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I am feeling a little challenged this morning. The challenge comes from being fully present for a married couple we have known and loved for a generation. A “two months to live” diagnosis for the husband, coupled with the wife’s obsessive compulsive nature to prove her own worth, and to also protect and honor her partner, in the face of their collapsing lives, keeps me “engaged with the unknown”.
How can I help?
Being “fully present” as a life witness, while being a loving friend, in the face of his deterioration and potential death, and with his partner’s fear, anxiety, neurosis, and potentially, own emotionally self-destructive attitudes and behaviors, has placed me in a position for “accelerated understanding and spiritual growth”.
I used to say “growth is highly overrated” in a humorous manner when I feigned aversion to situations known to create opportunities for personal evolution. Now I am looking for real humor in the face of adversity, and this morning finds me coming up short.
I miss the healthy version of my friend, while I learn to embrace today’s version. I have experienced some shock in the face of his accelerated change and his wife’s emotional near collapse.
We were preparing to hike parts of the Pacific Crest Trail later this summer, and we did a 6 mile wilderness hike just 6 weeks ago to test equipment, and prove fitness. We all passed, with flying colors.
Two days later, he began losing all use of his left leg and arm, and he is now wheelchair bound. The mets to his brain are impinging on his sense of self, and his competent, highly intelligent, insightful, loving mind.
Now, I help with small tasks around their home, once or twice a week. I attend, and participate with him in, a men’s cancer survivor writing group at OHSU, as of last week (my survival from melanoma is going much better than his, as mine has not yet metastasized, and hopefully will not in the future).
I miss the only man who responded to my philosophically challenging Facebook posts, now knowing that he no longer has the energy to sort through all of the Facebook chaos, of which I inexplicably remain a small part of. Why I continue to post has to do with my own need to heal, and to express myself, even if there are no positive returns to be gained from the endeavor.
My heart aches for the married couple Sharon White and I have shared so many outdoor adventures and community memories with over the last 25 years.
Love goes before all of us “to make the crooked places straight”, but while chaos’ clouds obscure the view, it is hard to see the path. Being open to each moment as it unfolds in its own unique way, and being present with self through insight clears the fog, and keeps the door open to love’s unfolding mystery.
But, It remains a mystery to me, how to plan for and successfully navigate the rivers of life that carry us into death. Reading more books, and gathering more information, is not going to get the job done for me. I try to remain open to the mystery, though it still troubles my heart. I may never heal of that, but miracles are still possible.
Death really sucks for those with much life left to live, period. I am not fooled by the promises of a “reward in the afterlife” offered by some. That reward is only a painkiller to be ingested by the magical thinkers who struggle mightily with the concept of death itself. The thought of an after-life vacation in “heaven” is more addictive than opiates, and drives national and international irrationality and insanity.
It is our eternal struggle.
“And, in the end, even death shall be conquered”.
I am not “in the end”, obviously. “Fear of death” can be conquered without it being masked by even more illusions of thought. That is the path of today’s spiritual warrior. I guess that I somehow signed up for the course. The only study materials are supplied through a committed involvement with life, on Life’s terms, and not on my ego’s terms.
I am no longer allowed to just audit the course, now that I am in the final stretches of my own life. I just hope that my “final stretch” is an engaged, joy dominated experience. I do have some control over that!
I love you both, Mr. and Mrs. C.
“I will be with you always, even unto the end of the world”
