Friday Morning mid August

I am having peaceful warm inviting dreams.  Sometimes I remember them when I awake. Sometimes I don’t recall the detail. But the reassurance remains. Often their are family, friends, old dogs, kids I knew in the dreams. Often I’m on this peninsula with my sailboat or in a room with tables of ladies. There’s a good church feeling in the latter and a youthful adventurous feel in the former.
Today Gilbert woke me at 530 am wanting up on the bed to cuddle.  Since he hurt his back he can’t jump up like the cat.  I had a ramp for a while but it took up too much room. Now I’ve built a tower with suitcases but it’s not always possible for him to climb it.
“Who cares if Bill is sleeping. I want up on the bed now.” He says.  It’s also possible he wants me to come back to this dimension, these rooms.  It’s like I could die in my sleep or pass on and one day may but Gilbert isn’t ready for that. He’s just so excited to greet me in the morning like it’s not really a forgone conclusion that we’ll be together. Humans take so much for granted.  The cat is just pleased  he got me up so I will feed him. As I stumble to the toilet the cat rubs against my legs trying to trip me. I think he doesn’t care if he eats canned cat food or I fall and die and eventually he’d be eating me. Otherwise why else is he always trying to trip me?  Cats are devious.  Gilbert meanwhile is delighted to have the company and wants to play ball as if it were the most original idea ever. He has the ball in his mouth waiting when I leave the toilet and head downstairs to the kitchen to feed the scheming cat.
This morning Gilbert thought to help my meditation and exercise by lying against me.
Coffee is heaven.  I love brewing coffee and getting a taste of heaven.
On Facebook a friend asked if I believed in others visiting.  I recalled my mother in the taxi as I drove to my dad’s having been told his time was near. Then the two were there happy telling me they were reunited. I looked at the time and recalled it when I got off the plane and met with my brother.
What time did he die? I asked.
He told me the time.
I thought so. I’d felt so warm and at peace. like I do when I wake from dreams these mornings.
Last week the air smelt like toast. So many forest fires.  There was so much haze in the sky it looked almost like fog. This morning the sky is clear. I’ve a few patients to see at the clinic.  Then I’m off to the Salt Spring Island Round Up with Laura and Gilbert and probably the new KTM 690 motorcycle. We’d hoped to take the truck camper but logistics went against it.  We had to reserve the ferry and there’s too many moving parts in the plan to be sure we’d get on this evening.  Much to Laura’s chagrin we’re tenting. All the hotels and motels and B&B’s are full for this weekend. I even phone to rent a sail boat, as I’d so often sailed there. The cost of sailboat for the weekend would be $6000.
Meanwhile an email from Loyalist Marina came asking if I wanted to sail this summer or put the boat in storage another year.  Hard call. Of course I want to sail but I don’t want to quit working while I still can. So here I am enjoying the people I know here, the practice and the clinics but loathing the increasing corruption and incompetence of government more interested in broken fingernails and fat pay checks than youth dying.  It’s troubling to me to see so much waste and arrogance and death.  Yet I don’t want to quit and frankly enjoy being paid for my participation. I believe I can go another year. I had hoped for a decade even but the politics and those involved have descended to a primitive barbarism of swaggering baboons and their smug lying girlfriends.
I go to these round ups and meetings, these retreats and recovery weekends and people think of it as a  ‘holiday’ and I reflect that it is in a way, the R&R after a soldier comes out of the trenches, a break, mostly a wee bit of healing to face the ‘boss man’ and his and her ‘contempt’ for those they perceive beneath them.
I shoulder the load. I pray and meditate and ask God that I might know him more , that I might do his will. That I might be more hopeful, that I may rise above despair. I ask that I might help each one in their struggle with darkness. I keep leaving the light and coming down into the tunnel to guide the way out. But they can’t even acknowledge addiction because they don’t know their own attachments. Pointing fingers.  I have to look at my own too.  The evolution of spirt from blame to shame to forgiveness. I didn’t know. Now I do and I will change.  But to do this I must feel. I must have empathy and empathy is so frowned on in the cold blooded pursuit of power, sex and cash.
The sun is out. Laura said she smelt fall in the air last weekend. I”ve been putting on the heater when I wake but using the air conditioner in the day to keep the pets safe.  I sleep naked still but put on a t shirt and sweats in the morning.  In fall there comes a time when I need a night shirt.
Now it’s time to go to work. I take Gilbert the dog with me. He’s blind but has his favourite friends and loves to visit.  My constant companion. My therapy dog.  He’s certainly been a god send for those with PTSD.
Thank you for all the blessings. God is good. God is good all of the time. Help me to see your hand and be thankful always. Lift me up on eagles wings. Let me know you and serve you. Thank you.