Tag: love

Sometimes, it’s all about perspective

On By tgentryfunkLeave a comment

The dining room is cold in the half light of morning, as I sit with yogurt and coffee within my reach. The hum of the heat and gentle breeze of warmth cradles the space, as I settle into reflection on this cool, March morning in Georgia.

It’s been about a month since my father’s death, and the clarity that comes from the experiences of that process are still shaping my understanding of the world. I’m brought closer to conviction on a few things in my life that have been neglected or ignored. First and foremost, my Vajrayana practice was always present and in the background of my daily life. Now it’s central to my exsistence. Second, the recognition of my own unwinding or transformation during the throws of the dying process have finally taken some shape and color. I can take action in ways that I haven’t done in the past few years. Those actions are small things: choosing to find moments of clarity, expressing my ideas and art, writing extensively on experiences, and coming to grips with how to untangle this fragile ego and mind.

Flowers, Athens Georgia

That process of untangling sent me into the past, reimaging old wounds and injuries as well as coming to an understanding of my negative thoughts and actions. It was important for me to take an accounting of my life in some very specific ways: how I hurt people I loved and how to rectify those actions. Using Tonglen as my meditative approach, I welcomes the negative thoughts and emotions, and in turn released love and compassion to those I harmed. I tried to recognize each and every mistep in my life and accept responsibility for all actions and thoughts. In this particular way, I was letting the past stay in the past and offered compassion in the present. I came to understand that I cannot correct previous actions; I can only offer love to those people who are no longer in my life.

It’s this act of letting go and elaborately allowing the regret and sadness to swell and then to release. With that release came compassion and love. Yes, it’s a mental process. No, it’s not letting me off the hook, so to speak. It’s my way of placing into the universe the kind of kindness that needs to be free from personal control and open as a genuine gift. I’ve come to believe that giving this kind of open-ended kindness, compassion, and love into the world is the one thing I can do to help. That means that I believe my mental formations, my thoughts, and imapct the world simply by their formation in my mind. As the Buddha said, “with our thoughts we make the world” or something like that idea.

Too, I’ve found that personal freedom (really I’m talking about mental freedom) comes at a cost. To be free from ourselves and our negative actions, we have to recognize the cost of such actions. The gentle unwrapping or untangling of our thoughts and emotions requires attention to what happened and how we can be free from those same negative thoughts, emotions, and actions. The cost, to ourselves, were the actions we took that resulted in pain in other people. That’s why personal freedom comes at a cost. Then, offering unconditional love and compassion to those we harmed is the gift that begins the untangling of our thoughts and emotions into something more complete and more forgiving.

In the dim light of evening

I also liked the metaphor of the lock and key. We have always had the key to our own freedom, we just have never figured out how to use the key on the locks we created. Again, I’m talking about the mental locks and keys here. Many of us are quite literally in chains with no access to the physical keys to unbind us. Once we can realise that internally we can find a way to open ourselves, the path to personal freedom is the gift we can give ourselves. In a sense, we build our own prison cells without realizing we have the means of escape at out fingertips (an old image, and a good one to fit my conversation).

While my process of untangling became years ago, my father’s death and dying allowed me to take more direct action toward untangling. I thought back to the story of Alexander and the mythical confrontation with the riddle of the Gordian knot. In the story, Alexander cleved the knot in two, supposedly solving the riddle. Alexander, it would seem, never understood that untangling the knot was not the point. The knot never mattered to his life. The untangling had to happen in his mind, not on the battlefield and certainly not by cutting a knot in two pieces. Cutting the physical knot simply brought him closer to his demise. Untangling his mind, it seems, was not something he every considered.

And so I seek a new perspective, one that it just on the edge of realization. The ways in which my father’s death has helped me along is a big leap in the right direction. My father showed me the way to untangle my knots….now, it’s time for me to get to work.

May you be happy, may you be well.

On Death and Dying: Day Three

On By tgentryfunkLeave a comment

Blotches on hands and arms. Shallow breathing.  No eating and drinking very little.  Gradually slipping away.  Sleeping almost constantly.

Today, my dad’s brother came over.  He’s one of the funniest human beings you could ever meet; that this guy is not a stand-up comedian is shocking.  At the same time, he’s been through a lot. When he came into the room with Dad, my father was more animated than he had been in days. No real smiles or words, just a little more movement in his face and hands.  I left them together and worked on the other things going on…mopping floors and cleaning the house.

Dad’s brother got up to leave and asked me when we thought his brother would recover. Had we been to the doctor?  Could we give him some kind of medicine? It was hard to know exactly what to say or how to help him understand the situation.  I tried the subtle approach: “You know he’s on his own journey now, and I’m not sure things are going to change.”  He replied, “Yea, but I mean let’s make him eat some food!  Let’s make him a protein shake.”  I paused.  “You know, my Dad’s dying.  He’s going to be gone in just a few days.”  He stared at me for what seemed like an eternity.  Tears welled in his eyes.  A moment of shared understanding. “Ok well, I’d better get home.  I’ll come back over this weekend.”

Standing there in the driveway as he pulled out, I thought about the number of people I had told this information.  My dad’s friends, former coworkers, former boss.  All were dumbfounded, all at a loss.  How?, they’d say.  When did this happen, they’d ask.  I haven’t come up with a pat answer yet.  Most of these people I didn’t know well, and I’ve been a little unsure on how to break this news.

As I shuffled back inside, it was time to wash his body, shave his face, comb his hair, and just clean him up a little bit.  To say that this process was comical just doesn’t do it justice.  First, he was pissed I lifted him out of the bed. He growled “nah, nah.” I spoke to him in a kind of silly voice, “it’s time for a tubby!” “I don’t want no tubbbbyyy.” I sat him in the chair, and he demanded Mom do this part of the process.  After it was done, Mom said, “Don’t you feel better?” and in the LOUDEST statement he’s made yet, he said, “NO!”  Then I started shaving him; he didn’t like it, and grumbled.  We finished it up, got him back in the bed, and I asked, “Now, that’s better isn’t it?”  He looked me straight in the eyes and said, “No.”  I couldn’t help but laugh, and my Mom called him Bozo for being so ridiculous.  I swear to you, he looked up and gave me a kind of sneaky grin.

He quickly fell asleep. I sat for a while.  He no longer wants the TV on in the room.  The noise is too loud, the sound too grating.  The house is quiet.  His breathing is still rhythmic.  At the same time, something has changed.  It’s subtle, and I feel it more than I see it.  The waiting and watching, of course, continues.  I’m thankful I’m here, grateful for this moment.  In the kitchen, the hum of the refrigerator is the loudest thing I hear.

On Death and Dying: Day One

On By tgentryfunkLeave a comment

The bedroom is warm, hot even, as I walk through the hallway and into the sauna-like space.  Laying quietly on white sheets with a white coverlet is my father, resting peacefully in the late afternoon of a Georgia winter.  I grab his hand and gently lift it as he turns to me in a kind of half-awareness. “Oh! You came home!” he says, and it’s all I can do to hold it together.  I smile and say of course I did, and after a beat, he says, “Now you can make me get better.”  I continue to hold his hand, almost delicate in its frailty, covered in blotches of blue and red.  His fingers barely squeeze my hand, and I sit with him for a few minutes.  He slowly turns his head.  His mouth falls open, and he’s resting again, respiration normal with a hint of a rattling sound deep in his chest.  I lay his hand on his chest and turn to consider other obligations.

My mother is glad I’m home and has already planned for us to head to Kroger to get food for the week.  She’s anticipated my cooking ever since I said I was coming home, and she’s ready for me to get started.  I’m tired, tired in my bones, after a frantic series of flights and car rides to make it to Athens.  Still, we go to the store, and I pick out the ingredients for a series of meals we’ll have this week.  Chicken and rice, tofu and vegetables, salmon, flour for pizza dough, shredded cheese, and the like.  Mom must make two quiches for church tomorrow and we grab the ingredients along with pie crusts, and eggs.

When we return home, my sisters are there in various states of concern and personal struggle.  My middle sister is concerned that my dad won’t drink or eat anything.  Hilliary, my youngest sister, a P.A., launches into the various needs Dad will face in the coming days.  We talk about it all: the many arrangements, financial concerns, and a service.  Dad communicated a few days before that he didn’t want ANYONE at his funeral; in fact, he just wanted us to have dinner together at home.  As usual, Mom overruled THAT request, and we plan an abbreviated service as I will do the eulogy with contributions from everyone.  I’m caught by the mundane nature of planning for the passing of an individual.  The logistics feel wrong in the face of the death of a parent.  It seems like it should be more, somehow.  Of course, and truthfully, it isn’t more.  Maybe it needs to be less.

Mom starts the quiches as we talk, and my sister sits with Dad.  My youngest sister and I talk about medical issues, and her husband is visibly uncomfortable with our matter-of-fact conversation.  He squirms in the chair, looking away, not making eye contact with me or my sister.  With side glances, I can see a kind of horror in his face, a deep abiding fear.  I completely understand it, and at this moment, there’s not a lot of space for questions of our own mortality.  I smile at him and try to include him in the conversation, only for him to stand and slowly walk out of the kitchen.

As the night winds down, we all say goodnight to our dad after giving him his pain meds.  He thanks us, kind of formally, for being there, and we file out of the room.  My Mom gets ready for bed, it’s 10:30PM here, and we settle into the new routine of waiting and watching.  

The house is almost completely silent.