Esme' -- my Mei Mei (Chinese for Youngest Sister, though she was really
only the most frail and not young at all), my Tiny Dancer who only had a
few months of dancing during the two years since we adopted her -- crossed
the Rainbow Bridge during the night while she rested on my chest as I
slept.  I awoke around 4am Tuesday to find her peacefully gone.
 
She began to prepare for her journey on Friday when she would no longer eat.
I left her resting in her favorite sleep sack while Rebecca and I went
ahead, as planned, to our Level I Reiki class Friday evening and Saturday
and Sunday afternoons.  I carried her with me in her Warm Fuzzy bag much of
the time while I was home.  Sunday evening she was very weak, and I did not
take her off my chest except one half hour until I found her gone.  I was so
grateful that I had received Reiki in time for her passing, because it eased
her breathing so much at the end.  She never seemed to be pain until the
last few hours, and then she was just having a harder time breathing and I
think she was afraid.  As long as I gave her Reiki she lay quiet, but if I
stopped even briefly and took my hands away, her breathing became a sad and
difficult whimper.  I fell asleep in a position where I would not move my
hands.
 
Esme' came to us from a couple who had rescued her, scruffy and malnourished
and with a once-broken leg that had never been set right, at maybe age four
or maybe older.  She had insulinoma, and surgery gave her a brief period of
energy and joy.  But she was so frail.  She developed another insulinoma,
plus adrenal disease, and I often had the feeling that there must also be
something else, though she was too weak to try more surgery to find out.
I think it was the "something else" that took her, since her death was so
peaceful.  For the last two months, she has barely had the use of her hind
legs and yet she bravely pulled herself around the room, determined to sniff
it all and be a ferret to the end.  I would watch her and think of Andrew
Wyeth's painting, Christina's World, in which the farmhouse looks so far
away and the world so very large to the lame woman in the field.  Of course,
you would never know from her attitude that there was a problem.  She was
always sweet and courageous ... always as positive in outlook as a ferret.
 
I mourn the brief time she had of health.  I rejoice that I was able to
give her almost two years of love.  I am grateful that I was priviledged
to know her.  I hope Bizzy was waiting for her in her beautiful new coat
to show her around her new world.
 
Blessings
Judith White
[Posted in FML issue 2335]