors, but the daring to let go, to cede control, to look death in the face, and let return to stardust what the universe calls back.
A short post from me at this time, as I sit here with a wooden box of Mr. B’s cremains resting in his favorite chair.
This is so moving. My heart goes out to you.