Lead Me from Death to Eternal Life

Although I had spent years immersed in nature—living among the horses, the trees, the wild things—raising my children in harmony with the land, unlearning and remembering, I had not yet been tested in the way that life ultimately tests us all.

I had been taught by nature that life is eternal. The breeze, the soil, the stars—all whispered of the great continuity. The cycle. The return. I had come to know, in theory, that death was not an end but a transition. A shedding of form, not of presence. But it remained just that—an exquisite idea, a spiritual witness from afar.

That changed the day Aramis transitioned.

Though each of my beloved family members’ transitions has been profoundly sacred—and until now, held quietly in the sanctity of my own heart—I offer this glimpse into Aramis’ passing with the prayer that it may illuminate something deeper for others.

It has been my lived experience that transition, whether it arrives through violence, sudden loss, or after the long journey of a well-lived life, is never easy. It is never without pain. It is never without a part of you dying along with them.   And yet, it is always holy. Always divinely timed.

I do not speak of these moments lightly. I prefer to keep them wrapped in silence, where spirit breathes most freely. But I feel compelled at this moment to share one of our family’s transition; that of our beloved dog, Aramis as he was the way-shower; the one who bore the lantern that would light the way for all those who followed.

He knew me intimately—my fierce devotion, my unwavering love for my family, my deep entanglement with all the lives of Chevalia as one breathing loving heartbeat. And so he prepared me. In his passing, he gave me a gift I did not yet know I would need: the lived truth of eternal presence.

The path to remembrance.

What he gave me was not just the pain of loss, but the wisdom to survive it—and the vision to eventually see beyond it.

Aramis, my dog, my guardian, my soul-companion, was the first.

He was poisoned by the rotting remains of a poached deer—its organs discarded and left to decay by an irresponsible hunter, not far from our home. Though I tried everything to save him, the damage had already been done. For two long weeks, he suffered, and I suffered with him. But his pain was not just physical—it was filled with a sacred urgency. Through the agony and the healing sessions I ran ceaselessly, he was speaking to me, soul to soul. He was trying to prepare me. Not just for his departure, but for everything that would follow.

Those agonizing days made it clear He didn’t linger for himself. He stayed for us. His purpose, his entire joy, had been to protect our family, to watch over my children as their surrogate father, to guard the land and walk beside me through every season of motherhood and transformation. That kind of love does not leave easily. Nor is it easily released.

I couldn’t let him go. My love gripped him. And his love gripped me. We were suspended in that unbearable space between holding on and setting free.

Only when I could finally surrender—not just to the inevitability of his death, but to the truth of his love—was I able to act. I remember so vividly as if it were today that the sun reined brightly overhead and the birds sang as my children and I all placed him gently in a soft mobile bed we had fashioned from a wagon and together, feeling his desire to do so, made the sacred procession among each horse who reverently honored him; each horse of whom he loved and loved him and whose life he shared so passionately.  I then carried him gently into the back of our SUV and lay beside him for that final ride to the vet, cradling him in my arms, in reverence, and sacred passage remembering the day I held him in that same truck as a tender bundle of ears and paws, a precious puppy 14 years prior.  Every mile was a prayer of gratitude he whispered to me for the amazing life we all shared, giving me strength.  For amidst his frail body, I could feel all around me the power of his loving spirit that held me in a vortex of his gigantic soul’s presence.

When we arrived, and the vet came out at our request to administer to him from the truck he had spent so many wondrous adventures, she said softly after administering the injection that he was so ready and almost already gone. 

And so it was.

Aramis left not in resistance, but in peace—carried on the wings of love so immense, so mutual, so complete, that it transcended time. He had waited until I could let him go. And once I did, he was free.

But his death was not an end.

What happened next laid the foundation for everything I had ever sought. The truth I had witnessed in theory began to live in me as experience. And Aramis, even in death, continued his sacred duty. His body was gone, but his presence, his enormous spirit could no longer be contained in his frail body, and I was soon to witness this truth.

When I brought him home to be buried, and I opened the trunk to lift his body out, something inexplicable occurred. His spirit burst forth—not in metaphor, but in undeniable presence. I could feel it. I could see it. Light flooded into everything. He became the trees, the breeze kissing my cheek, the sunlight dancing across the leaves. He was everywhere. He was telling me: I am not gone. I am all around you now.

He didn’t just surround me—he entered me. Aramis became the very breath in my lungs, the blood in my veins, the silence in my bones. He moved through every cell of my being, and in that sacred instant, all pain vanished. Grief dissolved. Time stood still.

What filled its place was bliss—pure, undivided, eternal. Not an emotion, but a frequency: a homecoming.

And in that moment, he revealed his true nature, not as something apart from me, but as something that was also me. That was all of us.  There was no boundary between our forms. We were joined—not in memory or metaphor, but in essence. What he shared was not just his love, but his expanded self—his liberated being beyond form, beyond story.

I was no longer a single self. I was Source experiencing itself, submerged in the frequency of the Tao. It was everything and nothing, fullness and emptiness, presence without name. A stillness so vast it sang.

That moment was beyond time, space, and identity. It was the Tao before it divided into ten thousand things.

But like a wave that crests and dissolves back into the sea, the illusion of time slowly returned. The world of form wrapped itself around me once more. The ache crept back in.

Yet I knew—I knew—I had touched something true. That moment would become my compass, my spine, my sacred pillar. The still point I would return to again and again.

He became the river of love that would carry me through all that was to come.

It would live within me as a remembered truth—not always felt, but never lost. And in the seasons that followed, as the flood of loss after loss came pouring in, it would become the rod I held onto when everything else was stripped away.

And so it was.

Aramis prepared me.

Our path was quietly approaching a great turbulence—a rapid we could not yet see, but whose thunder Aramis already felt in his bones. He knew. He knew the flood was coming.

A flood of loss.

A flood of departure.

A tide of transition.

It began with Stariadnia, my first horse, whose passing opened the gate. Then, like a dam giving way, the currents surged—fast, fierce, merciless. Not a gentle stream, but a torrent—more like the shattering percussion of a machine gun than a wave—ruthless, relentless, without pause.

After her, it was as though the Universe held its breath until 2019.

That was the year I lost my dear Mother.

Three months later, my beloved husband, Jeff.

Then Wodi, my steadfast mare, her daughter, Xena. Echappe. Diva’s newborn. Isabeau’s son. Then Isabeau. Sam. Isis. Maximus. My big brother. Then tragically, the final rock, my dearest Father.

The list continues, a sacred roll call of souls I loved with all my being; each one a world unto themselves, a teacher, a mirror, a bearer of light.

And though each life and loss is worthy of their own telling, I will share their stories only if and when their spirits whisper that it is time. Until then, I carry them in reverent silence.

But all of this is for not if we don't remember and return to this truth.

Some passings unfolded like ancient ceremonies—we were present, hand in hoof, hand in hand, heart pressed to heart. We kept vigil as they crossed, returning to the Great Silence.

Others came like lightning on a cloudless day—sudden, disorienting, splintering the world as we knew it.

Yet each was a sovereign act of the soul, chosen beyond our comprehension, beyond our grasp. And in the stillness that followed, I bowed to the deeper truth:

That death, too, obeys the Tao.

That timing belongs not to us,

but to the eternal rhythm of return.

Our path was heading to a tumultuous rapid where floodgates of departure was an impending part that we were unaware. But Aramis knew.  He knew.

 And all of this unfolded during the same time that the outer world was unraveling. It was the height of the COVID era. While the world descended into chaos, fear, isolation, and grief, my inner world was undergoing its own complete dismantling.

It was a trinity of destruction: the collapse of society, the collapse of my family, and the collapse of the known self.

I felt under attack on every level—emotionally, physically, spiritually and financially. The rug had been violently pulled out from beneath me. I felt abandoned—by my parents, my husband, by Source, by Mother Nature Herself. I had unconsciously leaned on the emotional security of their presence, not realizing how much that presence buffered me from the deeper void beneath.

When it was gone, I felt exposed and raw, my soul torn open.

But just before my husband’s passing, a Vedic prayer came.

It arrived like a whisper from the unseen:

Asato Ma Sat Gamaya

Tamaso Ma Jyotir Gamaya

Mrityor Ma Amritam Gamaya

Lead me from non-being to being.

Lead me from darkness to light.

Lead me from death to eternal life.

This Vedic song came to me softly—first in meditation, then again through music. Whenever I turned on Pandora, this prayer would play. Nature was preparing me. The Tao was preparing me. Whispering, not shouting. The Way always speaks quietly, like the rustle of leaves or the soft breath of a horse.

And then his sudden unexpected departure happened.

At first, I resisted the grief. Even though I “knew” what was true.  I held on so tightly, trying to make sense of what was slipping through my fingers. And the more I resisted, the more the fire of loss burned through me.

Eventually, I surrendered—not by choice, but by necessity. I had nothing left. And when everything else is gone, all that remains is silence. It was in the silence that truth finally became embodied.

No longer just a spiritual concept or a poetic notion, but a lived, breathing truth that took root in every cell of my being. In the silence, I found everything. I found them. All of them. Still here. More present than ever before—not bound by distance or time or body.

I no longer needed a phone call, a visit, a memory. I only had to enter stillness. And in that stillness, they arrived. In wind and water. In the shape of a cloud or the glint of light on a blade of grass. They speak to me in the language of nature, the language I had unknowingly been learning my whole life.

This isn’t emotional sentiment or poetic metaphor.

This is eternal.

Remember—nothing dies. Everything simply changes form. Consciousness continues. Souls expand. Presence deepens. And in letting go of the physical, we become more sensory, more attuned to the subtle frequencies that never left us. The rooms of my home, the pastures of Chevalia, even the space within my own heart is now filled with their love, their wisdom, their guidance.

I am not alone. I have never been alone.

And this knowing is no longer a theory.

It is not borrowed language from a sacred text.

It is the fire I have bathed in.

It is the silence I have become.

It is the truth I now live.

 “They Walk With Me”

They do not walk in shadowed halls

Nor wait beyond a veil,

They move through wind and waterfall,

Through leaf and breath and grail.

They speak in birdsong, flick of tail,

The hush between the notes,

The shimmer on a horse’s flank,

The tide that inward floats.

When all the world had turned to ash

And silence claimed the throne,

They gathered close—not bound by flesh—

More present now, more known.

Not memory, not fantasy,

But pulsing through the air,

The scent of fur, the flash of eye,

Their spirit everywhere.

I walk, and they walk here with me,

Not gone, but changed in guise,

Expanded now beyond the form,

Alive in every rise.

So let the theory fall away,

Let silence be the key—

For once you know them in the flame,

You’re finally set free.

Our bud, Aramis