Dotsie and Eagle Heart - thank you for responding regarding my feelings about loyalty. It draws us together, makes each of us feel less isolated on our journey. Eagle Heart, my heart is with your regarding your issues with your mother. The fact that she was so unkind to you, makes it harder to reconcile. I've come to believe that there is nothing more important than kindness.

Seeing someone in a casket used to bother me. I remember when my grandmother died at age 69. I was 16. At the funeral I remember her sister, Lola, touching Grandma's hand, saying, "Oh, Mabel, Mabel" Aunt Lola had tears in her eyes. That was 40 years ago. I've been to so many funerals of close loved ones since. I was with Gary when he took his last breath. Later at the funeral home I needed to be alone with him in the viewing room. I needed to slip my hand inside his shirt and touch his skin, to feel the surgery incision. I needed to infuse this into my mind so I could accept that he was dead, really dead.

I was there an hour after my sister died. She was just laying there on the couch, her mouth hanging open. It was different, but I realized this is how it used to be when there was a death. People came to the family home and viewed the body. I still see her in my mind, it will probably always be with me, but it seems natural to me now. I'm not haunted by it.

I think being with Gary at the end and working all that through changed things dramatically for me. That change is a good one. With the gravesite - Gary was buried in a military cemetery. It was free. After his death I went and sat with him several times. But he wasn't there. It didn't comfort me to be there nor did it bother me. I could as easily talk to him anywhere else.

Maybe the acceptance of the gravesite thing is because my father's family has a family cemetery. The first funerals and burials I attended were at the family cemetery. It was just a small place, no fancy markers. But the last physical remnants of their earthly lives seemed to belong there. My father was not buried there. This does not bother me either. He does not live in a box in the ground. He is free and happy.

I think this culture has changed so much in so many ways so very quickly that we now miss the belonging - that we are part of our ancestors in this way too.

What I learned from a raccoon.

Today the old raccoon, Missy, came again to the back door. When we first met her years ago, she was old, tired-looking, a piece of her ear and part of her tail was missing. No longer the reigning matriarch, she watches nervously now for another raccoon, the one who must have defeated her sometime during the winter. After raccoons attacked our old cat, Fleggy, last fall we stopped feeding them. Missy was not part of the attack force. She and Fleggy got along, respected each other's ways, each other's space. Still to stop the group of over eighteen from coming around and threatening all three of our kitties, we had to stop feeding them. Unfortunately neighbors shoot raccoons around here for robbing chicken houses. When Missy showed up this spring, she looked elderly, no longer agile. Even more of her tail was missing, and she wore the defeat of age. This year for the first time she has no litter. Only last year she was vigilant, watchful, in charge.

This morning my husband, Phil, said, "I think this will be Missy's last year."

I said, "She probably won't make it through the winter."

"She may not even make it through the summer," he said.

Always while she eats now I sit watch for her. Perched in an easy chair back next to the sliding glass door I comb the deck and the hillside to make sure no one comes and attacks her for the food. These days there are only two other adult raccoons who show up. One has three kits, the other has one. Usually after Missy eats she hobbles to her favorite spot behind a small stump next to some ferns, cleans herself and sleeps for a while. Today she curled up on the ramp to the deck, nestling her nose to her feet and tail. Two times she roused herself and ate again, cleaned herself and went back to the ramp to sleep. Eventually she climbed under the deck and wandered away.

Missy movements have slowed down. She is obviously achy. Life is difficult for her now. I thought of how she resembles my 86-year-old mother. My husband and I shop for her food. We and some lovely people from Mom's church clean house for Mom. She sits most days and watches television - whatever is on. Her arthritis hurts too bad for her to do anything else, even with pain killers. The difference between Mom and Missy is that Missy has no pain medication. She does not have a safe place to be. One day soon she will wander off and die, or she will snuggle into her den, go to sleep and not wake up or be attack by another animal and die as a result.

It reminds me of how hard it is for so many on this planet. That the reality, of this place we've come to learn and grow, is that life for all living beings is difficult. For me Missy has become a case in point on how important extending kindness is/will be as the population continues to soar and the competition for resources escalates. Instead of fighting each other, instead of yelling at others on the freeway, instead of rushing to get the last parking place, instead of saying mine, mine, mine, it's important we learn that what happens to one happens to us all. As we reach up and learn the meaning of kindness and extend it - we become. And when death comes, as it did for my sister, as it has for our mothers, our fathers, our lifemates, our children, it becomes a transition into beauty and freedom.