Enter the wild with care my love

Samwise the Brave, February 2011 ~ October 5, 2024

Our sweet Samwise the Brave left his body yesterday, October 5, at 4:20 in the afternoon. I was with him, and I am so grateful for that. I held his sweet, pink paw in one hand and let my other hand rest softly over his heart. He took a few widely-spaced and very deep breaths, and then I felt his heartbeat slowly fade away. No more breath, all spirit gone from his body and into the air surrounding me and his brother and sister. He left on his own terms and in his own time, and while it was excruciating for us humans to witness over the past couple of weeks, he was never deterred. He wanted to live. He gave it his all until the very last breath.

So many times I asked myself if I should call and have him euthanised at home. I have done so for other cats and have had one fairly harrowing experience. I knew I didn’t want him to experience what my cat Simba experienced, but I also didn’t want him to suffer, and I knew that if he were suffering we would know. The thing is, he never gave up his will to live. He ate, even if very little. He got up to drink water (and play in the water bowl, a lifelong hobby) and use his little box several times a day. He snuggled with his siblings and with us. Otherwise he found cosy places to sleep peacefully, sometimes right near us, other times off on his own. Samwise loved life, and he was not ready to leave it behind. I honoured that, took great care to ensure his comfort and his fastidious habits of cleanliness, and I promised him I would see him through. When his spirit did leave, I felt a great relief for him, that he was ready, onward to the next great adventure, whatever that may be.

Where is it that our spirit goes when it leaves our worn out body? I cannot possibly know. I just hope he got to go someplace as beautiful, gentle and peaceful as he was. I have been witness to death many times now, human and animal alike, and each time I am in awe and feel a little more certain that our bodies are nothing more than a vessel for our our souls and spirits. But where is it that our spirit goes? Is our soul different than our spirit? I have looked to the great religions and find the dictates full of holes and often a sense of the fantastical, and it leaves me with far too many feelings of dissonance. I want to suspend my rational mind and believe, but somehow I just can’t cross that chasm and find my way there.

I have also looked to the great philosophers. Plato presents the soul as immortal and separate from the body. It exists before birth and continues on after death, which he saw as simply a release of the soul from the body that allows it to return to a higher plane of existence. Aristotle was almost the opposite, seeing the soul as the essence of a living being that animates the body but didn’t seem to think it was immortal. When the body dies, the soul also ceases to function. Descartes placed the mind and the soul as the foundation of existence, but separate from it, and the soul was more the essence or spirit and the mind was the center of consciousness and intellect. Sartre, an existentialist, denied the existence of a soul and argued that humans must create meaning in their lifetime as there is no soul or afterlife to bring any other purpose to our lives. Death is a final state of nothingness. I suppose I am not an existentialist, as I just don’t feel like death is the end.

There are countless other philosophical perspectives and I suppose I personally resonate most with Plato, but truly have no official belief about it, because… how can I really know? I cannot. I have tremendous faith in goodness and in truth and beauty and in life itself, but anything beyond that, to me, is pure mystery. Kierkegaard suggested that certain topics like the meaning of life, death and the soul are beyond human comprehension and that the concept of faith was a leap into the unknown. I think I am okay with that. I accept many things that I think about as profound mystery. Einstein once said, “The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and science.” Maybe the mysteries are not so much problems to be solved, but an essential part of experiencing life’s depths, joys and sufferings with wonder and awe.

As painful as it was for Rick and I to watch Sammie find his way into death, I think there is a lesson there for me about the importance of not becoming rigid in my beliefs or having expectations about these mysteries. It reminds me to stay open and curious, more fluid in my understanding and experience and that everything does not have to be explained or defined. It reminds me to embrace the dualities as one continuous, luminous thread and that we can be in many points along the way of that thread, even at the same time. It reminds me to acknowledge gratitude for the entire spectrum of this one life we are so privileged to have. Today I acknowledge my deep sadness for the loss of my dear companion, and my immense joy remembering all the moments we shared. How lucky a human is if they have the privilege of sharing their life with an animal.

This is just my off the cuff ramblings on a day where writing seemed like an impossible task, but I sat down and began and have arrived here. I am not going to edit except for typos. I am sure that by next week I’ll have a bit more to say that is usual. Sending love to all. Thank you for being here.