Attachment and letting go...

I did something I rarely do today. I had a raging migraine which I simply could not work through, sit up through, push through. I gave up about 2:00 and went to bed.

I don't think my head hit the pillow before I was asleep, brain flickering in that slow-seizing wave that *is* a migraine. When I am awake I am all senses, all raw reaction, every cell grating against the bouncing light, the frenzied collision of air against my skin, the smell of my own hair and the lavender body wash lingering around me.

When I am asleep the brain interprets stimulus in its own inexplicable ways. Curled with his back into the curve of my recumbent body is a small, muscular, compact dog. Slick-haired, breath slowing rising and falling, his head resting on my crooked arm. He smells like Fritos. His whiskers twitch.

I wake enough to realize that "he" is the weight of a bunched blanket, a pillow migrated to lie against my arm, the warmth of my own breath. "He" is not there. I hang onto the "him" that has not been there for 30 years. Tears well up into that emptiness where he was once.

Attachment, the Buddha called it. I hold on to my attachment, brought unexpectedly to the surface by a thunderless storm raging in my brain. I enjoy the memory of that joyful little body, and my attachment to it, touch it once more - lightly - and let it go.