Meditation and after

 I meditate every morning. I get up, unload the dishwasher, make a cup of coffee, then meditate. I like to sit around after I meditate and just enjoy the quiet of the early morning. It really is like the calm before the storm that usually becomes my day. As I was sitting there this morning, enjoying the cool air and quiet of 5:30am on a Saturday, I started thinking how weird it is to know things are you last things. For example, we plan on this being our last house. Unless something unforeseen happens, we will both die here. I'm in my last job before I retire.  Looking at Mavy and realizing he may well be the last dog we ever own. It's kind of weird to have spent your life making plans for the future and suddenly the future is here and there aren't a whole lot of plans to be made anymore. 

It all started when I was looking at Mavy and thinking about how dogs come into our lives and really teach us something if we are open to it. Mana taught us how to be good dog parents. She was amazing. Kea taught us that bad situations can be gotten over. Nala taught us that stereotypes are meaningless. Rocco taught us that being big and dumb is okay and you are still loveable. Lola taught us to find the fun in everything. Everything is an adventure and life is generally fun. Axl showed us that love goes a long, long way in healing. Bella taught us to love everyone. No one is unlovable. Mavy has taught me to calm down. To not get excited about things and to take things slowly. It's amazing when I think back on all these dogs how much they added to our lives. I can only hope that we made their lives as rich as they made ours. 

But that led me down the road to think about endings. Mavy may well be the last dog we own as there are things we want to do that we can't do with him. We really can't board him, he gets traumatized too easily. That means that we have to take him with us wherever we go. That limits our vacations to places we can drive to. So the thought process is that we will not get another dog after he passes and instead focus on traveling to places we can't drive to. Which leads me to endings. Spending the end of our life traveling. Living in our last home. Having our last dog. It's just weird to switch your thinking around from doing better, getting ahead, moving up, to suddenly - here we are and this is it. Strange thinking.