Prince Update ~ 6 January 2014: “Face reality”

My Prince’s Gift: “Face reality.”

I wasn’t ready to write more on “Face reality” last night. I could give myself a hard time about it; or I could just accept it. Some of it’s because I suspect I’m going to cry; and I haven’t done much of that in weeks and weeks. Frankly, I’ve spent a lot of time crying up until this past Thanksgiving Day, starting in early November 2011 when I got Shingles which lasted for three months.

Then, my spiritual growth went into overdrive. Everything had finally started to settle in when Tuna was diagnosed with a form of COPD/CHF in February, and was gone weeks later 19 April. He was only fourteen, and had been in near perfect health his entire life. Then Tiffany, his mother, went 5 July, at the age of seventeen. For months, with both of those and with Blaze, home had been a bit of a hospice scenario.

Blessedly, I have on top of all this, I triggered the only flare of this nature I’ve had with the auto-immune disease (www.SolveCFS.org) I’ve had since first diagnosed in 1990. When this message came up yesterday of “Face reality”, I wanted to have it read, “Face reality head-on”. Yet I realized, it doesn’t really matter how we face reality.

What’s important is that we face it … head-on, or sideways, or backwards, or like we’re sliding into home base, or lightly such as a dragonfly gliding on the warm California winds.

The reality for me is that Prince is going to die. He’s going to transition from his physical body sooner than I ever thought. He’s going to die of something I never conceived of. I often had fears about his back going out as he has a few weaknesses he came into rescue with.

This wonderful, amazing trusting boy who has taught me so much of life isn’t going to be my companion in life for many more years to come. ~the tears start, especially as I’m listening to the playlist of music I put together when Prince’s diagnosis of “stomach cancer” was confirmed.

When he first came into rescue with “Senior Wiener”, it wasn’t known Prince had a behavioral issue, “biting”. He didn’t bite lightly either; and it seemed mostly targeted towards women. I worked with him for months, or maybe it was a year or longer. Well, maybe it’s that Prince worked with me. He taught me to really “listen” to him, to respect the boundaries he put up. If I didn’t, the consequences were usually immediate, and heart-rending.

I would be bit. Then, I’d see the look on Prince’s face and feel his fear. 

It was clear that he didn’t mean it. I’ve often explained his biting to neighbors and visitors as an automatic reaction comparable to how a friend’s autistic son would start to scream when he got on overwhelm. Prince learned, over time, how to manage this for himself more and more; yet sometimes it would take over.

Some of the realities about Prince’s treatment is that he needs a muzzle to be seen by the vet and to be near most people. Hence, I can’t make him do any treatment he doesn’t want. Since mid-November, I’ve been bit 6-8 times which is more than I’ve been bit in at least three years combined. Currently, I can’t type very well as my index finger which got bit last night is infected. I’ve been soaking it on and off all day, which seems to be helping.

I could care less about the biting. I hate hate hate seeing my boy start to waste away. He’s always been so full of life. He LOVED becoming part of a family. He’s always been so eager to please. It’s why it was relatively easy to help him move out of his fear in life to become the loving, vivacious, energetic boy he’s been.

The joy and love emanating from him when he saw that he what he did pleased me, was tangible. Prince is laying above the comforter under the blankets, ON my feet. Lately he has to be touching me, almost every chance he can. Maybe he’s picking up I need that. Tuna went so fast, then Tiffany, and I was quite ill myself, I missed my chance to soak up every moment I can.

In the meantime, I am not the only one going through something painful. Across the world, many are in pain over some loss, or impending loss. My friend Laura Bradshaw (now Roggendorf) at Healing HEART Sanctuary has lost 6 or so animals in a year. Senior Wiener has lost a number in the past year, and he now has two who have cancer in addition to losing Prince, through me.

I have friends who are going through huge internal changes, and are having to lose who they used to be in order to move forward in life. A friend here who lost his love when she went to sleep at a friend’s house one night, and died in her sleep, in her 40s.

What Prince is giving me as a gift is life experience in holding the space of “both/and”. We usually live in duality of “either/or”. I’m sad he’s leaving, so I must be sad. My REALITY, or our REALITY .. Prince’s and mine, is that I am sad he will be leaving me AND I am loving and enjoying and savoring every emotion, every experience we are going through together.

He’s teaching me more about .. just living life .. as it comes. I am a lucky lucky woman and mother, in that regard. Thank God both Senior Wiener and as a result, Prince came into my life. It’s much been richer as a result. <3 <3