HOW DO YOU SAY GOOD-BYE IN THE LANGUAGE OF LOVE?

                 You matter to the last moment of your life, and we will do all we can,
                 not only to help  you die peacefully, but to help you live until you die.
                                                                                         Dame Cicely Saunders

HOW DO YOU SAY GOOD-BYE IN THE LANGUAGE OF LOVE?

Everybody adored my grandfather. Full of love, still waters running deep; he made me laugh. That is, until the last stage of his life.

His doctor gave him three months to live. He told him he needed a year. Shortly after Christmas in January, just after that year, he entered the hospital.

Our family had been summoned. We approached the hospital elevator. “No one under 12 is allowed in the critical care unit,” the sign read. My parents told my youngest sister that she could not visit. My father would stay with her. Later, I would relieve him.

I saw the crushed look on her face. It haunted me all the way up the elevator and down the long, dark corridors. I watched my other sister tremble as we neared his room.

Our grandfather met our gaze. His sunny smile greeted us. Protruding tubes were out of place on a body that had always been a call to comfort others with hugs. Delighted to see him, we smiled and rushed to hug him anyway...taking care, as much as teenagers can. Dying did not seem present. Love was. Once engaged, we stepped back and met his eyes. Where’s Sam? I flinched as our mother told him that she would not be coming. Wendy looked down at her shoes.

Our mother left to get water for him. Though not groomed to be friends, my sister and I shot each other a glance. A plan was made.

“Did you see the stairs outside his room?” My sister said, “Yes.” “I am going to run down and get Samantha. We’ll run upstairs and be back before there’s trouble.” My sister lit up. My grandfather gave us each a conspiratorial look.

Downstairs, I said I would stay with Samantha. Not exactly a lie. I waited until the elevator closed and asked, “Do you want to see Grandpa?” An emphatic nod ushered a beaming smile across Samantha’s face. “Then grab my hand.” We sprinted up the stairs that opened only two doors away from my grandfather’s room. Inside, my grandfather’s body heaved a sigh of relief. Samantha was doe-eyed with wonder. She was so happy to see him and he laughed upon seeing her.

Moments later my father entered. No scene, no drama. My grandfather had a calming effect on my parents. Today was no exception. The love between a grandfather and his granddaughters was so overflowing that the promise of an enduring connection, transcending all, would remain.

Two days later, we learned that our grandfather had just died.

It brought such joy, that ending revolution; living close to the edge of intimacy as it unfurled, sharing our last goodbyes.

WATCHING SNOW MELT

Watching Snow Melt

   I lie here in bed

           Cast heavy on

   Arm and wrist

           Resting on the pillow

                     That covers my heart

I lie here in bed over

          These long slow days

                Watching snow melt

Snow melts in whimpers

  On foggy chill days

           Like yesterday

Today the sun has peeked

In and out
 Caressing the pines

                   Snow slightly murmurs

                            Warm wafting through

Mountain changes daily

Much like my hurt tired limbs

Snow daily is less full of

     Puffed arched pilings

Now she is

                     Scantly cladding gray rocks

     Brown needle risings

     With dusty

                  salt sprinkles confused

Looking back at me

Pines Trees

      Still thirsty from their

          Parched hopeful days

       There were no snow dripping pines

         Or rivelets trickling down the mounds

Mysterious this

                Watching snow melt

As it goes away from

             Itself cold and glistening

Into white cloud trailings

                Lingering tentatively on
                     The ground

TRANSITING SPIRIT

Gismo:

I am a sound sleeper when I am nine years old. Yet when our beloved dog, a beautiful brown Cocker Spaniel, Gismo, comes into my room, late one night, I open my eyes. He gently eases his body down onto the rug. Liquid brown eyes gaze into mine. The look of pure love is there. His eyes then take me into deeper shores. Soon after, he exhales and is gone.

I lie there watching him. His big old brown eyes are now forever closed. I watch for a few moments careful to make sure his furry body is unmoving. Where once was breath, now there is none.

I lie there in witness to quiet interlude. I am too young to know those words then. Yet, Gismo’s peaceful dying remains in my heart and being.

Muriel:

I am one day away from boarding a plane for Hawaii. I’m eager for my osteopathic treatment that will help me release the sciatic pain, preparing me for travels. I have been seeing the celebrated Dr. Muriel Morgan Chapman for a few years. I know fully her miracle touch.

Arriving there, I have no time to sit under her sprawling oak tree. The door to her office is uncharacteristically wide open. Slowly, I walk over to it. I find Muriel lying face up on one of her treatment tables. Quietly she says, “I have fallen. I cannot get up.”

She requests me to help her get into her house. While her house is only yards away, momentarily I wonder how I will accomplish this, given my injury. As if on cue, another car pulls up the long driveway and parks. Together we help Muriel into her house.

It becomes clear speaking first with Muriel, and then her daughter, that no one is in place to care for Muriel during this stage of her life. She has cancer and the treatments are no longer working. Muriel is well into her eighties.

My first planned vacation in years is mysteriously rearranged. Overnight, I become a hospice caregiver. My trip to Hawaii is cancelled. I am privileged that Muriel calls on me to stay with her.

What I learn is more than I can convey. After all these years, nothing expresses the level of intimacy, stripped-down core encounter, that we shared. My life is redefined.

There is a quiet hush in the home that governs interactions. My years of meditation barely prepare me for this depth of connection. After all the communication, healing and death and dying training, I am invited to be wholly present. This is practicum. This is raw intimacy. The daily conversations are centered on real life and death concerns.

Every day I watch life around and in me move away from the mundane and into the subtle, still, sacred space. To be sure, there are conversations, dialogues, some easy, some not, risks taken, discoveries made. People daily come and go. We are also down to basics. But another aspect of life ushers itself into view as Muriel lies dying.

Daily, I take leave to drive across a bridge to work midday; it is shaping our letting go. These are not easy moments. One day, just as I am getting ready to leave Muriel’s bedroom, she shifts our dialogue from tentative leave-taking to true engagement.

“Good-bye,” she sings out in that singsong, lilting voice of hers. She is weak, yet her sparkling brown eyes twinkle as I start for the door.

“Good-bye,” I smile at her, singing our new song back to her, my hand slowly waving.

“Good-bye,” she sings out again, as I move into the living room.

“Good-bye,” I intone, voice quivering.

Over and over, our voices are singing out, one to the other, as I walk across the living room. There is no holding back this moment.

Our good-byes continue until her voice fades. I open the front door to the outside. My heart is wet with tears.

These experiences helped me be unafraid of death. They opened my heart. They opened me to deeper love. I know many people are fearful of natural dying experiences. I’ve been witness to traumatic deaths and their impact on families, friends and culture. I wrote this blog to start a new conversation, exploring a comfortable relationship with positive dying experiences.

Dear reader, do you remember when someone you loved died in a natural way and it opened your heart?

LOST AND FOUND

If you get stuck, get away from your desk. Take a walk, take a bath go to sleep, make a pie, draw, listen to ­music, meditate, exercise; whatever you do, don't just stick there scowling at the problem.  Open a gap, create a space. Be patient.       
                                                                                        Hilary Mantel                                                                                       
Everywhere, take your time, so you do not give the mind an opportunity to speed up and get out of control. Negative thoughts are fast. Positive thoughts are slow.

                                                                      Eknath Easwaran

    

Have you ever considered that what you thought was missing was not actually missing? That your mind clouded over in anxiety and played tricks on you?

It is faith and peaceful reflection that allow things to be discovered. But the mind likes speed; its’ whirling and spinning out of control. My mind has done this often. I am sitting at my desk. Suddenly I am called out of my office. Or I go take a walk. And when I return, my eyeglasses are not on my desk.

First I feel this mild panic and queasy stomach. “I have no time for this”, my mind shouts. “I’m down to the wire.” My eyes look this way and that. My mind is racing. “I can’t finish this project without them.” My shoulders are rock-like. My limbic brain is on alert. “Code Blue. Code Blue.”

That is exactly what happened to a friend this week when I called her. With very little words from her, “Code Blue” screamed across the telephone wires. I could almost see the veins popping in her neck. “I lost it! I lost it! My report I spent all week on. It’s gone. I don’t know where! I am afraid I left it in that last huge conference room and someone threw it out!” Code Blue. Code Blue.

I guided her in a leadership exercise to reconnect with her document. Her shrill thoughts escalated in and out at a fevered pitch. They forecast doom and condemnation. Her mind ruled out simple solutions. At every turn it thwarted her process.

But she kept at it and her Code Blue simmered down.  Finally, her sputtering mind stopped for a moment. Her intuition said quietly. “It’s not lost. It’s not where you’d expect it.” That intuition saved her a wild trip across four counties to go search in, what likely would be, a closed conference facility. Her intuition said: “Enough, rest, eat. Let go.”

About an hour later, she emailed me, reporting she had found it. She learned something about the tricky mind: it abruptly guaranteed that she would never leave her reports in the place her intuition suggested that she look.

What is lost is not lost. This was certainly so with Buddy, the dog, who was missing for seven years. Mrs. Hartman demonstrates in this positive story what faith in the yet-to-be found can do. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/10/dog-reunited-with-owners-7-years-missing_n_5127079.html?utm_hp_ref=good-news


How about you, reader? What’s your intuition guiding you to discover that you once thought was lost?

WHAT DO I REALLY WANT?

What We Want

What we want appears

in dreams, wearing disguises.

We don't remember the dream,

but the dream remembers us.

                             Linda Pastan

“Five Positions” is an organizational tool that views situations from multiple perspectives. A long while back, a friend invited me to assist and be an active participant in her Advanced Skills Training course.

I was an example of fifth position. Fueled by spiritual values, I viewed my work and recreation sourced in universal truths. “If I am committed, do my actions bring peace?” My friend offered participants an overview; I easily “groked” the four positions. When fifth position came, I asked: “Am I really aligned with the highest truths?” When called upon, I shared my doubts. A participant, a CEO in the #1 position of self-interest, piped up: “If she doesn’t feel she’s living her core values, what hope is there for the rest of us?” There was laughter from others, a red face from me.

I’ve been working all the positions for years. Yet, as Achilles’ heels go, I keep returning to embody position #1: “What do I want?’ Recently, this straight-thinking eighty-year nun asked: “Do you know what your spiritual weakness is?” Head down, I mumbled, “No?” She responded, “You’re not entitled!” Jeez, if a nun, for God’s sake, is asking me to get a little self-interest, what’s one to do? Wait for the Pope?

Do you know, dear reader, what position is your Achilles’ Heel?

Two weeks ago, a mentor and three friends raised the stakes. “You are the most important person in your life. Repeat after me!” So gauntlet down, head up, I rose to the occasion. One of these friends urged me to post my poem. With my soul in my throat, I thought I’d give it a go.

“Because I am the most person in my life”

When I got off the phone

I did not call Jena

To see if she wanted to go

On a walk tomorrow

I went on a walk right then and there

With the sun still out

Pouring into my body

Early enough

I fixed myself the meal

I had been wanting

For a long time

To make

Aloo Gobi

I used all the cauliflower

I was not sparing

I used the best spices

I did not think 

Of whom else to serve this dish

It was for me

And because I did not 

Make extra calls

Or fuss at my desk

Before allowing myself 

A walk and a meal

I watched daylight 

Merge into dusky hues

Looking out my window

I noticed first bloom of

Cherry Blossom flowers

That last only a few weeks

Because it was still light

I walked outside

And told the flowers

Hello

HOW TO TURN YOUR FAVORITE STAINLESS STEEL POTS AND PANS INTO CAST IRON BLACKENED WARE

If you are a fifty-something, or twenty, or graybeards, thirty or forty, this recipe might just hit the spot. And how about you teens?

    Put a generous amount of water in your best stainless steel pot or pan.
    Add 3 PG Tips Black English tea bags.
    Add two to three crushed coriander seeds.
    Add finely chopped fresh ginger to the brew.
    Add three crushed black peppercorns.
    Add two small cinnamon sticks; organic is always best.
    Turn the burner on high.
    It will be at full boil in about 7-10 minutes.

    Leave the room. This step is vital!
    Engage in your favorite project.
    Fall deeply into loving arms...
    And engage, engage, engage.
    Time falls away...
    You are happily writing the next chapter of your book.
    Practicing your putt.
    Or immersed in your bridge blog.

    Ever so slowly, be aware:
    "Funny smell. Is there is someone burning trash nearby?"
    Listen as your lover calls you back. She/he is the jealous sort!
    Give your full attention.
    The flames of passion are calling.

    Along with them, smoking tea bags, cinnamon sticks and seeds, too.
    Without warning, burning smoke saturates you.
    Quickly, spring into action, mid-putt.
    Follow the smoke...
    CONGRATULATIONS, YOU’VE DONE IT AGAIN!

    Perfect stainless steel pot/pan morphs into cast iron pot.
    Singed tea bags and scorched cinnamon sticks.
    The smell is out of this world!
    Holy Smoke rising: thick gray globs dance across cobwebs.

    Pop your pot into the sink.
    Pour in cold water and let it sizzle!
    Open doors and windows.
    You notice the blackened pot/pan features.
    The cast iron effect appears as you try to scrub.

Important TIP for when guests come:

    When they inquire into your technique, tell them it comes from
    BEING PRESENT...
    Focusing intently on your golf swing.

If guests insist upon learning more about your craft:

    Hand them an SOS pad.
    Tell them you will be back in a bit.
    Theory U: Leading from the Future as It Emerges is calling you.