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]