This has been a fairly tough year: my partner has been dealing - successfully - with a major cancer. I've helped care for people close to me with cancer since the late 80s, but this experience has been the toughest, probably because this was the person closest to me.
I've had to keep working as well, of course, and my manager at work has been brilliant (in fact, I've decided he is the best manager I have ever worked for: he used to be on a par with the one who gave me a 30% pay rise [discrimination is a bitch], but his consistent support and skill at getting and directing work have moved him ahead on my personal "league ladder of managers" [my company is also improving, but work remains a challenge for a range of personal and professional reasons]), but it has been difficult.
At the start of this week however, her diagnosis of "morphological" (pencilled in) remission was officially confirmed, and we took a breath of relief, and I have some long service leave coming up . . . but the decision has had to be made for the family dog (Seb) to be put down.
He's had a long, happy life (I've commented just recently how he stands happily in our back yard, proudly waving his tail, and clearly thinking "there isn't a part of this yard that I haven't done my business in" :) ), but his health has been in decline for some time now. My partner's other partner thinks Seb had a stroke a while ago, and we agree. Seb has to be carried (and he is a big dog), but he has still been happy until now.
There is a service who will do the euthanising at home, and then cremate the pet and return the ashes: we've used this for other pets (although I've been too stressed to do that for my cats in the past [our last cat will be cremated, but I hope that is not for many years]), and the day has been set.
So, the week started well, although my partner has a long way to go in terms of recovery, but is ending on a down note.
I've been a little surprised that one of our other cats, who has often come back when one of our pets is close to passing, hasn't come back this time, but perhaps that is because we got Seb for my partner's daughter, as a companion animal (before the term had come into vogue), so maybe Luna hasn't connected.
Our last cat, incidentally, always knows when I'm going through a rough spot, but cats usually do. (I like cats because the relationship with them is deep, nuanced, and not blind adulation - it is more like relating to another person, rather than having a slave.)
This has all been written as a prelude to a brief note about one of the books that is helping me right now: Whitley Strieber's "Afterlife Revolution", which is about the communication he established with his wife after she passed. Interestingly, they had agreed the communication would be through friends.
Quite apart from the proof of survival aspects, this book -and I'm only about one third of the way through it - is helping me reconnect with my soul, and THAT is the strength in it, for me, after a rough six years reached a new low this year. At other times in my life, the book may not have impacted me as forcefully, but I have been well guided.
On guidance, something I have noticed is that my adoptive father has been around more in recent years. I used to find my best guidance came from people who weren't relatives from this life, and I consider people who limit the guidance to only people they have known in this life are making a massive and very grave error, but it has been good to develop the friendship I had with Dad.
And now, time to go to work.
