Then, I had to move away from my adopted home town of twenty years. A place where I had built a sense of community, where I was known, where I produced public access television, and was known as a prominent poet. The sense of loss was beyond anything I had felt in my life except for losing Mouzer.

I moved back in with my parents at the tender age of 38. There was grief about this. Having to live with mommy and daddy without a car, in the Phoenix Valley, with no friends, and no sense of community. I had several acquaintances, but hadn't yet solidified the friendships.

The reasons I had to move were several. I had been evicted. My baby cats, and the iguana were one step from living in a shopping cart under a bridge. I wrecked my ex's truck by putting it up a Palo Verde tree on a desert highway at 3:30 in the morning.

Amazingly enough, we survived, with only a few bumps and bruises. The high point of living at home was that I got to spend time with my oldest niece, whom I loved and adored, and hoped to spend the next thirty or forty years being good friends, and having "adventures." My niece was going to be twenty on Aug. 15, 2001. I was waiting until she turned twenty-one so I could take her out and let her see that there were other people like us...queer.

A year after I moved home, she decided to take a trip to Utah. On the way there, she met an untimely death by driving headlong into another vehicle. When they were trying to cut her body out of the truck, the truck caught fire. It was a closed casket funeral. Her body was that badly burned. She left this world on July 20, 2001.

This made me angry at the Universe. I was already angry at the powers that be for taking my cat, who should have stayed with me for another three or four years. I dove into a bottle for six hard months, and committed acts that I care not to repeat in my life ever. When my niece died, I became even angrier. I don't deal with death well. It hurts. Why do people and pet companions have to go away from us. Why did I survive the truck accident, and my niece didn't.

Why? Why? Why?

I couldn't see clearly. I used an old standard to keep the feelings at bay. When mouser passed on, I spent at least a month in mourning. With my niece, it was two weeks of intense pain. I stayed at a friend's house, frozen on her couch, watching tv, smoking, and unable to process the pain. The good thing about this friend is that she has an incredible connection to God. And she just let me be, and surrounded me with love. (she did the same thing for me when my cat died).

I had lost my connection to the Universe. I was so angry that I didn't want to believe in a Higher being that would let us humans suffer so. I thought "God" was cruel and vicious for letting such things happen.

Then I open my eyes and look around the world, at how much suffering and pain that there really is. I look around at this imperfect world, and think "there has to be Something taking care of us, otherwise, we wouldn't keep breeding and bringing children into such a miserable place.

I wrote in the introduction to this section of the website that Gnosticism is something I can believe in. They believe that there is the Great Power of the Universe, but what happened was a lesser being (an angel?), yet greater then humans, made our world. Thus, this world has imperfection, even though we all carry the spark of the greater Good. We all are made from that higher Being, "God", therefore somewhere in our spirits, we are all perfect.

I have to believe this. Otherwise these losses and these deaths wouldn't make sense to me...

In December of 2001, my iguana Scout found a way out of the house. I kept looking for her for two weeks, and couldn't find her. Finally one morning I went out to the back porch, and there she was. Cold and frozen. Dead. My dad reported months later, that he had seen her two days prior to this. But he didn't tell me so that I could bring her in and make her warm. Instead of being angry at God, I was angry at my dad...furious. Scout had been with me for seven years, and was a great companion. She co-existed with my cats, and tolerated the poor care she received from me when I had better things to do then take care of her. I don't quite remember the date, but it was sometime in early December. I found out later that the Vets had done everything possible to try to bring her back. Now this is the way the Universe works, and which helps me have faith again. Three months later, in February, I was able to get my hands on another iguana. A little guy that had been terribly abused. He is missing his back feet, his tail was broken, he wasn't getting the proper care. So I rescued him, and took him to my vet that said he had about a 75% chance of living. I took it. Roadie was so feisty and full of life that I couldn't imagine giving him away. So I was given another chance to take better care of yet another iguana. (the people who gave him to me had named him Peg Leg Willy...eeewww).

A bit of my faith was restored. I was starting to make some good friends, people I could start trusting. And then, Master came into my life in a big way. We were already getting acquainted, but we were moving into a more intimate phase. Master has a rock-solid foundation in Faith and Love. So much so it amazes and scares me at times. It was this foundation that helped me start healing from all of these intense losses that happened in a short period of time. When I moved in with Her, I stopped talking to my very dysfunctional family. The grief around this was that my mom was very, very sick. And the guilt I felt over leaving her was a big ball and chain around my ankles.

My sister-in-law called me in early November, 2002. Mom was in the hospital from a heart attack. I went to see her. A week later she went in for by-pass surgery, she survived the surgery, but the nerve that operates the diaphragm was so damaged from Post-Polio syndrome, that she never breathed on her own again. She left this world on Nov. 12, 2002.

This was a loss I could handle. Mom contracted polio at the age of nine. Her early life was a series of stays in the hospital. The doctors broke her back three different times to stop the progress of the disease. She walked with crutches and a brace up until she was about 53. Then, she was in a wheel chair the rest of her life. Mom lived with much suffering from Post-Polio Syndrome. She lived with Chronic Pain, and not being able to keep food down. In the last year, her breathing was rough, and she constantly had problems keeping food down. I knew it was only a matter of time.

I was thankful when it was over. She is out of the pain and suffering. She is in a better place now. She doesn't have to worry about the children or the grandchildren anymore.

Through this death I had Master behind me 100%. I had that rock-solid foundation. And I was able to turn this death, and all the other losses I had over to this Higher Power, this greater-then-me-or-the-rest-of-the-world Being.

The final sense of loss was officially asking to be released from the religion of my childhood. This was a pro-active, postive action on my part, still, there was that sense of finality, the closing of that particular door. And a sadness that goes with closing a door.

What does this have to do with Spirituality? Without this concept, I wouldn't be alive today. I firmly believe that something saved me when I crashed that truck into the Palo Verde tree. Saved me for something more then what I had been doing with my life. I am a talented person. I am a poet, and a chef, among other things. There is something left here in this world for me to do, though I don't know what. I know that being with DM is a huge part of it. And the Universe has some sort of plan for me. Every once in a while I get flashes. Not visions, but flashes of life continuing for quite awhile, and sometimes I see what that life might involve. Whatever there is left for me to do, I need to keep a hold of this sense of faith. This feeling of belonging. If I don't, I go back out and commit acts of stupidity, and could get myself hurt very badly.

And that I don't want to happen!

Even through this grief and this loss, I have had incredible people around me. People I can turn to and ask questions of. People, who though weren't there those twenty years in Tucson, know me well enough now to help me stay centered. And when the grief comes, and when I am in pain over losing my niece or my cat, I look around at what I do have today, and I am grateful for my life.