Here is a tribute to Bailey. She is/was a very special dog who I met at least once, in Edmonton Canada. Tom Wharton is pretty special too, as is his whole family. Not only is he a writer, he is a successful one too and I bow to that a million times. He is also a practicing Buddhist in our tradition. And best of all – he rides a bike to work – sometimes in sub SUB zero temperatures! Let’s hear more from you Tom. And thanks for this.

Bailey came into our family when she was almost two years old. Her family in Airdire wasn’t able to look after her anymore, and the long-term care hospital where Sharon worked was looking for a pet therapy dog, and also for a family to keep the dog when she wasn’t visiting the hospital. So Bailey became our family dog, but she was also a working dog, heading off with Sharon every morning to spend the day visiting the patients in the hospital. She loved her work, and everyone at the hospital loved her. We used to joke that she was the only one in the house who was eager to go to work in the morning. And she’d come home completely tuckered out from being petted and played with and given lots of treats. Hard work!

Bailey was a gentle animal and loved to be with people. In her early years she was brimming with energy and couldn’t wait to get off her leash and run like the wind. She befriended everyone, and if she managed to get away from the house she would follow after people, tail wagging, expecting and usually getting lots of petting and attention. Once, not long after she came home with us, one of the kids rolled off the couch on top of her – she didn’t get angry in the slightest. The only time we ever heard her growl at us was once when she was suffering from intestinal pain. It must have taken a lot of suffering to change her placid temperament, even for a brief moment.

One time a woman was delivering flyers to our house, and Bailey dashed out the front door to say hello before I could hold onto her. The poor woman saw a dog running at her, tail wagging, and threw all her flyers in the air and ran for her life. Her husband showed up later, angrily demanding that we keep our vicious brute chained up. You missed a chance to make a friend, folks.

I met my own very good friend Bill because of Bailey. She disappeared on us one summer day and showed up on the doorstep of a house a few blocks away. Thanks to Bailey’s tag the family was able to call us, and I came to get her. That day I struck up a friendship with Bill, a friendship that has become an important part of my life. Bill and his kids loved Bailey very much, too, and were always eager to look after her when we went on vacation.

I was the one who probably spent the most time with her after she retired from pet therapy work a few years ago. I’d be at home working and she’d be in the house with me, although usually I’d forget she was there. When I got angry – at a malfunctioning computer or some problem I was having with my work – I would sometimes swear and growl, and a few moments later I’d notice that Bailey had come down to my office to sit near me, as if she knew I was unhappy and wanted to comfort me.

Bailey’s great nemesis in life was hot air balloons. She was terrified of them. Usually she could hear one coming (from the sound of the gas valve) before we could even see it, so we would be baffled when she would crawl whimpering into the basement to hide. Then someone would think to take a look outside, and sure enough, there would be a hot air balloon overhead. Maybe Cesar Milan, the dog whisperer, could have helped Bailey with that.

In the last few months of her life, Bailey developed severe arthritis, which was eventually joined with other health problems that led us to decide it was better for her that she be put to sleep rather than continue to suffer a deteriorating quality of life.

We took her to the vet, and while we waited we told her she was the best dog in the world and had brought us a lot of joy. The vet administered the needle and Bailey slipped away very quickly. Her death was as quiet and unassuming as she herself had always been. And I was really struck by a truth at that moment: that she had done so much good in the world for others. That she wasn’t just our pet, or “just a dog.” It took me a while to think of the word that best describes her.

In Buddhism, a bodhisattva is someone who helps others with no thought for herself. And bodhisattvas always return to the world, since the job of helping others goes on and on. So I know that Bailey will return, in some form, somewhere, to continue loving people and doing good. And that makes me glad.

Thank you Bailey.

In her ‘spare time’ Karen continues to reflect on her marriage, whilst in the midst of the ‘grit and joy’ of her daily life. These words are published here because they reflect a depth of devotion and firmness of commitment, on both her part and her husbands. They have left their front door open for us to walk in through. I bow to that generous offer. And respect it.
See also Karens first post in this series, Up Against It…

Writing is an interesting process. I think it may be different for different people but right now, for me, it is part of a gentle, inner turning; a kind of song that needs to be sung. I do hope the reader won’t mind if I sing it.

I look at my little altar, across the room and my eye rests upon the photograph in its pewter and turquoise frame. I am drawn into the scene; David stands tall, though bowing his head slightly to his right to meet with mine, the top of which just meets with the bottom of his chin. We pose for the photographer; it is our daughter’s graduation celebration. He looks strong and young, belying the slow creeping of rheumatoid disease within.

I once heard a doctor describe rheumatoid as ‘cancer of the joints’. This is an apt description, I think, though an emotive one. I can barely remember a time when he didn’t have it.

But there was a time………

They say that opposites attract and there are all sorts of reasons, both practical and spiritual, why that is often a good thing. Speaking for myself, I saw in David, many qualities that I searched for within myself- steadiness and ‘stickability’ being two of them. For as much as David was a ‘steady sort of guy’, I was, quite frankly ‘a bit of a dreamer’. I loved to dance; he loved to sit in the corner with a book and, dare I say, a pint of good ale. On the other hand, I’m up for a bit of ‘risk taking’ whilst David prefers ‘safe ground’. Living together for 33 years has had the effect of ‘evening things out a bit’. There has been a necessary ‘meeting in the middle’, which feels like a positive.

Though we were both born and bred in Shropshire, we had quite different upbringings. David was the son of a police sergeant and his Irish Catholic wife, Kathleen, who took up several country beats, in his career, requiring the whole family to move, sometimes at short notice. David was born in Cleobury Mortimer but lived for the majority of his childhood in Bucknell – Welsh border country – acquiring a thick, regional accent that sounded like a foreign language to the inhabitants of Bridgnorth, where the family eventually settled. He was the eldest of four children and although money was often ‘tight’, he recalls the strength and security of being part of a large, close-knit family. He has many happy memories.

I, on the other was born in Bridgnorth to a carpenter, turned insurance salesman and his land girl wife. My parents always dreamed of farming the land together and raising pigs and geese. They moved someway to fulfilling this dream by renting a small holding, keeping livestock and breeding dogs. The ‘dream’ however, was stinted, when the marriage ended after only eight years, leaving my mother a single parent to my sister and me. I too was the eldest child. I too have happy memories and many sad ones, also.

These two childhoods were very different, in many ways but there were three distinct similarities. Firstly, there was a sense of the nomadic about them. For, as David’s parents were compelled to move frequently because the life of a country ‘bobby’ dictated it, so my mother, searching for work, a sense of stability and a glimpse of happiness, also moved from place to place trying to find it.

Secondly, as eldest children, we both bore the mark that many first children have; an overburdening sense of responsibility. This sense of responsibility, intertwined with the accompanying fear, has been the ‘root’ of much individual suffering, for both of us.

Thirdly, and most importantly, from our very first memory we have both had a sense of something greater than ourselves and both sought to understand and ‘serve’ it. In youth, David was an altar boy in his local Roman Catholic church, though he talks of his most ‘spiritual experience’ being sitting quietly, on his front doorstep, with the family spaniel, listening to the wind. Likewise, a regular in church, until my mother was told she wasn’t welcome for divorcing my father, my most transcendental moments have been those spent in solitude, ‘sitting’ quietly with nature, in my childhood tree house, the local woods and fields or by the brook.

By spring, 1975, both sets of parents had settled into a semi-permanent residency. David’s family lived in a residential area of Oldbury Wells, on the outskirts of Bridgnorth town. Whilst my mother, after ‘uping sticks’ and moving several times, had by now ‘settled’ in a cedar wood bungalow in the more rural area of Oldbury. Though we had no knowledge of each other, all that separated us was a field, a church and a short section of road. Soon those three features would be most significant in our lives. We would ‘court’ in the field, marry in the church and a late evening walk along the road would result in an accident that would impact on our lives, long after skin had healed and bones were mended. But that is for another time, perhaps, not now; for the light is creeping in around around the edges of the room. I can hear David, in his converted garage, downstairs, moving a glass, taking his ‘pills’, it’s time to get up and start the day……….

Boots and shoes where I live.

If someone leaves shoes in disarray, let us silently set them to order, such an act surely will bring harmony to the minds of people around the world.

Thanks to Pascal for this quote – found on a postcard from Eiheiji temple in Japan.

And from Karen, also left as a comment and also too interesting to leave hidden:

This article puts me in mind of a time, many years ago, when David and I took our three children to a Buddhist family camp in the Theravada tradition. Though of course, the monks and laity had many ways of training with and manifesting compassion for both self and others, putting their slippers straight, as in the Zen tradition, wasn’t one of them. Being still ‘green’ to the true purpose of this practice, I found myself greatly ‘phased’ by piles of scattered shoes outside the meditation hall door. It took me a good 24 hours of persistent shoe tidying before I finally stopped, laughed at myself and let it go!

See guest post, First Things…. about the teaching of putting ones shoes straight.