Lapcat Meditation

Like so many people, I have felt a current of sadness braiding through my day about the death of Robin Williams, which may have been suicide.  We've probably all known someone who committed suicide. The true saying is, It's a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Despair does lift eventually, if you stick around.

Scott [Robinson] Columbus 

Tonight my mind went to a friend who did not kill himself, but died of a massive heart attack at age 49 at a moment when he was in love and loving life.  Just like that.

Scott was in meditation groups with me about ten or twelve years ago.  Like many people with difficult moodswings, he searched for a spiritual practice.  He called me once to talk about his difficulty with sitting meditation. Sitting meditation can be the wrong thing for someone with major depression.  Today I would suggest listening to, becoming, and making music, letting it move your body, being music, but I didn't know that then.  Scott loved his cat, Bartholowmeow.  So I suggested lapcat meditation.  He knew immediately what I meant.

I found myself doing it tonight with Tashi.  I don't hold her on my lap as much as I'd like to because I'm dreadfully allergic to her.  But once in a while she requests it by tentatively coming up on the table or my lap and putting a paw on my shoulder.  She is always polite, looks to see what I think.  I usually let her come up, and then get her down from shoulder to lap.  Later I will take off the clothes she touched and put them in the dryer on air for half an hour, or just wash them.  Also wash face and hands, and do a nasal rinse.  Love is complicated.

We had a very pleasant sit tonight, her on my lap with one hand supporting her underneath and the other stroking her.  The kitchen was getting dim in the twilight, no TV or radio on, the windows closed, only the sound of a train at the Cooke Road crossing.  After a bit I realized I could feel the rise and fall of her breathing in my hands. When I paid closer attention I detected the pulse of her heart as it took the oxygen from her lungs and infused it into her blood, then sent that blood out to the body.

Once during our thirteen years with Sherlock he happened to lie against me in such a way that I felt vividly the entire action of his little heart, all that fast, muscular pumping. It had the effect of filling me with awe at the intricacy of this living thing. So did his death, years later, also on my lap. Rest in peace, loved ones.

Sherlock