So evocative of the the experience of my elder relatives:
“It’s just, I feel like my life is like that.” She waves her hand toward the forest outside the window. The trees, whipped bare by passing winds, crowd without grace down the hill to a thick darkness. Beyond their crisscrossed branches, the winter sky is blue, bold, slashed with a single riff of cloud. “Beautiful,” she says, “and completely still.”
Equally evocative of the experience of a patient I recently saw - young senior, 10years into life with a brain tumor. I asked her what she was thinking (in the bardo of the hospital room). "I feel useless." In that moment the room was silent, completely still. The sun of the cold bright day streamed into the room.
"What is useful?" I asked. The conversation moved in many other directions as that thought and moment passed for her. But it stayed with me.
Before I left I said, "About being useful, I think differently about it then I used to. Not much at times seems useful, except maybe being here, in the moment and being with what is there for us. Being here for that sunshine, for your mom, your friends." A sigh as the thought returns. "Maybe."
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