Liam, our beautiful little Jack Russell died suddenly on Friday.  He was out on the path looping our big field walking with Pam and suddenly all the other dogs ran to him.  He had collapsed.  Our vet called it a “deadly arhythmia.”  He died minutes later.

For many years, Pam had wanted a Jack Russell.  I resisted what I thought would be a crazy, manic dog.  Then one day, visiting a friend at a barn, a litter of Jack’s were nestled in a stall, recently imported from Ireland.  Our youngest daughter, Chandrika, adopted from Nepal, came out cuddling a puppy and told us seriously, “This is my baby sister Laxmi who died.”  Clearly the decision about a Jack had been moved to a different realm, and that puppy came home with us that day.  We named him Liam.

Liam had a presence that was so strong, so steadfast, so self-possessed that he felt like the center of our human-animal family.  He was always there.  Not needy, not requiring anything except to be with us – to be present in our presence.  And that carves his sudden, irrevocable absence into us in the most painful of ways.  He was the small dog in a pack of greyhounds, so the rhythm of his feet, the quality of his movement, his color and nature were precise and unique.

All of us now are walking around the house a little lost, untethered and deeply sad.  I see him everywhere.  Pam hears his feet.  His absence is present.  We are present with his absence and with his presence, woven together like a möbius.

This summer at the Body-Mind Centering Conference, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen showed us how the heart is actually a möbius – a never ending cycling flow.  “The continuous flow of blood through the arterial system–which runs next to the venous system but in opposite directions–contains möbius coil properties. The circulation of blood throughout the body resembles the figure-eight shape of the möbius coil.”  (Scalar Heart Connection)

How perfect is it then that the heart, physically and metaphorically the center of us, should hold at the same time the shape of loss – this mystery of presence and absence wound round each other inextricably.  Like the breath – in then out with the little death of suspension between.  Each beat, each breath moving us forward and through.  Our dear friend Jo-Ann Eccher wrote on my Facebook page, “I just had a vision of Liam guiding Dr Masaru Emoto who passed into the next dimension yesterday into the bliss of the pure land filled with love and good intention.”

Thank you Liam, and thank you Tashi, Luna, Esme, Dae, below, all running in fields of gold with Liam now.