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.

Completely still

From The New Old Age Blog http://newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/the-agenda-for-today/
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."