She whispered

So this was the first time I have been present for someone's death.  10 months of training in pastoral care just completed, but the focus was on anticipation and change.

JD was in her 60s.  Retired early, I think.  She was a middle school art teacher and artist (watercolors).  Just one living relative of whom we were aware.  Her "family" was a network of people from work, the community, and the sangha.  

JD was simply kind to me whenever I encountered her.  She appeared to be someone who had slowed down - her speech was slower, her body less reliable; but then she’d comment on something - a softly delivered joke, a heartfelt comment on a dharma talk - and I'd understand that she just listened and processed differently.

I am so grateful to have been present today. I wanted to be there in part because I was acutely aware of how relatively little I knew about this sangha member from whom I had received so much goodwill. A woman who always had a kind word for me, who loved when I showed up dressed nicely because I'd come straight from work - unprepared to shift into the dark, simplicity of zen-wear, who asked after my kids and my husband, and who was clearly struggling a bit more in the last few months.

Just last year she completed jukai. I learned today that JD had been unable to do the small stitches that form the jukai robe, each stitch to be taken with a vow - to do cease doing harm, to do good, to live for the benefit of all beings. So others made the stitches, with JD seated close to them, whispering the vow into their ear.

Such is the surprising intimacy of zen practice.

And could it be my most recent prior thought had been to idly wonder why she kept dropping off to sleep in the zendo? Was that the heart condition manifesting itself? Will I ever really get it that saying goodbye should always be full and complete; you never know if you get to do it again.

To the last, she accommodated. Most of us had to leave by 5. The service was done by 3:30 and shortly after 5 she took her last breath. During he service, I felt she heard even if she could not understand the chants. She understood the message - you are not alone, you are part of us all, you are loved, you can move on to whatever comes next. A nurse commented that she usually felt like crying to see such a sweet woman die, but everything felt so peaceful that she simply felt happy for her. The nurse, with joy, urged JD to let go and get "up there" to look after us.

Absent breathing tubes and the sound of machinery, JD was peaceful. Labored breathing slowed; less wildness in her eyes. As I held my hand to her chest, I eventually felt the rough rumble of breathing ease and then stop.

This is how it unfolds. Life, suffering, flashes of joy, struggle, a moment of change, and the course is set, the scene changes so quickly.

Thank you JD for being present, for letting us all in, for vowing in our ears....sometimes we need to be close to hear.

Poem of anticipatory grief

The earliest bird will sing its awareness

as sunrise bleeds soft gold onto the dew damp grass.

Potted flowers will turn in attention

as it begins - 

water pipes whistle, horns cry, truck tires squeal, 

and the first child runs headlong toward the curb

as the mother’s voice is lost in the hum of sound.

That day will come

and there will be no possibility of hearing your voice.

I can not call on the phone.

I can not show up at your door.

No letter will be read.

No message received.

I will sit with my words.

I will sit with my thoughts.

I will sit with my heart broken

in the haze that only 

the light of your friendship

ever dispelled.

Poems of Joy....are far too few....maybe I'll start a collection with this one by Ed Hirsch

Happiness Writes White

I am a piece of chalk
scrawling words on an empty blackboard.

I am a banner of smoke
that crosses the blue air and doesn't dissolve.

I don't believe that only sorrow
and misery can be written.

Happiness, too, can be precise:

Doctor, there's a keen throbbing
on the left side of my chest
where my ribs are wrenched by joy.

Wings flutter in my shoulders
and blood courses through my body
like waves cresting on a choppy sea.

Look: the eyes blur with tears
and the tears clear.

My head is like skylight.
My heart is like dawn.

Being with Dying, Joan Halifax c2008her.

There is an intimacy in the voice of this book that prompted me to read it with more deliberation than I have others on this topic.  Each chapter was coupled with a meditation that I recognized as challenging for me, which likely means they are all ones I would benefit from doing; so far - indeed they are!

From her experience and contemplation of how to be with the dying, Halifax effectively communicated that it is just that - be there, be present.  Bring nothing extra so you can respond to what emerges in the moment-to-moment reality of breathing in the same space as another human.  Which is also what we need to do with ourselves as we live with our own discomforts and fears of our own deaths.

Also offered is an explanation of tonglen that now makes me want to explore further.

This is one of the handful of books I would recommend to both those who find themselves in a caregiver role and to anyone who wants to explore what this part of our lives can mean.

Book notes:

• Jonas Salk: Learn to cooperate with the inevitable.
• Radical optimism (born from the raw truth of death) = not investing in the future, but in the present moment, free of design.  "Only a radical optimist can bear to bear witness."
• Equanimity - the state of being non-partial, which is not the same as impartial.
• Sympathetic joy (3rd boundless abode) = joy in the good fortune of others, joy in the virtue of others, altruistic joy engendering benefit in others
• Can we see the true nature of being as free from all pain and at the same time be present with the truth of suffering?  Can we see two things at one and the same moment, like seeing that the water and the wave are not separate?
• Zen saying:  If you take care of your mind, you take care of the world.
• What is the shadow of the Bodhisattva?  Helping other beings. (When we forget there is no "I" doing a good deed for "another.")  Roles that emerge (and block) - the hero, martyr, parent, expert.

Letting go

If you let go a little, you will have a little peace.
If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace.
If you let go completely, you will have complete peace.
 - Ajahn Chah, Forrest Buddhist Master, 20thc Thailand

....The same message in every book on how to live the Dharma....

Right Speech / Perfect Speech / Samyag-vach

On reading Dharma, Color and Culture, Charles Johnson's essay on Reading the Eightfold Path:

Really enjoyed this comprehensive essay.  Have come back to the discussion of right speech several times since reading it.  Johnson quotes Heidegger on idle speech serving to close-off "Being-in-the-world" aka "inter-being".  Then notes:  "Violence is not only physical, it is psychological and verbal.  It beings in the mind.  All my life I've wondered what it would be like to live in a society where, instead of men and women insulting and tearing each other down, people in their social relations, and even in the smallest ways, held the highest intellectual, moral, creative, and spiritual expectations for one another."

Indeed, what would that world look like?  What we I look like/be if genuinely habituated to that type of expectation.

It would be a reason to follow the Buddhist idea of "holding" thought at three gates, i.e., enough time to consider:  Is what I am about to say true?  Will it cause no harm?  And is it necessary?

I remember meeting at least one teacher who seemed to so consciously aim to observe / hold his speech in this way.  Maybe it is possible.

Through the looking glass

Got to read to a patient this week. Every week before this she had been too engaged with the struggle to stay alive to speak with someone new.  I knew her name, but had no sense of the person.  This time - awake, alive, color in her cheeks.  Her body still wasted and weak, but clearly this was a new day.  We agreed that Alice in Wonderland would be nice.  I read the first chapter - pausing together to appreciate how perfect the metaphor of the rabbit hole was for her current situation and for life generally.  What would it take to greet suffering with Alice's eyes:  Curious and curiouser.