Tag: death

The Vigil

I hate waiting. It is a character flaw.

I should be a model of patience by now.

I am not.

It is uncertainty that bothers me most.

I don’t trust easily. I am a small “c” control freak. If a job needs to be done well, I need to do it. Etc.

I could analyze ad infinitum how I evolved this way but I think it is pretty textbook. Chaotic childhood. Addicted parents. Chronic upheaval and instability.

To not become something of a control freak in such an environment would be a little crazy in its own right.

So even if waiting for what I expect will be a positive outcome, I dither.

I harbor the anxiety that the proverbial rug will be pulled out from under my proverbial feet.

Op. cit. childhood.

The trick is to manage the anxiety of waiting and not the other way around, letting anxiety manage you.

I sometimes think of the frightened bird hiding in the reeds in a vignette from the classic Disney animated film, Fantasia.

Instead of keeping her head down and staying put, the bird panics. She flies out of her hiding space into a hunter’s clear shot. I had similar metaphorical experiences in my life. Many instances when things might have gone much better had I simply kept my head down and my mouth shut.

But no. Anxiety is a powerful driver. And with a nervous system deeply gouged with life threatening memories of a danger-filled childhood, it is not an easy emotion to quell in emotional heat.

Sometimes the emotional game in my head was akin to playing defense in a basketball game. Feinting. Parrying. Watching for one move or another on someone else’s part. Blocking constantly, frantically, and in this analogy, one’s own emotions to boot. I already need a shower.

Waiting drags at the nerves. It forces you to think or, at the very least, spend time alone with your thoughts. While it might benefit you to think about anything else but what you are waiting on, that is easier said than done.

I remember back to memorable waiting periods in my life. For grades to be posted. For a boyfriend to call. For the outcome of a job interview. For my children to be born. For my father to pick me up. Ordinary life events made tolerable or intolerable in direct relation to the extent of my anxiety and distrust of life.

Let go, the self-help books say. Let go and let god, the 12 step programs say. Let go, the religious tracts say and, if you fall, god will pick you up and you will fly. That is a lot of faith to invest in reassuring platitudes. If, and especially when, life has given you plenty of personal evidence to the contrary.

I have slowly learned positive benefits of cultivating patience. It makes waiting easier. It lessens the gap between triumph and disaster. As Kipling counseled in his poem If, I have learned to “treat those two imposters just the same.” Well, similarly at any rate.

A friend from long ago suffered from a rare and capricious form of cancer. She traveled as far as Sweden to the only clinic in the world that specialized in treatment of her condition. She wrote about waiting. For test results. For updates. For word of developments on her condition. Her writing was full of frustration for what she couldn’t control. She sounded like a lot of us managing much less difficult circumstances.

My friend died. And that was the end of her uncertainty about everything. Everything ends eventually. Death is so final, after all.

It seems that is the trick of life and living. We do what we have to do while we have to do it until one day we don’t. Or can’t. And then really, really can’t.

We can be patient and learn to put up with life’s uncertainties or we can act out along the way like overtired toddlers. The end result is the same. How we handle these inevitable frustrations is what informs the quality of the journey. That is going to be a lot more important to you later than you may realize now. Trust me.

I have been that peevish toddler in the past having a temper tantrum and throwing shade at every person I perceived as an impediment to my goals and wishes. I have also hung back and talked with others in the queue misery bitching about our shared calamity. We often got a laugh out of it and a shared – if temporary – sense of connection. It was the spoonful of sugar that made the line move faster.

So today I wait again. For an uncertain outcome. In a dire situation. I am better at discerning what I can control and what I can’t. The person for whom I am holding vigil is on their own journey. I am simply a fellow traveler.

On that note, I am going to go top up my coffee. Completely within my control.

A chore utterly without frustration.

Unless the coffee is lukewarm.

I hate lukewarm coffee.

Letting Go of the Reins

One day I will be taken. I don’t know how or when, of course. All I know is that leaving Earth – the only home I am familiar with – is inevitable.

It is a mildly discomfiting feeling but doesn’t consume my daily thoughts. Except some days, it does.

Does death scare me? I suppose so, yes, on some level. In the same way going on a trip to any unknown destination scares me. More nervousness than fear. Traveling is a hassle. There are bound to be nerves. Any trip causes internal and external upheaval. What do I pack for starters?

I have lived long enough and traveled often enough to know that wherever I go, there I am. Exotic destinations and white sandy beaches stretching off into the distance are alluring. I appreciate them in direct correlation to the vantage point of the mood and headspace I am in. Over my lifetime, positive and negative internal states have been many and various. My internal state always mattered in my recollection of the experience more than any external situation I was in. I could appreciate or adapt myself to the degree that I was capable of reacting to or appreciating it.

One stunning travel memory was the beach at Hikkaduwa, Sri Lanka. Local boys brought us freshly cut spears of pineapple that dripped with juice and had the mouth feel of biting into heavy whipped cream. I snorkeled in shallow waters off the beaches there. I nearly inhaled water amazed and distracted by the orderly kaleidoscope of colors among fish wending their way through equally colorful coral reefs.

When I think of travel experiences that stayed with me, I think about the synchronicity between my inner self and what was going on outside me. Often nothing. Standing at a rock cairn in the Himalayas, I watched clouds gambol across the peak of Mt. Everest in the distance. No hurry, no drama. Just mountains and clouds being mountains and clouds. Just being.

I often try to reconcile the disparity between growth and stagnation. It is said life on Earth is largely for spiritual education. Damned if I know exactly how that works. Damned if I have ever been able to fully recognize and internalize graduation markers from one “grade” to the next.

I only know by comparison that my values, hopes, and ambitions are radically different than those of a younger me. Younger me was largely consumed by the drive for survival. Older me wonders more often what survival’s end will be like. I often reflect on the enduring shame and distress certain actions or situations created in me as a youth. Those situations would never happen now and the memories cause me pain and pause. Maybe that is the point. That feels like learning.

I have often said, however, that many life lessons I learned I would rather have read in a book. Were the lessons of devastation of loss, humiliation, upheaval and searing emotional pain really necessary for the ultimate good of my eternal soul? That seems doubtful. I spent a lot of time wondering if those crushing lessons were simply a case of me being the a—hole. The uncomfortable answer was often yes.

Life for me has been like some talented, untrained filly full of spirit and energy and bumping into its mother and the paddock rails out of sheer, unbridled enthusiasm. The filly needed to grow up, become trained, focus that energy and spirit in a controlled way to be of any value to the herd or its owner. And protect its mother’s ribs. Otherwise it would simply grow bigger and continue to be an unruly, undisciplined horsehole that outgrew its cute phase and was eventually labeled delinquent and dangerous. At which point, it would become isolated and avoided. I’ve been there.

As a child in Pony Club being trained myself, I would often let go of the reins. It signaled the end of the lesson. It was the moment where riders relaxed and the horse relaxed, too. We often caught flak from instructors if we let the reins go in a field where the first thing the horse did was start grazing. That seemed to bother the instructors terribly but I never really got that. I always thought it was a nice treat and reward for a horse that has just worked hard and put up with your childish incompetence for the preceding hour.

On a horse trek across the Andes, I relaxed the reins at certain points when I couldn’t possibly imagine what my instructions to the horse could constructively add to the situation. The group of fellow riders edged along narrow mountain trails within way too close proximity and clear sight of cliffs plunging thousands of feet down the mountain. If the horse took any misstep whatsoever, we would both free fall to our deaths.

It finally occurred to me that the horse did not want to die either. It had crossed these pathways many more times than I had, after all. It needed to be sure – and was likely very sure – of its own footing. Self-preservation is not confined to the human species. I had utterly no control over this animal in that moment. I loosened the reins and gave over my trust to this steady, wordless equine. It worked out, of course, or you wouldn’t be reading this blog post!

Facing death with an attitude of peace would seem to mean arriving at that portal having come to terms with most of the problems and relationships life threw at you. Combined with surrender for what you could not and cannot control any longer, which is a form of grace. I have lately been learning that lesson in real time.

When facing a situation where you have explored every option, you have given a project or person your all, you have asked all the questions, done all the readings, shaken the curtains for every last remaining bit of insight until, one day, for no discernible reason, you let go of any control over the outcome. Where the illusion of control was deployed as a survival strategy, it becomes obvious you have little to no control whatsoever. Control over getting the dishes done, yes, of course. But not for the ultimate outcome of life’s trajectory.

In the vernacular and wisdom of the 12 step groups, one ultimately decides to “Let go and let god.” I assume and hope that will be my conclusion on my deathbed, or death sidewalk, or death seashore or airplane wherever I happen to be at the time I cross “the great divide.”

While it causes anxiety to let go of control, it also comes with a certain sense of relief. There are burdens worth setting down along the journey of life. To surrender to forces greater than you are. Surrender undoubtedly comes at no more important or impactful time than at the end of that journey.

Sounds like relief to me. At the end of the ride, let the damn horse eat all the fresh grass he wants, say I. He’s earned it.

Blessed Equanimity

Would that we could all be this nonplussed in the face of losing a loved one through death.

Good perspective though.

“Death is nothing at all.

It does not count.

I have only slipped away into the next room.

Nothing has happened.

Everything remains exactly as it was.

I am I, and you are you,

and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged.

Whatever we were to each other, that we are still.

Call me by the old familiar name.

Speak of me in the easy way which you always used.

Put no difference into your tone.

Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.

Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together.

Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.

Let my name be ever the household word that it always was.

Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it.

Life means all that it ever meant.

It is the same as it ever was.

There is absolute and unbroken continuity.

What is this death but a negligible accident?

Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?

I am but waiting for you, for an interval,

somewhere very near,

just round the corner.

All is well.

Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost.

One brief moment and all will be as it was before.

How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!

~Henry Scott-Holland, “Death Is Nothing At All”

Dear Death

Death is on my mind lately.

No particular reason. I occasionally flirt with thoughts of death and dying.

It’s a form of interim stock-taking. Thinking about what’s gone before. What may be ahead. Like routine maintenance. What do I have to tweak or do better to make my inevitable end more calm and peaceful?

One good thing about having a total mid-life meltdown is that it can initiate a major reframing of your life goal and priorities. I used to think it was important for me to be someone important.

I came to learn that making others feel important is more important than being important yourself. Depending on your hopes and dreams.

It comes down to whether you choose to lead your life with your head or your heart. A combination is optimum.

We spend an inordinate amount of time running from the reality of death as our last pit stop. If I manage to avoid a violent and messy end, I expect death will be just one long night’s sleep at the end of the day. If I’m lucky.

I fear the disintegration of physical strength and skill more than I fear death itself. I have often considered what I would do with a terminal cancer diagnosis. Pack up and go home, I think. At that actual moment, my feelings may change.

I like running my own ship. I don’t like to rely on others. Though I do.

So the following quotes helped me reframe my recent thoughts about death and woke me up a little.

I expect dying folks are about the wisest folks there is on the planet.

Whether they are happy about dying or not is a whole other discussion.

Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have.

It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death—ought to decide, indeed, to earn one’s death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life.

One is responsible to life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return.

One must negotiate this passage as nobly as possible, for the sake of those who are coming after us.

(Book: The Fire Next Time [ad] https://amzn.to/3TcCyl5)

James Baldwin

Mark Twain may have put death in the best perspective of all.

“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.” 

Mark Twain

I expect he’s right.

Fun At Funerals

Funerals. Bad word. Right up there with shingles, scabies, dog poop and malaria as unwanted life events. Ew.

Yet, they are inevitable. People we love will die. People we don’t love will die. Lots of people we don’t know will die. And we will die.

Here I am borrowing loosely from the LGBTQ anthem: “We’re here. We’re queer. Get used to it.” I say: “We’re here. We’re mortal. Get used to it.” Admittedly not anywhere near as mellifluous.

But are funerals the absolutely worst occasions we have to take part in? That pretty much depends on the above associations. Did you love the deceased? Did you hate the deceased while s/he was living? Did you even know him or her?

The answer to these questions will definitely inform the tone and your emotional response to the funeral you are attending. Although it begs the question, if you didn’t even know the person, what were you doing at their funeral anyway?

My mother used to regularly visit funeral homes in her home town whether she knew the deceased or not. She always stayed afterwards for the free food and baked goodies.

A nutritional mainstay of her diet for a good number of her later years actually. But this is not about my mother so I won’t go there. Not directly at any rate.

I am trying to say that not all funerals are bad. Some engender relief. Some engender gratitude for the release from pain and suffering. Some have unwelcome but noteworthy comic elements.

I have the worst funny story about my great-uncle’s funeral back in the last century. To say Great Uncle Leigh was not a religious man would have been a dramatic understatement.

He worked nearly his whole life as a logger in the backwoods of provincial New Brunswick, Canada and later as a carpenter and house builder. Leigh deftly managed to dodge the marriage and kids trap as a young man. However, as old age and decrepitude started to set in, he apparently felt it wise to give up his bachelor status.

He tossed his single lifestyle in favor of a comely widow hovering in about his age range. A comely widow whose baking and cooking skills were locally renowned. It could be said Uncle Leigh knew exactly which side his bread was buttered on.

The only gaping and discernible gap between them was Millie’s feverish commitment to God, and the Baptist church and Uncle Leigh’s religious avoidance of all of it. Not only did he avoid church as an attendee but he also avoided any of its teachings. Uncle Leigh was a proudly devout heathen through and through.

So he and the widow did the deed. Got married, I mean. Some years and many, many apple pies later, Millie passed. In due course, Leigh got older and sick and soon followed Millie on the path into Heaven’s kitchen. (Though, heathen that he was, that point is certainly debatable.)

A funeral was arranged. Without a church to call home and no preacher who knew him personally, there was no religious eulogist familiar enough with him to summarize his life and character. The pastor of Millie’s church was summoned.

Now as an audience member in the family pew, it certainly seemed to me that the ad hoc preacher did not know anything at all about what – or more precisely – who he was talking about.

Then the preacher man’s eulogy launched into a passionate anecdote about sitting – for a time – beside Uncle Leigh on his deathbed. The preacher fairly swooned as he shared his ecstatic news with the assembled gathering.

According to him, our beloved Uncle Leigh, “in his waning hours,” “had accepted salvation and the Lord Jesus Christ as his personal Savior.” Apparently this happened just as Uncle Leigh was hovering on the brink of passing over to his “final reward.”

Sitting amongst other relatives in the family pew, including my mother, I did not take this news well. The image of sweet but tough and resolute old heathen Uncle Leigh accepting the Lord Jesus Christ into his house, let alone into his bedroom and heart, hit me entirely the wrong way.

I struggled to suppress a chuckle. As the preacher droned on about the salvation of dear Uncle Leigh’s immortal soul, the rising chuckle gained momentum.

It was everything I could do not guffaw out loud, in what I knew would have been a most inappropriate and shameful outburst.

Still I was doubled over in my seat in the pew, holding my sides, rocking quietly, in an attempt to regain some self-control. At a point, I just jumped up and fled the sanctuary. The laughter exploded out of me once I was safely out of anyone’s hearing in the hall outside.

If you had actually known Uncle Leigh, the absurdity of the preacher’s announcement was too ridiculous for words. It took me several minutes to compose myself.

But compose myself I finally did. I slithered quietly back into the sanctuary and settled into my seat in the family pew – once again, the very model of grief and decorum.

The little break I took meant the funeral had moved on to another speaker, blessedly. My composure and the family’s dignity were intact.

Then, on my shoulder, I felt a gentle tap. I looked around and saw a white glove covered hand and behind that the sweetest and most compassionate-looking elderly lady with tightly curled blue hair and a tender expression of sympathy.

“There, there, dear,” she comforted me. “I know that grief can be overwhelming when you lose a dear one.” I should have been happy she completely misread the reason I fled the sanctuary.

As it happened, her overture had the unfortunate effect of forcing me to once again repress laughter bubbling up within me. Admittedly, I was pretty emotional. But in the entirely wrong way for the occasion at hand.

I smiled broadly, patted her gloved hand still on my shoulder, and whispered sincere thanks for her kindness and concern.

It may have been Uncle Leigh we gathered to bury that day and whose life we celebrated, but, in retrospect, I feel I dodged a bullet.

At the very least, I managed to save the family’s dignity and my own on that sad and sombre and august occasion.

Seriously close call.

On the Road

I awoke this morning enveloped in dead silence. Aaaah. So lovely.

I am in a hotel miles away from home in Osprey, Florida. At home, I realize, electronics run perpetually about me. The ceiling fan. The bathroom fan. The outdoor heater. The air purifier.

In this here hotel, there is none of that. My ears awoke this morning to nothing and I was struck by how different that is from my normal.

I am abed and luxuriating in this simple and peaceful environment. I am headed for a Christmas weekend adventure to stay in a houseboat overnight. Florida is unquestionably an odd state in the union.

Known for its weirdness and tackiness and Disney World. But Florida affords travelers unique water-based experiences that you would be unlikely to find, say, in Nebraska.

No doubt Nebraska has its own unique charms and surprises to discover. Houseboats on the ocean is definitely not one of them.

Isn’t odd how we end up living where we live? The possibilities are endless but eventually we must all decide on somewhere. Maybe we were born where we live. Most unusual these days but still, possible.

Or we transferred jobs or got a promotion. That planted us somewhere across the country to a place we have become deeply attached to and now call home. Or we retired, and deliberately sought out sun, sea and sand and zero personal income tax. Maybe John and Susan moved here first, talked it up, had you visit and now you live here, too.

I know people whose whole extended family has pulled up stakes and moved several thousand miles across the country to live around each other in retirement. I consider them lucky to have family relationships strong enough to merit that move.

So my intent this weekend is to see a little more of the surrounding countryside in the place I temporarily call home. Gathering me rosebuds while I may and all that.

There is something mentally refreshing about simply seeing different signage along the road or as you pass through small towns. Meandering down highways that are bordered by different landscapes than you are used to is visually interesting snd stimulating.

Last night, I ordered take-out from a Mexican food chain called Tomatillo’s that I had never heard of before. Mighty tasty steak tacos.

So soon I shall rise, eat a hearty breakfast and get back on the road. My chosen route is through a backcountry route where I hear alligators laze up on the side of the road. You can’t get a more extreme than that for a change of scenery.

What I like about travel is what awaits me when I go back home. I always see my home with fresh eyes after an outing, regardless if it is long or short.

We never travel any distance in reality in the long run. Wherever we go, there we are. But travel does stretch and educate us, if we’re lucky. I used to regard people with disdain who travelled in developing countries and spent little time outside their hotel and constantly complained and made disparaging comparisons to their living conditions at home. So why did they bother to leave home at all, I often wondered?

I have only another day of wandering around before I head back to my “permanent address” and pay my respects to the biggest day of the Christian calendar. Meanwhile, I am going to milk this day and tomorrow for all they are worth.

I hope to return home with a new perspective. And if I’m lucky, pictures and tales of alligators I encountered lying along the road.

Eventually we all come home again. To a physical one here on Earth or to our spiritual home. It’s just a matter of time. My responsibility on this planet is to suck as much of the marrow out of this earthly experience before I light off for a purely spiritual one.

At that point, I will live each timeless moment in all the silence I ever longed for.

Near Loss Experience

What is a wakeup call? When do we get them? And why?

Having nearly lost access to my blog recently, these thoughts came to mind. I was forced into a position where I had to reflect on how I would feel if a certain something (or someone) I cared about were to leave my life permanently.

In part, my spiritual beliefs have helped me understand loss better. We don’t really lose anything it turns out. People who are taken from us live on in us. No, it is nowhere near the same as sitting down with them for tea or hearing their voice.

But the voice and memories they left us live on inside us. When my Dad died, someone sent me this in a sympathy card: “Now he is no longer where he was. Now, he is always with you.” I can conjure up my Dad in my mind’s eye whenever I want to.

I think about how much time and energy we put into “protecting” our possessions. Insurance. Wall safes. Safety deposit boxes. Alarm systems on our doors and windows. Certainly all are valuable for our peace of mind (and to legally comply in some cases as it is with auto insurance.)

I am struck not only by how much I have lost in my life but what replaced it. The family of origin I lost was replaced by dear, lifelong friends. I’ve made a safe and stable home to replace the one I never had as a child. I replaced low self-esteem with consistently decent behavior that has built a solid sense of self-respect. The lost love of my childhood was eventually replaced by a solid and mature love relationship.

Are all of these replacements equivalent to what was? No they aren’t but it doesn’t matter. To start, human beings are infinitely adaptable. It is our collective superpower as a species. Those who let go of the past and accept and build on what is in front of them right now are survivors.

To feel joy in the present, we cannot constantly grieve for the past. Doing so is a form of emotional sickness. Of course, we have strange ideas about this sometimes. A widow fears sullying her late husband’s memory by dating again or falling in love.

Yet, we hear that in the healthiest relationships, spouses pray for a new beginning for their partner if they should pass. We are given the time we are given with someone or something. When it is over, it is time to let go and move on.

In your own time, of course. It is ludicrous to think that there is a deadline by which to stop grieving. Most people who have suffered the loss of loved ones never really do “recover” completely. That is part of loving.

Anniversaries, birthdays, holidays can all bring back memories. Instead of slipping into grief and depression, we could turn those feelings around and use those occasions to honor and celebrate what we once had with them. This can also be painful and may bring tears. But, of catharsis.

It is a reframing and acceptance of grief to recognize its’ inevitability in all of our lives. Go to the graveyard. Leave flowers. Or raise a glass of fine single scotch whiskey in their memory. Pour some on their grave (not too much, of course! Fine spirits should be savored by the living, after all.)

It all circles back to the need to live each moment in the present. I have been as guilty as the next person of running around doing a bunch of things instead of carving out time and settling in for a chat with a friend.

I have improved. There are phone calls I will not make unless I have a free hour to talk. I still write letters and send cards occasionally. We forget the impact of the literal written word in our high tech age.

Not only do I love sending cards, I love getting them. Someone has taken the time to pick out a card, write a note, find a stamp and put it in the mailbox. That’s a mighty loving gesture right there.

Access to my blog was finally restored after a day of minor panic and frustration. It was a wake-up call to secure my writing output somewhere that it might be safe and accessible even if the internet crashes one day. (Wouldn’t that be something? Life as we know it would come to a complete standstill.)

And even if it was lost, would it matter? Sadly not. Like my life, these musings are but a grain of sand in the grand scheme of things. They are only important to me because they are mine. If you find something in here that resonates, that pleases me. We are all – as my friend said to me just the other day – “walking each other home.”

That makes me exactly like all of you. We are all most interested and indeed, called upon to nurture and protect what is ours. While we can and while we still are able.

One day, we won’t be here to do that. If we are lucky, there will be a few folk out there who will carry us in their hearts until their lives come to an end just as we carried those who went before us.

In this way, we throw our two cents worth into the infinite and self-replenishing fountain of love and wisdom of the ages. For others to carry forward. In perpetuity.

Even Keel

I would love to feel every day exactly as I do this morning. Calm. Grounded. Mostly untroubled (though I could probably stir things up pretty quickly by glancing at my “to-do” list! So I won’t.)

I am nearing the end of my grieving process for the lost forest behind us. I recognize I have gone through the five stages of grieving made famous by Swiss psychiatrist, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross.

In 1969, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross described five common stages of grief, popularly referred to as DABDA. They include:

  • Denial
  • Anger
  • Bargaining
  • Depression
  • Acceptance

I have gone through nearly all of them. I am transitioning from depression to acceptance. What is happening on that back lot is not within my control. It never was.

I did give the legal route a try and contacted the county powers-that-be and came up with bupkis. Apparently, disrupting a neighbor’s dream and destroying their privacy is not sufficient for a “stop build” order.

So I’ve learned things about grief and the process it wends its way through. Not for the first time.

I’m not sure anyone can adequately prepare themselves for grief. It is one of those things that reads much differently on the page than it feels in real life.

None of us can prepare for the shredding of our reality by the departure of someone or something that matters deeply to us. Whether that is a person, or a pet, or the availability of something or a dream. And yet, we all have – or most certainly will – experience loss.

I have a regular habit I employ now when I expect bad news. I erect a psychological barrier. Bad news coming by mail: don’t open it. Bad news coming by phone: don’t answer it. Bad news at your front door: don’t answer that either.

Not indefinitely, but for as long as it takes to shore up my inner resources and prepare. We are often given the gift of time to prepare with an impending death. It does not necessarily make the actual loss easier. But pre-grieving is a real thing that allows us to imagine what life will be when she/him/it/they are not longer present.

I did it with both of my parents.

Their age and infirmities set me up to begin grieving them long before they left. It did not change how I was with them in the day-to-day. It built an emotional cushion inside me and made space for the inevitable loss. In both deaths, there was grieving but also relief and resolution. In sudden or premature death, that is not always possible.

Processing grief is critical if we are to move on in life. I have a friend who lost her young adult daughter suddenly and violently in a car crash. More than twenty years later, that loss is still the core of her emotional life. It has driven her to an alcoholism and a gambling addiction. She is neither fully engaged nor present in her everyday life.

Leaving the emotional safety of grief can be a terrifying leap of faith. It is a common, if ineffective, way to keep someone’s presence in your life even when they are emphatically gone. When grief has not been processed and integrated, it can screw us up and stunt our growth and healing.

My friend has found comfort and escape in booze and gambling. Not the most healthy response. Her behavior hurts not only her but those around her. Yet there is nothing anyone can do unless she elects to do something differently. That is the responsibility of being an adult.

These past few weeks (months maybe) have been exceedingly difficult. Not only because of the lost forest but other losses and realizations. Though our house move was mostly positive, it has been incredibly taxing. I have learned I am not as strong and energetic as I once was. I am more and more aware of our limited time on the planet.

I have been advised to learn to let go. I once described my self as someone who clung to the mast on a boat (my life) that was shipwrecked and taking on water fast. That worked for a long time though I know how much I missed with my inflexibility and neuroses. No matter. I survived.

I am going in a different direction now and making different choices. And this morning’s mood was an unexpected payoff. Peace actually is possible even in the face of disappointment and loss. Even if it takes awhile to get there.

Damned if I am going to spit in god’s face for the gifts and good things I have in my life by letting loss overwhelm me. God will deal with the perpetrators in time and in his/her own way. Or not.

Listen Up

I like the piece below because it is sensible and realistic. Platitudes abound in society and they can be useful. For a minute or two.

But there are a few widely shared platitudes in life that are a little TOO optimistic. They prevent us from internalizing and accepting how life really is for us at any given age and stage.

There are platitudes that prevent us from taking full responsibility for our lives whatever situation we find ourselves in. Not doing do can open us up to crushing disappointment and regret. It is all up to us.

This is a helpful guide (I found) for adding perspective to those helpful comments people make that aren’t quite as easy to attain as they sound. Accept the reality of these prescriptions and you have a better than average chance of making it to the end of your life with your eyes wide open.

That is, having lived a real life based on the real opportunities and people you have had come into it and those you built your life around.

Only then do you really have a better than average chance of dying in peace and acceptance with minimal regrets. When you have only yourself to blame or thank for its outcome.

The older you get the more you realize that a lot of things you were taught in your youth are just plain wrong.

  1. You can be anything you want to be. No, no you can’t. There are tests you won’t score high enough on that will prevent you from being accepted into whatever program you desire. All this despite having the intelligence and skill needed to excel at whatever the profession may be. Even if you have the right credentials and experience, if they are not hiring for what you want to do…well…you may be out of luck. There are miles of reasons why you can’t be whatever you want to be.
    • But guess what? You can be the best at the opportunities life does present to you.
  2. Hard work is rewarded. No, not always. Sometimes the power of the universe conspires against hard working individuals and unfairly rewards our lazy, short cut seeking, less intelligent friends, co-workers, and acquaintances.
    • But if you knuckle down, and don’t let the unfairness of the world ruin your attitude, show up everyday, and do your best, then because of your hard work, you definitely increase the odds of having a fulfilling life.
  3. Money and wealth are your greatest asset. No, no they are not. They are important and provide security and freedom.
    • Your health is your greatest asset. If you have terminal cancer or some other horrible condition, all the money in the world does not matter. In fact, if you get type 2 diabetes or heart disease, what you can do is radically impacted. So invest in your health daily.
  4. That others care about your house, your clothes, your toys, and you in general. No, no they do not. We all think others are concerned with what we have or don’t have. They’re not. In fact the people we think are thinking about us, usually are not thinking about us at all. The world doesn’t really care about you.
    • But, if you are lucky, you have a few people who do truly care about you. It’s usually a very small number of people. They are the people that truly matter in your life and they probably could care less about all your toys.
  5. That we will all live forever. No, no you won’t. Sure, no one ever comes out and blatantly tells you that you will live forever. But every message we get on TV, social media, or culture in general seems to want us to believe we are immortal. Worse yet, our own minds seem to lead us around as if we are going to see the next two centuries.
    • But, you are going to die. Everyone you know is going to die. That should not scare us. It should free us. Free us to be present in every moment because this moment is all we really have. The past is gone. The future is not guaranteed. We have today. Embrace it and allow it to grow the love you have inside you. Then share that love.

Good Thinking

My friend Margo Talbot https://margotalbot.com/ is a world-renowned ice climber, author and mental health advocate.

Margo has led expeditions in such far-flung locales as Antarctica and the Arctic. She is a motivational speaker and writes a powerful blog about her insights along the road of life. She promotes women’s personal empowerment through workshops and coaching.

Her book All That Glitters: A Climber’s Journey Through Addiction and Depression, is a story of healing and redemption; a story about losing oneself, and then finding one’s way back home. https://margotalbot.com/book/

Margo writes about family dysfunction and healing from it and regaining/preserving mental health. She once gave a powerful TED talk on this very subject. https://youtu.be/kayj6oew9_M

In her youth, Margo got into trouble with drugs. She was eventually arrested for drug dealing. She has spent most of her adult life figuring out how she got there. She helps others to get out or stay out of similar places.

I met Margo Talbot as the group leader of an Outward Bound survival course I took in Ontario, Canada over a decade ago.

Margo taught us how to live survive in the woods. We chopped a lot of wood that week. We made a lot of fires out of forest detritus. We took a lot of swims in a cold and uninviting (but admittedly invigorating) lake.

Margo organized a solo camping trip for each participant on the final night. That was the “big finish” to the course.

Mid-afternoon on the next to last day, each of us were taken by canoe to separate remote campsites. We were left alone to spend the night with a tarp, some rope, a box of matches, snacks and a barebones breakfast. My nerves were pretty steady until nightfall neared.

I went wandering once I landed onshore. I came upon a derelict and uninhabitable shack in the woods with a two-hole outhouse beside it.

On the side of the shack hung a sign. In huge letters, it proclaimed: “Bear Country.”

I can’t even pretend I slept well that night. But I did survive. Bonus.

Margo once shared this wisdom below in a post and it has stayed with me.

I share her perspective.

Make lemonade.

“Things you don’t see coming in life: your sister trying to legally prevent you from seeing your dying father.

Your brother taking your father’s hearing aids from the nursing home to prevent you from having conversations with him.

Your mother defending both of your siblings and their actions.

Your extended family standing by doing nothing to prevent these emotional crimes.

The upside is, I don’t know ANYBODY who gets handed such PRICELESS stories to fill their books with!“

– Margo Talbot