I am waking up at 6am these days. 0600.

For a guy who has an average wake up time of about 0800, this is a big shift. I have worked west-coast hours my entire adult life. It is a coping mechanism for the oppressive traffic patterns that come with living in the DC Metro area. To my body, it first felt like waking up at 0300. Now it's the new normal.

Lights Out at Sunset

Starting last week, Liz and I are trying something new. We are shutting down all of the lights and screens in the house shortly after sunset. No artificial lights if we can help it.

This usually happens around 2045 or so. The house is pretty dark by then. We light a couple candles, sit and talk. And then we go and brush and floss by candlelight in the bathroom and then we lie down in bed and talk for a bit before we get tired.

It used to be that I would get tired and go brush and floss and get ready for bed. I would read for a good while before falling asleep.

Now, when the sun has set we turn the lights out as well. There is no reading myself to sleep. At first I missed it. But I find that I feel tired and fall asleep after lying there for a bit. And the book is always there waiting for me in the morning.

I have to plan to get my reading done during the daylight hours now. Often this is in the morning before work and just a bit after dinner before lights out. It's a bit of a guilty pleasure reading fiction early in the morning but it makes for an unrushed feeling about each day.

Mornings At Sunrise

Waking up early hasn't made me efficient. I imagine that I will be able to squeeze in all the things most mornings: Coffee and breakfast. Exercise. Reading. Writing. Music.

In practice, the exercise, writing, and music don't always happen on a daily basis. Some mornings I spend too much time reading the streams of the BookFace. I can pretty much tell you that I always have to drop one of my morning activities because I run out of time.

I used to work 1000 to 1900... but dinner is pretty close to lights out if I get home at 1930, so I intend to start and end work earlier. This will also cut into morning time somewhat. Maybe I will get more efficient over time.

Weekends are especially challenging. It's hard to tear away from the party... hard to get home early enough from evening visits with friends and family to do our shutdown right around sunset. So we pushed into the night a little bit. We will have to find a way to adapt. Maybe by flexing our own rules, maybe by being disciplined about leaving on time.

Changing The Flow

Overall, this has the feel of an experiment to play with the flow of life. In our culture we celebrate being busy and efficient as if it's a good thing without qualification. Sometimes it is good. For instance, if you are holding depression at bay. Slow meandering action is better than no action in this case.

I tend to struggle with something other than depression: the feeling that I don't have enough time for everything I want to learn. I struggle with wondering whether all of the busy I inflict upon myself will add up to contribution and achievement which matters to me in the longest of runs.

Now that the night enforces a routine of rest and quiet upon me, I feel like I have just a bit more mental space. Nothing to read. No devices. Just my own thoughts and talking with Liz while we snuggle.

Last night, we got to talking about work and Liz could tell it was a topic that was going to make it harder for me to sleep. We decided to drop the topic and she stroked my back gently to help settle my mind until she fell asleep. That was really, really nice.

I suspect this sort of practice would break just about any couple out of a rut of feeling like they don't talk to one another enough.

Photo Credit: "Sunset" by Sunny_mjx from Flickr

On Friday evening, I got home from a short road trip to New York and Liz needed to talk about Canobeans, her 20-year old cat. Canobeans had pretty much stopped eating, was getting dehydrated, and was having trouble with using the litter box. We made the decision to schedule with Lap of Love to have her euthanized because her health was accelerating downhill.

Saturday wasn't a blur for me but it still went much too quickly. The Vet from Lap of Love was scheduled for 1pm. I doted on Canobeans with nearly every free moment before 1pm taking breaks here and there. I brushed her. I talked to her. I fed her water. I told her how much we loved her and what a gift she was to us.

I didn't say goodbye. It's just too hard and too sad. I'd fall to pieces. Maybe that would have been appropriate.

What Do You Do In the Final Moments?

What the heck can you do you make final moments in life feel like they are enough? I'm not sure that it can be achieved.

In the final moments, when you are trying your best to say and show the depth of your love and loss, nearly everything you do is symbolic. Everything you do feels totally futile. Your gestures can never make up for the fact that there will never again on this earth be what we had together. It's like trying to pay a sort of life-debt that can never be repaid.

But you do it anyway. You stop assessing and stay in the moment. You laugh when you can. You remember to breathe when your body forgets to do it for you.

While Canobeans was still alive, I focused on doing things she enjoyed so that she could know that we loved her.

Now that she is gone, it helps for me to do small gestures to express my gratitude for how much richer my life was because I had this other being to care for and to enjoy.

A Shrine as A Focus

Liz and I setup this shrine. It started with just flowers... an impulse buy at the store. And we put them in a vase in the bedroom, where Canobeans spent the last year. I added candles, and a cat toy. Liz put her paw print mold next to everything. And then we picked some photos to print and stuck them in frames. And we arranged it all on a very small table.

We light candles when they go out. They are wonderful to look at, day or night. A small fire that requires some care to keep it burning from time to time. This is good catharsis for us. Candle light is a wonderful focus for just sitting and being. For just accepting that what is, is.

A struggle that is particular to me in grieving is that the feeling of the person/cat I just lost slips away from me. It's not that I want to hold on and never let go. But I don't want to just "get on with my life" either. I want to keep a space for pondering and remembering. This is a good time for soul-searching and thinking about life. I am not looking to rush it along.

The ritual of keeping the candles going and pausing at this little shrine helps me to remember. It gives me a bit of space in my very-busy head. I think it's because I would have to do all of this remembering in my head if we didn't have the shrine but now that we have set it up it makes it easier for us because we don't have to keep it all in our heads and hearts. We can look upon our love and loss from the outside rather than only gazing inward.

In The Aftermath, Soul Searching Questions Abound

Getting space in my head is crucial right now also because another struggle I face are the manifold questions that arise in the aftermath of putting a pet to rest. Soul-searching questions are inevitable. Try as I might to trust our decisions, I find that I revisit the questions again and again and I have to justify that what I did was the right choice. All of the reasons are there, but getting to an alignment between feeling and reason isn't something I can force. It takes time. I have to trust that too.

I find myself thinking about everything that matters just before death and the things that matter in the aftermath. All that matters is that there was love. And all love is unique and beautiful and fleeting. Sometimes love is just brushing hair or fur. Sometimes love is cleaning poop off of something that shouldn't have poop on it. For certain, love is missing something/someone you are used to interacting with daily.

I find myself pondering eternity. The great unponderable. A sensation of being human is that our existence feels continuous and eternal: All I know is that I have always been and it feels like I shall always be. It is alien to imagine that I will not exist some day. I don't believe in an afterlife but sometimes it's a "pretty little lie". Either way there is good news: Either I am wrong and will continue on, or I am right that I will no longer exist and I probably won't know it anyway.

If I'm wrong I hope I get to see Canobeans and all of my loved ones again some day.

Blog: Ideas and Living