Devoted Sisters

One of our favorite songs is "Sisters" from that Danny Kaye/Bing Crosby movie, White Christmas. Rosemary Clooney and Vera Ellen, with her impossibly tiny waist, sing it first, dressed in matching blue gowns, carrying blue feather fans. My sisters and I sometimes call each other on the phone and sing the verses to each other: "Sisters. Sisters! There were never such devoted Sisters…" Our devotion to each other spreads like golden tendrils across hills, mountains and right now, through telephone lines out to the West. Our voices, our minds and our hearts reach out, trying to touch, listen and soothe one of our own.

In a distant city, in an impossibly hot desert, shiny buildings sprout like the models of alien landscapes in old sci-fi movies. Neon flashes, drunken tourists and celebrities stagger through facsimiles of world wonders. Gondolas float on a fake river in a shopping mall, and a giant, artificial Sphinx does not sweat in Vegas any more than the real one does in Giza. And somewhere, on the 8th floor of one of these buildings, our baby sister is lying on a couch. She is in pain; she is feeling weak but she is strong and intrepid. She has paper and art supplies right next to her, and when she cannot sleep, or when she is waiting for another pill to kick in, she draws. Her feelings flow from her heart and mind, bypassing her damaged, soon to be repaired chest, pouring color and emotion out on the page. Her littlest child stands next to her, helping her color.

We, the older ones, cannot quite believe this is happening to her. We don’t have cancer in our family, we whisper to each other. I hold the phone away from my mouth as she tells me the latest news, which is not as good as we had hoped. I wish I was holding her close and I am glad I am not, because then she would know that I am sobbing, soundlessly, helplessly, hoping she cannot hear me. Why should I weep when it is not my body that has been assaulted? Why am I vicariously sad? This is not my pain; this is not about me. This is happening to my beautiful Baby Sister. I remember rushing home after high school to watch Sesame Street with her; I remember her tiny voice chattering away to her three imaginary friends.

She makes another drawing, this one with a tentative smile on her face. We all want to tell her she will be just fine when this is over, in a few months, honey, it will be alright. And we do tell her this – only no one knows if it is really true. This is just another moment where we have to narrow our focus, turn inward, draw out all our resources. This is just another moment where we have to reach across the continent and remind her that no one ever had such devoted sisters. Even though she will always be the Baby, she just might be the bravest one of all.

Living a Meaningful Life

I spent last week at the International Conference on Grief and Bereavement in Contemporary Society, which was held in conjunction with the Association for Death Education and Counseling's annual meeting. There were hundreds of people there from all over the world – scholars, doctors, clinicians, funeral directors, hospice personnel, counselors and therapists. Research was presented, panel discusses attended. There were keynote speeches on compassion and dying mindfully (Roshi Joan Halifax), on identifying at risk families for early intervention at Sloan Kettering Memorial Cancer Center (David Kissane). A psychologist from Australia, Dr. Chris Hall, spoke about the multiple government outreach programs to help the communities that suffered major losses in the Victoria Bush Fires of 2008, which had me and the woman next to me shaking our heads, saying, "that would never happen in America."

What struck me was how kind everyone was, how welcoming. Of course, everyone there works with raw pain and suffering, and has learned how to attain some balance. The compassion and thoughtfulness of attendees was palpable and inspiring. It was also interesting how many people who work in this field have come to it in response to their own experiences with death. It is one of the ways they seek to turn bad into good; to make meaning.

When I first read about the concept of making meaning after death, I did not understand it. To me, it was the equivalent of that supposedly "helpful" statement, "he's in a better place." As if being here, with our children, was not good enough? How could his death MEAN something, other than pain and horror?

Robert A. Neimeyer, PhD, is the scholar who coined this phrase, saying that it is a necessary part of the reconstruction of life after suffering the loss of a loved one. But Neimeyer is talking about living a meaningful life after this loss. It is what you DO with it. Some people start scholarships, some people plant gardens. Some people become grief counselors and name their work after a tiny word found on the top of a page.

I attended a lecture by Dr. Neimeyer at the Conference. He read a poem he had written about a couple who was in counseling with him after the suicide of their 19 year old daughter. He said that "we seek the meaning that is viable, not necessarily valid." In the process of reconstructing our lives, we come up with ways to cope, to live and to grow, yet we will always have gaps. The meaning we attribute to our lives after the death of someone we love will always have some rough patches, some areas of unsettled dissonance.

Meaning is what you make of it, I guess. While it makes little sense to me that Alby is gone, before he could see the graduations, the weddings, etcetera, our lives have meaning. Some of this sense of purpose is related to him, some of it is reaction to his death. And a good deal of the meaning we make correlates with our own growth as we deepen and mellow. Hopefully over time, this growing purposeful, meaningful life slowly becomes as valid as it is viable.

Buttercup in the morning

This morning I ventured out to Buttercup, walking quietly, following the path, following my breath, listening to bird song and squirrel rustles in the trees. Two deer ran across the path; two beaver stood on islands of their own creation before slipping in to the water and gliding away. I tossed a pebble into the water and watched the ripples change the reflection of the bare trees standing above the beaver dam. The geese on the other side silently swam away.

Stillness has never been comfortable for me. I am so action oriented; I want to DO rather than just BE. I want to BE something – writer, dancer, mother, wife.

This is how I describe myself, by a list of activities. There is some trepidation to claim the fullness and wholeness of who I really am, a struggling, evolving human trying to BE the best I can be. And even that is an activity – I am always trying to do something with my Being. Birds, frogs, beavers do not worry about this - or do they? They are busy building, nesting, swimming in the swampy water. But I treat my life as if it were some lump of unformed clay that I am supposed to mold into a beautiful, useful shape. I treat my losses as if they are obstacles rather than gifts for discovering a deeper way of Being. The losses, the gains are part of the shape of my life. Why do I always want to make them into something else?

It doesn't matter, really. I followed the path and my breath. I squatted on the wooden bridge and smelled the algae in the water. Bugs buzzed around my hair; they touched the water creating tiny ripples. The beavers did not return but it did not matter. I filled my basket with ferns, daisies and flowering branches. I filled my body with the sound and smells of the woodland. I walked back home, quietly.

Let it go

This morning I woke up, fearful. This is a rather common occurrence; I wake up, not quite rested enough and my head fills up with worries. My mind spins and I feel afraid. What if this happens and then that will happen and it will be really bad and what can I do to prevent it, oh no, oh no OH NO!!

A little later, my partner said to me that he had never met anyone who was so invested in cutting through fear. He said he's seen me do it over and over; I am afraid and I cut through it with laser like efficiency. And I know that fear does not diminish courage – in fact, courage is (as Winston Churchill said) proceeding in spite of fear. Perhaps waves of grief have been replaced by rivulets of fear as my life is in flux. As I wait for the shift to take shape, the ground beneath me heaves and shakes. I desperately cast about for something to cling to when it would be better to bend my knees a little, spread out my arms and find a way to balance myself on the groundless ground.

It's a habit, he said. I guess he is right; I am repeating myself over and over. If only I could trust more – my history proves that things always work out, sometimes in surprising, unforeseen ways. But I am so impatient for the next phase to begin; I am poised on tippy-toes and waiting to jump in. Then he said, "The problem is hope. Hope and fear always walk hand in hand. Without hope, you don't have to fear anything."

This is a tough one. As a positive thinking individual, I tend to believe that having hope and intention is a good thing. But is intention the same as hope? Hoping and wishing become longing and yearning which lead to worry and disappointment when the hope is dashed or even just delayed. Intention, on the other hand, is focused and active but I always forget the second part of intention: State it clearly and then….Let it go. Lay the foundation, clarify, clear the deck, set the stage – whatever metaphor works but then….get out of the way. It comes back to trusting that, when the conditions are right, the right things will happen.

So, hope and fear do not have to be my best friends. It certainly would be more helpful not to be involved in wishful thinking and the accompanying angst. I have set my intentions very clearly. I have made the plan, the structure is in place. I have all the tools I need to shift my world. I just have to trust that.

Forget about the Rapture - try Karuna instead

A small group of people, fueled by a pastor whose church has been raking in millions on his claims, have declared May 21, 2011 the End of the World. Some people have sold all their belongings and piled into cars, vans and RVs, driving around the country to convince the rest of us to Believe Before It Is Too Late. They are standing on street corners, stopping people as they go about their own business. The signs are everywhere, and I am not talking about floods, fires and famine. There are signs throughout the New York City Subway system, people are carrying placards in Times Square. The New York Times reports that a nice family from New Jersey has dragged their three reluctant, skeptical teenagers to the City to spread the word. The kids wonder if they will still have to make their beds.

Doomsday rumblings are nothing new. The Right (or possibly Wrong) Reverend who predicts the End this time draws his calculations supposedly from Biblical sources and says that while the true believers will be lifted up sometime on Saturday, the rest of us will roast until October 21. It will be oblivion by then. He said the same thing in 1994. End Day predictions have been made with certainty and the accompanying pamphlets, placards and proselytizers in 1844, 1914, 1918, 1924 by the same group, 1942, 1981 and again in 1988,'89.'92,'94,'95…..Apparently, Sir Isaac Newton even calculated the date: 2060.

Some claim the ancient Mayans have also predicted the End (or could it be the New Beginning?) on December 21, 2012. Personally, I think the Mayans got tired of carving, thinking that 500 years into the future was enough to predict. There is a large movement of intelligent people who believe that Mayans were predicting a major shift in consciousness. If we are all about to experience a worldwide consciousness shift for the better, if we could truly develop peaceful, respectful dialog across the dinner table, across political aisles and across borders, then I say, bring it on. I am not exactly seeing signs of an increase in civil discourse right now; political wannabes still spout vitriol and lies, governments still send in the guns, crazed fanatics are routinely blowing themselves into tiny bits, along with as many people as possible for some kind of "cause." This morning it happened inside a hospital.

Rapture literally means "to catch up" or "to snatch." To be rapt means to be engrossed or absorbed. To be enraptured means to be transported with emotion or filled with joy. Which brings me to my question:

Where is the joy? How do we trust that we will wake up tomorrow and it will be a good day? What can we do to change our attitude to approach any day as if it is a good one? How do we stop our rapt attachment to negative thoughts, worries and fear? I don't for a minute believe that selling all my earthly belongings and standing on a hill with my arms up waiting to be wafted into heaven is the answer.

Karuna is the answer. Compassion, first applied to my unruly mind which can't seem to stop its habit of drawing false conclusions and believing the worst is about to happen. Karuna, pouring like honey on all my self-created obstacles. Compassion radiating out towards the people I love, once karuna has soothed my inner beast. Karuna will bring my arms down if they reach away from what is real, to gently wrap them around the people I love, soothing them as well. Joy can be generated by spreading karuna out to the whole world.

As I write this, there have been no earthquakes, no beam-ups. The Doomsayers are still standing in the subway stations holding their pamphlets. I've got cinnamon rolls in the oven and nothing says karuna more than something freshly baked. Take a deep breath. As you exhale slowly, breathe compassion out towards all.

A tribute

I thought I would write something new but words fail me. I offer this, spoken at the first planting of the Spiral Garden, on May 6, 2006.

When I first met Alby he planted a huge garden, nearly half an acre. He was always full of garden plans, flowering gardens, vegetable gardens, dreams of ginseng growing in the woods. Together we planted lilies and hostas to feed the deer; we played together in our new home and we grew little people.

We used this poem at our wedding and gave it away as favors: The faith waiting in the heart of the seed promises a miracle of life which it cannot prove at once.

The heart of the seed promises abundance in its future flowering.

The seed of a new baby promises unimaginable miracles in first discoveries.

The promise of miracles is found in each of these amazing children, and I feel strongly that our partnership and love helped guide them into the people they are today. They continue to teach me and fill my life with abundance with their ideas, insights, compassion and hope.

The faith that Alby and I could step off the cliff into the unknown together, the heart in the seed of our life blossomed into blessings of home, travel, laughter and love, and even in the midst of the shock and grief of this past year, and in the suspended place of my life now without him, I am reminded over and over how I still live in the abundance we created.

Alby, you have been released into pure energy, and these remains are simply the dust left behind. You are all around us, in the air we breathe, in the feelings we have for each other, in the music we hear and in the love we share.

Alby, May everything you have given us live in us and let our legacy be to create abundance of love and blessings in our lives.

Everything we need, everything we are and can become is right here, right now.

Il faut cultiver le jardin.

Intuition

Last week I did not follow my intuition again. I was traveling from the top of Manhattan to the bottom, heading for a water taxi across the Hudson to a restaurant in Liberty State Park to meet my daughter for lunch. I took the A train from the last stop – or first, depending on how you look at it – down to the World Trade Center. Surfacing, I oriented to the west and trekked across town, through the winding streets towards the river. I passed the PATH train station and my inner voice said, "you should take this train."

Of course, I did not listen. I had my plan and I was sticking to it, even though I was already late and probably missed the 11:30 boat. I look across the water and see the restaurant, just north of the Statue of Liberty. I arrive at the ferry terminal; no boats. Realizing that I actually do not know where the taxi dock is, I run down to a nearby marina, circling through the roller bladers, tourists snapping photos, children eating snacks. A man emerges from a schooner and says, "I don't think the taxi runs on the weekend."

My daughter calls. I am becoming frantic. She has limited time and now I have to dash back across town to that train. Off I go, asking various people which train to take, where to get off; I jump out at the first Jersey stop and ascend on the world's longest escalator up to a nearly deserted square. Now I can see the back of the Statue, and Battery Park across the water. I ask again and find that I have to take another train, called the Light Rail. I am at Liberty, but do not know where the restaurant is and she doesn't know where the train station is. The trip has taken two and a half hours and I am still not quite there. I do the most natural thing; I burst into tears. Her fiancé says they will pick me up. I calm myself and finally we sit down to lunch and a nice, short visit.

It occurs to me that this journey is actually a metaphor for my life right now. I am stuck in my plan, running around in frantic circles, feeling like I am not quite getting there. My intuition tells me that I must take the PATH and I ignore the message. Yet, when I backtrack, get on the path to the unknown, ascend into new territory, everything works out.

I keep circumventing the obvious. The river can't be pushed or even crossed; in fact, I had to go deep underneath it in order to emerge into the sunlight. My own worry and fear kept me from getting there sooner; I did not investigate the alternatives. I was not prepared to shift from my original plan but change was required. It was only when I lightened up, trusted my instincts and asked for help that I finally arrived.