Li Po And Me, Pronounced Lee Po Options

[Tess]

Hi everyone,

Since I could walk. I have preferred animals to humans.
And as long I have lived on this planet, given the nature of the homo sapiens I have observed and lived with, this preference has only intensified.

So here I am now having to say goodbye to my best friend and in some ways, by my standards my only friend.
I live in a remote area in the midst of cultures which I cannot call like-minded. I foolishly left my home in Colorado to try something new 20 yrs ago and now am stuck in this place I don’t like much due to finances and health concerns.
I have been in chronic pain for 18 long years and have become a recluse due to this illness and also due to issues mentioned above.

My greatly diminished life became more bearable when I got my little buddy. Li Po. I didn’t know he was congenitally blind in one eye until he had an accident involving another dog and lost the sight in his good eye.
So here we are, the two of us, joined at the hip and joined in every other way, heart and soul.

Maybe it’s not a wise thing, to put so much love and life into just one other being. I have other animals so it’s not exactly that but given our mutual handicaps, we have bonded so tightly we can read each others’ thoughts.

About 9 mo. ago he was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. We have kept him in the best health we could with medications, diet and exercise but now he is going down hill .
It’s a horrible sound, that coughing that this illness causes and he is not getting much relief at this point. Had to bring him in to the vet yesterday to ask what to expect now in these last days.

Up until a few days ago, his spirits were good but now I can see that he is sometimes faltering.
His tail goes down and he’s starting to wonder...
As long as he was happy I was good with it but now, I don’t want his last days to be bad ones.
So I’m carefully watching for clues about when ....

I know that I am not alone here wondering what in the world I will do without him.
I can’t even imagine it.
I’m scared because there’s not much else around that I cherish.
I love everything about him, Just having his softness and doggy smells around me at night when I wake up is such a privilege.
Being able to care for him at all has been a privilege.

Here is this furry being who’s only desire is to be with me and I have to let him go.
I keep telling him that we will always be together but I don’t really believe it myself because I don’t believe in much myself. I don’t necessarily believe Li Po is going to be with angels. I would like to believe that. It would be comforting. Of course I don’t NOT believe it either. I just don’t know.
I do know that he will be in my heart always.

Once someone asked me, “What do you really know?””
The only thing I could come up with is that I surely know is how much I love my animals.

As I said, I’m scared to be without him because it is such an unknown. I don’t trust myself not to fall apart.
I have studied Buddhism and I can self-talk myself into a certain philosophical detachment but my connection with hum is so visceral, that seems to transcend any self talk I can manage.

I just needed to come here and tell you guys how scared I feel.

[Gretta's Mom]

Good Morning Tess

What a beautiful picture of a beautiful dog. You are in exactly the right place here on LS. Every one of us has known the love of a special animal - I call them a soul-mate because that's what they are - we are two parts of a single soul. And when they go back to the Perfect World from which they came, they take a piece of our soul with them and leave a part of thei soul for us to hold - until we are reunited in that Perfect World - forever.

You have received a comforting and insightful message from MoonBeam, sort of the :mother" of all of us - especially the newcomers. She has a deep and correct understanding of everything having to do with human-animal love and the inevitable separation when their shorter-than-ours earthly lives end and they go back home.

From the name of your baby and its spelling, and your saying you were far away in a remote area among an un-like-minded culture, I wondered if you were in China or somewhere nearby. In a Chinese-derived minority language and culture that I know well, your baby's name, Lee Pao (spelled Lis Pov in this langauge), the "Lee" part is the name of one of the two most powerful "clans in this ethnic group, and the "Pao" or "Po" part is the first name of its most powerful General. That is one powerful name for such a small dog and i think it speaks to the power of his spirit and of your two-in-one-soul relationship to him, since when you saw him, you gave him this name.

MoonBeam is right about anticipatory grief and Critzy is also right in that it does make "the day" and "the decision" easier, since you have a sense of reality about what is happening and what you, as the supreme gift of love, have to do, but the emptiness and hollowness and sadness of the loss are a different matter, although even those are tempered by knowing you loved your soul mate enough to take on pain so that he could be pain-free.

Please stay here and let us take on a little of your grief. This is the best-managed and most sharing and caring site on the internet. We're a band of brothers and sisters who have all had the life-changing experience of sharing an earthly life with a soul-mate and then having to face his or her going home. Alone, we melt away from sadness, but together we hold each other up and each take on a little of the other's burden and we all survive and eventually thrive.

Little Li Po, I love you. Thank you for finding your soul-mate and sharing an incredible life with her. Only your body will dissappear, your powerful spirit will continue to be with her forever, wherever each of you lives.

Stay strong, Li Po's mom, we're here for you.

Gretta and Rufus's mom