GRACIE

When I went back downstairs last night and checked on Gracie after posting our landscape photos, I first thought, "Oh, I'm so glad she's feeling more comfortable."  She was laying in her bed just as she normally had before she got sick, looking just fine and not panting.  Then it dawned on me that "not panting" at the moment was a bad sign.  When I sat down next to her and and lay my hand on her she felt perfectly warm and normal -- except she wasn't breathing.  

I got Mark to come check for a heartbeat to be sure, but there was none.  I guess I'm glad she was comfortable enough at the end that she was willing to lay down on her blanket and go to sleep.  Had this happened last week she would have been in a panic, I'm sure.  But she spent today - no yesterday, wasn't it? - outside watching everyone work.  I asked her several times if she wanted to come in but she did not.  So she died in her bed next to mine on our sleeping porch.  The house seems empty without her, even with Ben, Niki and Rocky here.  I love them, but I'm not quite as close to any of them as I was to Gracie. 

We carried her bed inside to the bedroom and that's where she is right now.  When I look at her, I feel like she's going to wake up any minute.  She just looks so much like her old self.  We Buddhists believe that the dead should be kept company for a number of hours after death while their spirit finds its way on.  I wanted to give Gracie time for that.   Today we'll take her to be cremated.  Her ashes will join mine when it's my time.