Thursday, June 21, early morning: I begin this post high up in the air over the flatlands west of the Rocky Mountains. Soon I will be in Denver, then on to Milwaukee, where my mother-in-law is dying.
I suppose I should apologize for writing so much the past few weeks about death, but I won't. The way I have been thinking of it is this: if I were in the circus, I would write about clowns and elephants. As it is, I happen to be in a time of dying and decreasing function in those about me, so that is what is on my mind.
I am feeling dislocated and anxious, though I suspect this is mostly to do with getting up so early. The day after the longest day of the year and I still arrived at the airport in the dark. Of course, there's also the fact of the suddenness of this trip; this time yesterday I wasn't even at work yet and it was only after lunch it was decided I should come. It's been a whirlwind. But I feel as if I am heading toward something useful at last. My birth family has been in an uproar the past few days over my parents' diminished capacity, my wife has been in Milwaukee while that situation is unfolding, and the friend I wrote about in my last post is facing all that. Meanwhile I sat at home doing housework—useful but feeling irrelevant.
(Speaking of that friend, I might as well admit here to an insecurity: so few people commented on my last post that I fear you hated it; mostly I fear that the person it was about disapproves of it. I have thought of no reason why I should regret it, but I carry the fear anyway. Not your problem, dear reader; saying it in this post is just a way of trying to keep it from clanging about in my head...)
.
Is it perhaps selfish to want to be relevant to other people's process? But of course it is my process, too, and I want to be present for it.
******************************************
Late morning: Now up in the air between Denver and Milwaukee. Nothing to see but agricultural fields all the way to the horizon, and beyond, I imagine. In a certain way this is dull and repetitive to look at, but astonishingly ingenious in design and execution. To think that all of that land was forced into some sort of fecundity by human hands in one way or another—if not directly, then through the machines they brought into being—is unnerving and inspiring. It is difficult for me to imagine the vastness of it until I am up here like this. I especially like the circular fields, clearly made that way to accommodate straight-line sprinklers on a central pivot. (Though I can’t help but wonder about the wasted space that making a circle in the middle of a square implies. I also wonder: if you build your farmhouse within the circle, if you forget to turn the sprinklers off or are unexpectedly called away, do they run into your house, or what? Or are they more sophisticated than that?).
Heather, my spiritual mentor, reminds me to let my grief and pain be embodied, to know what it feels like. The small mind, she warns, wants nothing more than to make it seem as if the concerns, routines and tasks it comes up with are all there is, and that a solution to some problem or other can be found in paying attention to that persistent voice telling me to strive and strive and strive. I know it isn’t so, but it feels like I am doing something, anything, to ward off the fear. This isn’t fear of death, mind you, at least I don’t think so, not my death or anyone else’s. This is fear of disruption, of my comfortable little world being challenged. This is precisely what the Buddha spoke of in his first teachings, that the nature of suffering is this desire to keep things just the same, to fend off the uncomfortable while accepting only what I like. It’s not that he thought this a bad idea, necessarily, but recognized its absolute futility and the inevitable frustration (suffering) of being stymied in that desire over and over again.
Seeing small towns from the air makes clear what we mostly (as a species) come late to understand: after we have cut down all the trees and cleared the land for agriculture, in the places we live we want those trees back and must replant them, this time in neat little rows that define the streets where we plunk our houses down. This seems to be true everywhere in these flat, fertile lands except where the rivers flood, which look to be places where the trees have been allowed to grow undisturbed; from a farmer's perspective the marshy ground good for little else, no doubt.
***********************************
Evening: Now in Milwaukee. This truly is only a bearing witness. Oh, there are a few things to do, a few opinions to voice, a concern or two. But mostly it is a reflection: what a miracle this life is, what a mystery the infolding of our consciousness as it ends. She was here, now mostly she is not, though her body lives on and now and then she rises to the surface (when she recognized I had come Jeanette said, "Well, look who's here!") but mostly not. She is gone and not gone. We spoke of the possibility of chemically inducing a coma to make her less restless and (presumably) more comfortable, but her daughters didn't want that. The distinction is subtle but real to us. What is being here and not being here? Where is that line? Why does the body go on when the spirit is ready to go? For that matter, what influence does the spirit have on the automatic processes of the body? Some, we know, but not total hegemony.
So I will bear witness. I will be helpful where I can, but mostly bear witness. It feels a bit lame to end such a post in such a way, without any profound Buddhist sentiment about death and dying, but there it is. Bearing witness and opening my heart—to Jeannette and to those who love her, to the process she has begun and that only she can decide how to end—that's all I am here to do.
I will share this from Pema Chodron, though:
I suppose I should apologize for writing so much the past few weeks about death, but I won't. The way I have been thinking of it is this: if I were in the circus, I would write about clowns and elephants. As it is, I happen to be in a time of dying and decreasing function in those about me, so that is what is on my mind.
I am feeling dislocated and anxious, though I suspect this is mostly to do with getting up so early. The day after the longest day of the year and I still arrived at the airport in the dark. Of course, there's also the fact of the suddenness of this trip; this time yesterday I wasn't even at work yet and it was only after lunch it was decided I should come. It's been a whirlwind. But I feel as if I am heading toward something useful at last. My birth family has been in an uproar the past few days over my parents' diminished capacity, my wife has been in Milwaukee while that situation is unfolding, and the friend I wrote about in my last post is facing all that. Meanwhile I sat at home doing housework—useful but feeling irrelevant.
(Speaking of that friend, I might as well admit here to an insecurity: so few people commented on my last post that I fear you hated it; mostly I fear that the person it was about disapproves of it. I have thought of no reason why I should regret it, but I carry the fear anyway. Not your problem, dear reader; saying it in this post is just a way of trying to keep it from clanging about in my head...)
.
Is it perhaps selfish to want to be relevant to other people's process? But of course it is my process, too, and I want to be present for it.
******************************************
Late morning: Now up in the air between Denver and Milwaukee. Nothing to see but agricultural fields all the way to the horizon, and beyond, I imagine. In a certain way this is dull and repetitive to look at, but astonishingly ingenious in design and execution. To think that all of that land was forced into some sort of fecundity by human hands in one way or another—if not directly, then through the machines they brought into being—is unnerving and inspiring. It is difficult for me to imagine the vastness of it until I am up here like this. I especially like the circular fields, clearly made that way to accommodate straight-line sprinklers on a central pivot. (Though I can’t help but wonder about the wasted space that making a circle in the middle of a square implies. I also wonder: if you build your farmhouse within the circle, if you forget to turn the sprinklers off or are unexpectedly called away, do they run into your house, or what? Or are they more sophisticated than that?).
I think I’m looking down on the Mississipi River now. It’s
big and long and water, in any case. I figure I’m in about the right place....
My friend Tamara reminded me that the process of being a witness to the life-transitions of other people is one of watchful waiting, of just being with rather than doing. I admitted to one of my friends yesterday (before it had been decided I would make this trip) that I organize and clean and tidy because I believe, somewhere inside me, that no one will be hurt or die as long as I keep things neat. I can keep us all safe with a good vacuuming and reorganizing of the paint shelf. Let me tell you, the tool area in the basement has never looked so good.
My friend Tamara reminded me that the process of being a witness to the life-transitions of other people is one of watchful waiting, of just being with rather than doing. I admitted to one of my friends yesterday (before it had been decided I would make this trip) that I organize and clean and tidy because I believe, somewhere inside me, that no one will be hurt or die as long as I keep things neat. I can keep us all safe with a good vacuuming and reorganizing of the paint shelf. Let me tell you, the tool area in the basement has never looked so good.
Heather, my spiritual mentor, reminds me to let my grief and pain be embodied, to know what it feels like. The small mind, she warns, wants nothing more than to make it seem as if the concerns, routines and tasks it comes up with are all there is, and that a solution to some problem or other can be found in paying attention to that persistent voice telling me to strive and strive and strive. I know it isn’t so, but it feels like I am doing something, anything, to ward off the fear. This isn’t fear of death, mind you, at least I don’t think so, not my death or anyone else’s. This is fear of disruption, of my comfortable little world being challenged. This is precisely what the Buddha spoke of in his first teachings, that the nature of suffering is this desire to keep things just the same, to fend off the uncomfortable while accepting only what I like. It’s not that he thought this a bad idea, necessarily, but recognized its absolute futility and the inevitable frustration (suffering) of being stymied in that desire over and over again.
Seeing small towns from the air makes clear what we mostly (as a species) come late to understand: after we have cut down all the trees and cleared the land for agriculture, in the places we live we want those trees back and must replant them, this time in neat little rows that define the streets where we plunk our houses down. This seems to be true everywhere in these flat, fertile lands except where the rivers flood, which look to be places where the trees have been allowed to grow undisturbed; from a farmer's perspective the marshy ground good for little else, no doubt.
***********************************
Evening: Now in Milwaukee. This truly is only a bearing witness. Oh, there are a few things to do, a few opinions to voice, a concern or two. But mostly it is a reflection: what a miracle this life is, what a mystery the infolding of our consciousness as it ends. She was here, now mostly she is not, though her body lives on and now and then she rises to the surface (when she recognized I had come Jeanette said, "Well, look who's here!") but mostly not. She is gone and not gone. We spoke of the possibility of chemically inducing a coma to make her less restless and (presumably) more comfortable, but her daughters didn't want that. The distinction is subtle but real to us. What is being here and not being here? Where is that line? Why does the body go on when the spirit is ready to go? For that matter, what influence does the spirit have on the automatic processes of the body? Some, we know, but not total hegemony.
So I will bear witness. I will be helpful where I can, but mostly bear witness. It feels a bit lame to end such a post in such a way, without any profound Buddhist sentiment about death and dying, but there it is. Bearing witness and opening my heart—to Jeannette and to those who love her, to the process she has begun and that only she can decide how to end—that's all I am here to do.
I will share this from Pema Chodron, though:
Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible in us be found.
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