My family usually go to bed around 9 p.m. Tonight was different. Right before 9 p.m., my husband and daughter came to me all excited. They started talking about the Chihuahua dog at my mom-in-law’s house.

This Chihuahua dog was originally given to my late dad-in-law in last July. One of his friends had some puppies to give away. They were born on June 12^th 2021. Around that time, my late dad-in-law got really sick and was diagnosed as Covid. One month after the puppy came to him, my dad-in-law passed away. My mom-in-law is a cat lover and not really a dog lover. My mom-in-law told us jokingly but many times that we could take the puppy with us back to our home. We believe she was serious. There was one time when she even threw the puppy onto my husband’s lap sitting in the passenger’s seat when we were about to leave back home. We all laughed and returned the puppy on the ground.

Tonight, my husband and daughter were talking about the chihuahua; how much they miss the dog. And that was why they barged into my room and started begging me to give a permission to adopt him. My husband was not normal because he already had some alcohol drink and got drunk. They kept on talking about the dog for one hour. I finally showed them the clock showing 10 p.m. and nicely asked them to calm themselves down and go to sleep.

After they went to bed, I thought about adopting a dog to this house. I love the dog and miss him a lot. But I don’t think it is possible. We are renting this house. This house is carpeted on all the three bedrooms. The dog was not toilet trained. We have seen the dog peed and pooped everywhere in my mom-in-law’s house. The dog loves to running around at his full speed on the Navajoland, but he won’t be able to do so. He will hate being leashed. I love to have him here, but I honestly don’t think it is good idea for now.  

It was our last day of our Navajoland visit. My husband’s cell phone alarm went off at 4:50 a.m., which was set to our local time of 5:50 a.m. I could not get back to sleep and so I chanted my routine mantra and daily prayer. Within one hour my family woke up naturally. We got ready to leave for our trip back to our house.

On the way back while driving, my husband and I had an interesting topic to talk. I mentioned that his parents and brother treated him as their Yes-person because he never turns down their favors. Now that his dad has passed, his mom fully depends on my husband a lot. She does not ask her first son even though he was right there during this trip. I felt like they are treating my husband as their daughter. I mentioned to my husband about my mom. My mom often told me she had two children a son and a daughter. Even though the son lives very close to her house, actually within 5-minutes walking distance, she could not ask anything to her son and his wife. But my mom often told me it was easy for her to ask me anything casually. And my mom always concluded that a daughter is mentally close to their parents rather than a son. When I shared this story with my husband, it rang his bell. He said it really makes sense to him. He was born 9 years after his older brother. Since their first son was out of their hand in his younger years, they often talked about their dream to have a daughter. When my husband’s mom got pregnant with my husband, they often wished the baby would be a girl. Thus, my husband received his parent’s expectation to be born as their daughter. We now know why his parents fully depend on my husband, not to their first son. It is good to analyze and come to a conclusion.

The day started with hectic energy. My mom-in-law set today as the memorial service day for my late dad-in-law. She gathered us, my brother-in-law’s family, and my niece-in-law’s family. She set 9 a.m. to start the ceremony, but she was running late from the early morning. And she was very irritated and scattered the negative energy around her. I tried to get close to her as much as I could. I didn’t want to get involved with other people’s negative energy and drama. We gathered at the cemetery area. my husband was the main one wo worked to dig a hole, put a gravestone, mix cement, and put everything back on the ground. After that, we shared some foods.

After lunch, the cousin’s family and we decided to spend the afternoon together. Our first stop was the flea market. My daughter wanted to get a snow cone but there were none. I guess nobody wants to have a snow cone in the cold monsoon. Then we went to the bowling alley. We had a good time together. The youngest child was not having fun at the first game. It was heartbreaking to see her crying. I asked the worker to set a bumper for kinds, then she started really enjoying.  

I am not going to write down in details, but it was a tough day for some part of the day. I think family gathering is tough for certain people like me. The great thing is though, my mom-in-law should understand how I felt. She never got along with her husband’s side of family. She never attended any ceremonies, funerals, or gathering of his side. I take it as a blessing that she went though the toughness before and she now understands. I am glad it was over.

***

It was an interesting message in the early morning that I would like to share.

I woke up in the middle of night. I had a nightmare two nights straight on Navajoland. In the first night’ nightmare, I was forced to sit down on the cold and hard ground while other people were sitting on the chair. I was furious to others who treated me badly. I was yelling at them that I deserved to be treated with respect. In the second night’s nightmare, some young children tried to kill me. They didn’t want to do so, but they were just following somebody’s order to kill me. They kept on apologizing me and telling me that they didn’t want to do so. I was again, furious to others who treated me in such a bad way. I didn’t know exactly who was my enemy. It was not comfortable at all to wake up like that being furious to somebody I didn’t know.

I felt these nightmares came to me as a message. I saw a clock. It showed 3:33 a.m. I looked up the meaning in the internet, and one website says like this. This number has a message to “purge your negativity thoughts and replace them with pure love.” And “Your angels will help you in your journey of self-acceptance and finding love.” These messages resonated with my soul.  I admit that I am still struggling to maintain my peaceful mind at any situation.

Since last night we had lots of rain through the night. It was a cold morning. I regretted that I didn’t bring any long sleeve shirts or jacket. After the breakfast we went to the local grocery store to pick up some more cardboard boxes. The male worker at the warehouse remembered us and wished good luck on our organizing old items. I am glad he was nice.

After we put the boxes in the trailer house, my mom-in-law wanted us to go to the DIY store in town with us so that she could get some help from us. We treated her the lunch at our favorite Mexican restaurant. I purchased a long sleeve shirt at the mall. My husband and daughter purchased their favorite items too.

When we came back at the homesite, my husband’s cousin and her family already arrived there. We spent at her mom’s house all afternoon to hang around with. Nothing new and nothing special, but we all enjoyed each other’s company.  

My family and I took the same procedure. I made our lunch boxes for us to eat in the ride. My husband watered our plants in the garden. My daughter finished some more school assignments. We left our house around 8 a.m. as usual.

I was surprised and happy to see the gas price has been gone down. The Tucson area always offers the lowest of the all areas in AZ. Their gas price of today was $3.59. I remember just one month ago, the gas price was close to $5.00.   

Today it took us longer time than normal. There was heavy traffic starting from our neighborhood area. On my turn while I was driving the canyon area, there was a construction area where the road was narrowed down to only one lane on each direction with the construction dividers so that all the vehicles needed to drive 20-mph for the 65-mph road. On my husband’s turn the situation got even worse. In the middle of nowhere there was a construction area where the traffic was available only one direction only, the other direction was completely forced to stop for quite a long time. We finally arrived at the Navajoland at 6 p.m. which took us 2 hours longer than usual. We were exhausted.

The monsoon of this year must have been harsh for them. Our homesite area was completely covered by tall weeds. And the road on the homesite was muddy. Since our car is a 4WD sitting high, we didn’t have any issues to drive around. Sedan cars would get stuck at the entrance of the road.  

We were all happy to see my mom-in-law and our chihuahua dog; Bucky. He was so excited for our return that he hung around with us all the time. It is always good to back to Navajoland.  I felt my late dad-in-law’s energy being happy for our return.

It was a busy day for my daughter. She needs to do extra assignments for our upcoming trip back to Navajoland. She worked hard so that she was advanced for more than one week in the assignments. I did my part for getting ready for the trip. I cleaned the house and packed the necessary food ingredient. My mom-in-law asked me to cook some foods to share after the memorial service for my late dad-in-law. I am planning to cook fried rice with wild rice and vegetables. We all are looking forward to seeing my mom-in-law and our Chihuahua on the Rez.

I attended the online Reiki gathering at 5 p.m. There were 40 attendees.

Our Reiki teacher shared the story of the Reiki originator; Mr. Mikao Usui. After he was given the wonderful healing energy from the Universe, he shared the gift with many people. He received the gift at the age of 57 and passed away at the age of 61. Even though his teaching activity had continued only 4 years, now it has been spread to all over the world. Our Reiki teacher shared his respect to Usui-Sensei. He said the key to success is to share and give.

One of the attendees asked a question about Reiki teacher getting cancer. I really liked his answer to the attendee. He stayed calm all the time. He mentioned that we should not be fooled by only the appearance. Getting sick or having some types of troubles are just a part of life. It cannot be the cause to judge the person as good or bad. He said he most likely has cancer cells somewhere in his body right now, and he knows people will judge him if he is diagnosed as cancel. Some people judge the healers to have sickness because they think healers can heal everything with their healing power. Our Reiki teacher said it does not work like that. Being sick or cancer cannot be a cause of judgement because the person might be able to learn some great lessons during the process of sickness. We all have some issues in our body, but it matters if the person fuels the issue or the trouble by worrying about it too much. When the person constantly worries about something, it gives the energy to it, then, the issue or the trouble will grow more. The only one thing we can do is shift our feelings and emotions from negative to positive.      

I agree with the Reiki teacher by his saying that we should not fuel to the disease. Rather we should keep focusing on feeling appreciation.

Today is the last day of Obon. I haven’t done anything special for my late mom and my ancestors but I send positive thoughts and appreciation to them in my daily routine. I hope they had a good trip back to this world to check on us.

I wonder how much my late mom has been enjoying in the spirit world. I want her to enjoy there, instead of constantly worrying about us. I guess it will work well for both way for me enjoying my current life and for my late mom enjoying her current life. And eventually I will depart back to my spiritual home ground. Once it happens, I want my family keep on enjoying their life instead of crying for me.

Recently I often think about what I want to live my remainder life. I think it happens to most of the people who have reached to my age where we see our life being limited.

I want to live my life without wasting my energy anymore. I don’t need to become popular among people. I don’t need to be liked by everybody I don’t need to be understood by everybody.  I don’t want to lie to myself. Rather, I want to stay being myself. I always want to be honest to myself. I will live my life by taking good care of myself keeping good share in body, mind, and spirit. And I believe my being true to myself can be some help to make the world to a better place.

I wonder why I wanted to share this with my audience. Right now is during Obon when our ancestors visit us. So maybe one of my ancestors are sharing their wisdom with me.

I woke up with sore muscle from yesterday’s bowling. Still, it is okay because we had fun at the school event.

In the afternoon I watched the lecture of the homeopath course. The teacher shared Ryokan-san’s words and they resonated with my soul. He was a Zen Buddhist monk who lived much of his life as a hermit.

災難に逢う時節には災難に逢うがよく候
死ぬ時節には死ぬがよく候
これはこれ災難をのがるる妙法にて候

良寛

His words resonated with my soul at this moment. It might not if the timing is different from now. His words resonated with me right now because I have finally reached to the point where I can fully understand what he means.

He shared his wisdom when we meet catastrophe. He recommends us not to get panicky, rather, to accept the situation in front of us. Once we accept our fate and let it be, we can stay calm. Even if the catastrophe take our lives, once we fully accept our destiny, the leaving the physical body, the departure from this world to back to our original homeland will be taken place with peace.