Being IS Doing

Today marks my one year anniversary as a bereavement counselor for Hospice.  It has been a heart-expanding year; a year of daily karuna practice. Every day, I have been called to open hearted listening, just Being with someone, compassionately. 

Inside the practice of karuna and active presence, the practice of managing chaos resides.  How much of life is chaos and how much of life is predictable?  A psychologist posed this question to me a few weeks ago and I've been asking it to others. Most people rate chaos quite high; some people go for a 60/40 split with predictability having an edge. That was my position too, but it was surprising when this doctor stated that only 5% was actually chaotic.  Of that 5%, he asserted, 4% was merely irritating or annoying.  The only real out of control chaos in life is about 1%.

Of course, in hospice work, we are helping people who are in that 1%. They are panicked, watching their loved one deteriorate, providing medical care they never imagined they would have to do. While many people prefer to die at home, the toll on their families is enormous. Wives, husbands, children, grandchildren and even family friends step up and gamely administer medications, change and clean the frail bodies, tempt them with tasty treats that can no longer be swallowed. And they are grieving in anticipation, not knowing when it will "end," and dimly recognizing that the end of life will not end the grief.

Daily, people ask me, "what can I do?" I smile gently and lean forward.  Just BE, I answer. Sit with him and tell him you love him, or don't even say it out loud.  Hold her hand and sing quietly. Open your heart and just BE with your loved one, as calmly as you can, pulsing with love, light and gratitude.

Afterwards, come and sit with me.  I also will hold your hand and walk with you for a while.  And if you are wondering what to do with all this pain, I have a few tricks up my sleeve. They won't fix it or make the sadness go away.  But they can help you manage it, learn from it, grow with it. And one of the best lessons I've learned this year is that sometimes, you don't really have to do anything.

Just Be with it.

Somewhere packed away, I have my Certificate of Being, bestowed by a humorous professor from the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology.  I think I will dig it out and put it on my desk.

Denial is not a river in Egypt

I have an unreasonable concept of my own "strength." Competence, capability and general good health, coupled with a can-do just about anything attitude has gotten me through a lot of sticky situations, troubles, traumas, etc. For all the times I think my eyes and senses are wide open, aware of what is around me, I am frequently out of tune with what is happening inside. Sure, I spend a lot of time ruminating, turning thoughts, ideas, sensory impressions over and over in my mind. But when it comes to what is happening inside my body, I tune it out.  When I start to feel a little slow, fatiqued, maybe even (gasp) a little bit ill, I deny it.  I zap myself with vitamins, teas, homepathics and plow through each day, telling myself I am not sick. Oh no, there is no time for such weakness. I don't get sick.

The effort this denial takes makes me snappish. With apologies to those in close proximity, I put so much energy into pretending to feel normal that I have no time for questions. The longer I ignore the signs, the louder they get, hammering on the Denial Door. Open up and take care of yourself! Obstinate, I drink a glass of vitamin C. Cough, cough.  No, no, I feel FINE. Just a little tired….

 After a week of feeling fatigued and coughing in a very annoying manner, I finally went to the doctor.  I would not necessarily have done this on my own; it took a doctor, a nurse, a social worker and a Rabbi to convince me, and a chaplain who took me by the arm to walk me into the employee clinic!  Go, they all said – GO, NOW. 

With thanks to my colleagues, I lay my denial gently on the ground. I don't have a minor summer cold; I have pneumonia. Take the week off, everyone says.  Denial lifts its head in concern, but I have to admit, the best thing to do is nothing at all except rest, take meds, rest some more.

Unless that River in Eqypt sends a rescue boat, this just might be a message I can't ignore.

The Movement of Moving

The dust has settled and it feels like there is so much of it, as if it were rising in drifts up to my knees.  I am tripping over boxes, bags filled with off season clothes, suitcases half emptied because I have not decided what to unpack into. 

I have always been about movement – when I have something to say, I gesture, move, pantomime. In crisis I seek ways to move the energy, release negative and overwhelming feelings that are coursing through my body, mind and spirit.  I hate being stuck and while most of the past seven years have demonstrated steady movement, there is a part of me that was glued in place. Now, prying and wrenching, discarding and tossing, gathering and grumbling, I have moved.

The old place was a cocoon, dark and embracing. Nestled into a hill and facing north, its eyes were hooded with shades to keep out the chill. Even when they were rolled up, only dim light came in to the family room, the place we spent a lot of time. The living room was brighter but for some reason we did not use this room as much.  The kitchen had big windows, looking out on the hill and the fern forest in spring and summer, shaded by a black walnut tree and desiccated cedars, one of which hosts a swarm of bees. The new tenants are city folk and are concerned: will their son run into the road? Will the bees chase him?  "Just don't throw things at the bee hive," I advise, in my best country girl, nonchalant manner. 

In contrast, this house floods with light from early dawn till dusk. It is quieter here. At the old place, there was constant lawn mowing as if the neighbors were members of a secret competitive club, with a prize for how often one could mow. Red tractors, green ones, stand on the back mowers, which the neighbor across the street used while wearing a black back brace around his plaid shirt. My own John Deere stopped working years ago and the new lawn guy wears an acid green tee shirt as he walks behind his orange mower, delivered in a horse trailer.  At the new place, I have yet to hear anything more than birdsong, frogs and the cicadas right now, signaling another searingly hot day. Maybe the lawns are mowed by pookahs silently in the middle of the night. I have to admit it is pretty here. The deck is bordered by a small pond with pink water lilies tucked under a straggly wild blackberry bush. The land in back includes more than 50 acres of forest, wetland, hill and glen, with lovely mossy paths and tenacious trees growing out of granite cracks.

I took the long road home last night, winding around an old country highway, over the Bear Mountain Bridge. I drove past the road I lived on growing up, past the park where we'd go to see the bear cubs. It took me through the town where my eldest went to nursery school, past the turn off to our first house. It was as if I were moving through remnants of the past as I drove to the present.  Along with the boxes, pots and pans, my collection of colored crackle glass, hundreds of books, records and cds, I have moved with memories, carrying them in my heart, into this place of light and hopefully, new possibilities.

Life After Death

Working in an interfaith, spiritually centered Hospice affiliated with a Catholic Hospital, I hear many people talk about what they expect after death. They say with certainty that they know they will see their loved ones again, or they joke that the husband, mother or father is up there (pointing to the ceiling) having an argument with Aunt Elsie, or driving everyone a little crazy.  It's a comforting thought for believers.

I've also listened to grievers who are troubled by their beliefs. Some worry about their loved ones, for whom they put so much time and desperate effort in trying to keep comfortable.  One man said he spent most of his time praying for his wife, because he feared that she needed him.  This week, a woman said, weeping, that she had the unnerving feeling that her husband wanted her "up there" with him. It felt like a pull in his direction and was very disturbing. She was not interested in harming herself in order to get there but she had this very clear feeling and was troubled by it.  This was in Group and several other members offered comfort and suggestions for her. I asked her if she could turn it around and ask him to be present with her here, and she again said that she thought he wanted her to come to him. 

In my spontaneous Sagittarian way, I blurted out without thinking, "well, it's not very nice of him, is it!"  The woman, along with everyone else in the room burst out laughing.  I feared I had been too provocative, but really, it seemed to me that she is alive and should be free to live fully, after his death.  If there is some presence there calling her, where is he expecting her to go? It seems almost rude of him (if it IS him and not a turned around thought about giving up) after all those years of care she gave him.  It would be nicer for her to find ways to re-engage in her life now, despite the sorrow and loneliness.

I have been thinking a lot about Life after Death myself lately but not in the same way.  To me, life after death is what you do with your life after your loved one died.  Life is not a passive place in which to wait, although grief often feels like an empty room in which everything is askew.  It is up to us  to embrace life, reshape it, re-invest in activity, new endeavors, new friendships and maybe even new relationships.  Immediately after my husband died, I heard a voice in my head saying, "your life has radically changed. Now WHAT?"  This has been the motivating thought even when I had no answers about how to live and walked around for years in a life that felt like an alien landscape. 

It is not easy to rekindle a desire for living when all you can manage is the most minimal of activities.  But over time, life begins to be more comfortable, even interesting.  There is life after death, and it can be whatever you want it to be. It is yours to shape.  Make it beautiful, full and fun.

Hostage to Fortune

"I think to love, for such a long time, is a detriment." The woman, a widow after 40 years of marriage, wiped her eyes as she said this. She added that she planned to always wear her wedding rings.  I smiled sympathetically and nodded to encourage her to continue, noticing that she wore a man's wedding ring on a chain around her neck, obviously her late husband's.

Although I was there for a counseling session, she had set the table elegantly. Dark pink napkins were tucked under white soup bowls, the only splash of color in the white room. I could feel the heat of the stove as I followed her into the kitchen. Even though I had dinner plans, I recognized her need to serve, to sit with someone in her empty apartment, to prepare something for someone else.  It's all about her, anyway, I reminded myself as I sat down to sip a small amount of soup.  Sharing some food with her, appreciating her effort, was part of the unconditional positive regard I was there to provide.  "Mmm," I said. "Delicious."

As I listened to her express her sorrow, I wondered if what she said is true. Is it a detriment to love someone for a long time or for any amount of time for that matter? Do we really offer "hostages to fortune," as Sir Francis Bacon said, when we love?  Isn't it worth the risk, even though we will lose eventually? I wonder if comments like these reflect more of a desire to control or avoid emotion than a true regret.  Yeats said we should never give ALL our heart, "for he gave all his heart and lost."  Is it a waste of time just because we hurt when our love dies? Honestly, is it possible NOT to love, just to avoid the inevitable pain of losing?

Consider the alternative, if this were possible.  Human beings seem hardwired to develop connections, to be in and thrive in relationship.  It's almost like it is coded in our DNA, to relate, to mate, to love, to hope, hopefully to grow. It is not easy but the challenge of it can be thrilling. Consciously, I'll offer myself up as a hostage to this challenge, because this is where the flow and the juice and the pulsing blood of life is.  It may be a full catastrophe but I don't believe for a minute that it is a detriment.

The weight of love

Has buoyed me up

Till my head

Knocks against the sky.

~William Carlos Williams

Euphemistically Speaking

Dear readers (all twelve of you), I have been absent for a while as I adjust to the working world. In addition to building The Karuna Project's private practice, I am a Bereavement Counselor at Holy Name Hospice now, several days a week. It is wonderful, sometimes painful but very meaningful work. I hope to be more present on this blog in the future!

Words, words, words.  We all use them but they often mean subtly different things to each of us.  Words are affected by interpretation, culture, by the books we read or do not read. Choreographer Pina Bausch said that "words can't do more than just evoke things" adding that this was the purpose of art.

This is why I love poetry.  The literal words, distilled down to a minimal essence of expression, evoke more than inform. In poetry, there is a visceral resonance that speaks to the heart.  Reading a poem, a curious and literally minded colleague asked me, "but what does it MEAN?"  I dislike picking apart the meaning of poems. Listen, flow with them. FEEL what it means to you.  It's like staring at a Rothko painting; at first it is just a blue canvas, a pretty color. You think, what does it mean? Open your heart, your eyes, enter the color. Movement exits there, deep blue washes you. The painting becomes a meditation, awakening feelings, associations, stillness. This resonance cannot be described, even though I am attempting to do so.  It must be felt.

Grief is like that too. Someone said, "I cannot speak about this, it is too deep." Talking helps, but no words can really describe the dark abyss, the agitation, fear, the dissonance of life after a death. And we are hindered by a habit of using euphemisms that purposely obscure grief.  He "passed away."  This might be a good descriptor of a quiet, peaceful death but it doesn't work for a sudden one. She's "gone to a better place."  This is comforting to many people, but infuriating to some. I "lost" my husband.  A woman in one group asked testily, "why do we say he is lost?"  He's not a set of keys or one of my three pairs of glasses that have gone missing.

Good question.  "Loss" refers to what WE have lost – our partner, lover, friend, mother, sister, daughter. The loss of this relationship is what we mourn. The loss is of whom we are, our role, even our purpose. The hole in the middle of our lives where that person is not creates a place in which we wander, yearning, seeking a way to repair the chasm into which we plunged at the moment of death.

So why talk at all? Words are what we use to build a bridge.  Words are how we connect to each other, and when we speak, we also evoke. The position of our body, whether or not we are making eye contact, the tone of voice, our eyes welling up with tears,  color our words. These subtle clues create a responsive resonance. The listener, understanding and sympathizing, evokes a metaphorical buoy we can hold on to.

Maybe words have no literal truth at all. The Heart Sutra of Buddhism says form is emptiness, emptiness is form.  I use my words to reach you and perhaps they do.  Or maybe each word leaves my mouth and disappears into nothingness, flitting by you like a wisp of air, barely noticed. While I am no longer inside the chasm, I sometimes sit on its edge, dangling my feet down into the dark. If you want to know about it, maybe you could just sit next to me for a while. Sometimes I just can't speak about it.