It’s been an interesting almost-week since Mocha died. Death can crack you wide open, exposing you to all kinds of thoughts, feelings, lessons, challenges – as turbulent and inevitable as the storms rolling through Northern California. One thing I realized soon after she died was that a song I had chosen to listen to for the first time in many years had significance beyond its aural charms. On my way home from the city a week or so ago, I rifled through my glove box until I found a favorite from the 90s: the British pop band Kula Shaker. Theirs was a fantastic blend of psychedelia and Hindu mysticism; two songs on their debut album were sung completely in Sanskrit.
One of that album’s songs, “Into the Deep,” became an ear worm for days after I slipped it into the car’s CD player. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3i9icc6iNA&feature=kp The morning Mocha died, it was there again, lifting me up as it soared majestically in my mind. I only knew some of the words, but the melody haunted me. Days later, I finally looked up the lyrics and was stunned. “Enter your heart, and never let it part / Yesterday was a lie so be happy now. / I know the time has come to let you go / Time to sleep, to sleep…”
Oh my goodness – how great is that. Great and sad and amazing. And a step in the healing process. The jolt of not seeing Mocha has softened, and the flickers of black and white I’ve been seeing since her Dec. stroke have stopped. (More on this later.) I’m not yet ready to take down my Mocha Memorial (flowers and a rainbow card from Carrie, a candle, her picture, a bejeweled tiny box with a bit of her fur) because it makes me smile.
I also sought solace this week in a consultation with a wonderful woman, Suzan, who is an animal communicator I’ve used several times in the past. (Stop reading here if you get hives with exposure to things metaphysical.) I asked her why Mocha went off my back deck – the thing that has haunted me the most since Tuesday – and she sensed that it was because she was disoriented, and wanted to go back to the ravine she came from, to die. That she could smell it on the wind, but did not realize how far the drop was. “She was a very determined, cantankerous old lady, wasn’t she?” she chuckled. I said that captured her perfectly.
Suzan said Mocha was extremely ready to go; that she loved me, and hung around this long because she’d found love at last in my home, but knew it was time. Asked if Mocha was “okay,” Suzan laughed. “She is joyful – just a soul spark now, and long gone,” she said. I thought this was interesting, as every time I’d had a cat pass, I sensed they were still nearby for a while afterward, even seeing them out of the corner of my eye. Not so with Mocha, my tortoise goddess, whose patchwork fur was unmistakable.
I DID, however, see flickers of black and white – going back to when she had her stroke six weeks ago. I would think it was Iggy, my youngest, but it was not him. No, she said – that was Marvin, Mocha’s mate, who had been present since she first almost died, there to make her transition easier. I “saw” him right after her stroke, and then several times this last week. And then nothing in recent days.
“He was there to welcome her,” Suzan said. “And he is conveying his gratitude to you for giving his best friend a home at the end of her life.”
I’d been doing okay until this moment, but it was time to bawl. I hope I adequately conveyed to Mocha how much she brought to MY life these last few years. And how she opened my heart and mind and brought me closer to the source.
“I know the time has come to let you go / Time to sleep, to sleep…”