Fading Out, Fighting Back, Losing Ground, Surrender

This is a blog about the second biggest thing in life: death

Or maybe the injustice we feel when death touches us unexpectedly. Or maybe, it's about suffering. 

A swift unexpected death releases the departed from suffering but perhaps prolongs that of the survivors, compounding the grief with confusing and often regrets. 

The promise of death in days, weeks, or months gives us more time to process the loss, address the regrets, thereby assuaging possible future guilt, but such a death is often coupled with unbearable suffering on the part of the afflicted. Watching a loved one suffer is another form of suffering, which can cause guilt and helplessness to the survivors.

My Aunt Gini was recently diagnosed with an aggressive cancer that was already in advanced stages. She was given months, maybe weeks, to live. Upon hearing the news, I made an impromptu visit to Michigan to spend time with her. Going to Michigan would mean missing the wedding of a dear friend, and although it was a hard decision at first, once I made up my mind, I felt peace. I write that not to give myself credit, but to help others who are faced with decisions like these. I knew she still had some good days left in her, and I wanted to spend time with her in those hours. Those are the hours that really count.

I was fully prepared for a very sad visit, but instead what we had was a nice time. By nice I mean quiet and meaningful. My cousins were all there, and Gini was in good spirits, and we all just talked and laughed. It was easy and peaceful, and it gave us all a happy memory. I can't imagine now that I might have missed such an opportunity.

I asked my mom to call me if her prognosis changed. Things have gotten worse. Once again, I changed plans in order to go to Michigan. The end was near, and I didn't want my next visit to be for a funeral. I prepared myself for the worst, and I guess you could say we got the worst. In two weeks, her body has mostly disintegrated. When we arrived, she was sleeping, but she looked like she was in agony. If I didn't know her and love her so much, I think the sight of her would have frightened me. It was exactly the look of living death. 

But yet, I didn't feel scared. She'd had a terrible morning of hallucinations, perhaps worsened by the drugs. She shouted in anger at her children and at the apparitions. She faced an onslaught of horrible images that seemed rooted in a deep spiritual battle.

I am not religious and I'm not sure I'm spiritual. My aunt is somewhat religious, although she didn't go to church or talk about religion. She kept seeing the devil in her hallucinations, and he was trying to get her. My mother suggested that this is Satan's last stand against humans to try to get them before they die.

When conversations like these come up, I find it is best not argue my position on matters of the afterlife. I've also learned that I don't necessarily have to pretend that I believe it. I think such visions would come to people who already believe in the devil or who are unsure of their faith. For people who don't believe such things, they might not see such visions. 

My aunt was always a worrier and perhaps paranoid, so these visions did not surprise me. My cousins frantically tried to calm her down, and I can imagine they were also horrified. 

Sara is possibly the most competent care giver I've ever seen. She has educated herself on the end stages, and she seemed prepared for each stage, including this one, and calmly told us what would most likely happen next, which would be a coma from which she does not awake.

Gini was not really conscious when I arrived because Hospice had given her sedatives to get her through the hallucinations. Sara said that in such cases, the hearing is the last sense to go, and that even when people in this state appear unconscious, it is believed they can hear you. We talked to Gini just a little, saying hello, saying we're here.

I felt like proclaiming a life-long love was not the right thing to do here. Since we don't go around in normal life proclaiming such things, doing so in these situations, to me would seem to indicate that you believe death is just around the doorstep. Implying such a thing didn't seem appropriate.

We were gathered in her presence for her, and I wanted my presence to also bring comfort to my cousins and my mom, and I felt a quiet love in the room though little was said.

There's a saying: Being There.

This was about Being There. Not necessarily doing anything, but just being present, because Being There is sometimes the most and best thing you can do.

While we gathered, I asked for a pen and paper to write her a note. My mom had wanted to have the family gather while Gini was alert for all of us to tell stories about Gini, recounting all the happy memories. People sometimes do this at funerals, and I liked my mom's idea to do it also while she was still with us. I think it allows the person to go to death with more peace and more love, and it gives the survivors a special gift too--the gift of having shared.

We didn't get to do this. Gini went downhill so fast. I knew I had to share with her the happiness she gave me, so I wrote it down. I wrote it down with out eloquence or poetry or metaphor or flowing prose. I wrote down the happy thoughts as they came to me, and I didn't even read it over after I wrote it, so I can't actually remember everything I said. I knew it wasn't good writing, but that made me realize it was what I needed to say, and was therefore the best writing--impulsive and true. I thought of handing it to Sara or Adam with a "Well, it will probably sound dorky," but I felt that would be asking them to give me reinforcement, and I didn't need it. Who in the world would judge words of love? I handed it to Sara, and she said, "I'm sure she will love it. You're such a good writer." I was so glad I didn't say something that might have prompted her to think she had to offer me reassurance.

I didn't write about death; I wrote about life, and I wrote about the gifts she gave us that will last our entire lives. I think it was good. I'm grateful I had the chance to write it, surrounded by love when I wrote it.

Gini came to for a few minutes, but couldn't really talk. She smiled and held my hand. We didn't keep her up long, and then we left to give my cousins some rest.

Later I got a note from Todd's wife that they read it to her and that it made Gini happy and was meaningful to my cousins. It's good to express love to someone when they can still hear it.

When we came home, my dad seemed to think I would be shaken by the sight of Gini. I really wasn't. I didn't avert my eyes when I realized that she already looked like death. I had to look at her. I had to calm myself. I had to look in love and look past the pain and the grim vision death can present.

If it were my mother or immediate family member, I don't know if I would have had the strength to face it calmly. I can't imagine what my cousins are going through right now. On top the inevitability of losing their mother at a relatively young age (66), they are also seeing her suffer both physically and mentally. It is extremely difficult for them, and they've had no experience in this, and yet, they are rising to the occasion, working together, and keeping the focus on getting Gini calm and comfortable.

A few years ago, I had a play in the Spirit & Place Festival, and part of the festival requirement was having a public conversation. The play featured a man in a nursing home who lived with regrets about how he treated his wife (deceased) and estranged son. I invited a faculty member of the University of Indianapolis Council on Aging to be a guest panelist, and something she said helped me change the way I see aging.

She said that people fight aging and see it as inherently bad and merely as a precursor to death. She said that in her experience in working with the elderly and with legislation on behalf of the elderly, she has come to see it aging not as a sentence of arbitrary passing of time until death, but as a beautiful phase of life. Just changing that one word "last" to "next" helped me relax. The next phase of life, not the last phase of life. And I need to relax. Aging and dying and the thought of yourself or a loved one going through either makes most people nervous and mentally fight against it, which results in inner conflict in what is ultimately a losing battle. Why exhaust ourselves at the end. What if we could take a deep breath instead? What if we walk slowly into that phase, noting the details and feeling gratitude and curiosity instead of being angry that we are getting old? 

There are a lot of beautiful and inspiring poems about fighting death, and I always thought I was in that camp, that I would indeed. "Rage, RAGE! against the dying light!"

I still find those poems inspiring, but I have decided to attribute that battle cry to living rather than to dying. 

How can I live more meaningfully? I have decided that the best way for me to live is to slow down and stop trying to do so much in life. To un-busy myself. To stop putting value on certain experiences. To stop thinking they are more valuable than merely necessary experiences...for example, missing out on a huge party wedding celebration with friends and fun-loving young friends to go sit in a silent still room that is, to put it bluntly, filled with pending death. 

To live fully is to understand what you value in life. 

If I live fully, I will have no reason to rage when the light starts to dim.

When you see a loved one dying, you think of the other people in your life. Have you assigned them their full value in your scheme of life? It only recently occurred to me how lucky I am to still have both of my parents who are both in very good health and very good spirits. Now is the time. 

I have been guilty of confusing fun and unusual experiences for a good, well spent life. I had those wild years. I sacrificed time with loved ones to have adventures on my own. I am grateful for those adventures as they helped me become who I am today and on days when I question my life, they give me memories and confidence that I did not squander. But I have felt the need to have such experience fade the past few years in favor of spending time with family and close friends and myself doing little things that make me happy rather than big things that get me noticed.

I've made so many wrong choices in my life, and I know I will continue to make mistakes. As I get older and lose more people to death, I understand so much more fully that certain people leave a hole when they leave. They take with them an era that can never be relived or occupied again. It's like it's locked away, and you can see it, but you can't ever touch it or change it.

 I don't want to experience that hole coupled with the realization that I didn't appreciate the person who left it while he or she was still here. I am today grateful that I know the full value of quiet rooms on sunny Saturdays full of people who don't talk but who say a lot.

And I don't want to die myself realizing that I didn't do everything I wanted to do. I will always have the drive to accomplish and to create, but I care so much less now about how people perceive me. I want to experience people and myself, I don't want to worry about image or legacy I must craft. 

I must make the way I live help me go gently into that good dark night.

PHOTO 365 2013 Part I

It's a little late, but here is my Photo 365 2013 montage. In 2013 I used two phones, two cameras, and two computers, so my pictures are scattered. I'd prefer to put them in order, but it would take hours. 2013 was a year of ups and downs, but looking at these pictures it's easy to see that the ups trumped the downs. From a spectacular trip to Washington, Alaska, and British Columbia, to camping around Indiana, to discovering Indy, to working on my landscaping and "laying down roots," to visiting my family in Michigan, this was a fantastic year!

Here's the first installment!

Gear for big trip to the Pacific Northwest

June. A day of "funemployment" with my good friend Dottie in her garden.

June. Getting read to play cornhole at Larry's with our favorite beer from St. John, USVI

I sometimes take pictures of food I cook for myself. Cooking for myself has brought me a lot of joy, as it is a message that says, "You are the worth the effort." This is just salmon croquettes and asparagus, but so delicious!

In Alaska, we took a helicopter to a sled dog camp high on a glacier.

We love taking long bike rides

July. And going for long runs in the mud and woods

July. Reading, writing, homemade pizza, and beer in my favorite beer glass

June. Icy Point Alaska at sunset. We had a great day of whale watching and bear tracking here and met many nice local Alaskan people who shared their stories with us.

June. Sun set over the mountains in Icy Strait

June. We saw bears here. Beautiful day in Alaska!

May. These yellow flowers grew on the mountain road sides all over California and Washington. 

May. In Washington, wild goats will stalk you, waiting for you to pee. They lick your pee then attack (and sometimes kill) you. 

May. Clouds part briefly on Hurricane Ridge. Just a couple of hours later, we were on a sunny beach in the same national park--Olympic National Park

May. Beautiful flowers near Neah Bay, Olympic Peninsula, Washington. Look like little teacups.

May. One of the many ferries we took. This one goes from Whidbey Island to Vancouver.

May. Sul Duc Falls in Olympic National Park. Breath-giving (as opposed to taking!) lush, green, dense forest.

May. ONP. Someday, I'm going to rent a Jucy Mobile. Saw these in Joshua Tree and Death Valley, too. 

May. Portland beer: Windmer Bros. Delicious. Buy it at Olympic National Park for $1/bottle. Wow! We had a picnic here at the waterfall.

May. Hoh National Rain Forest in ONP. Incredible wet hike through here. Felt like I was in Land of the Lost.

May. A romantic dinner at Ray's in Ballard neighborhood of Seattle. Overlooking Puget Sound where we watched seals and otters play. In my wine glass is a ferry!

May. Lunch at Pyramid Brewery.

May. Seattle from the ferry

May. Really jumping around--the night before flying to Vancouver, we had pizza and schooners at Silver Beach Pizza, one of our favorite joints. In St. Joseph, Michigan.

June. Sunset in Alaska

June. View from apartment in Vancouver

June. Alaska

May. Holding an iphone up to one of those telescope thingies. We wanted to walk to the lighthouse pictured inside but it was a five mile walk, and the tide would wash out the land bridge before we could return. At Dungeness Spit in Washington.

June. On the Juan De Fuca Straits

April. Turkey in Heat at Clifty Falls State Park in Indiana

Trying to get Primo to pose for a picture next to a waterfall in Clifty Falls. May

February. Hannah Georgas concert at Do317 Lounge. My concert review was quoted in other sources!

Murphy Arts February

June. Vancouver Aquarium. Had a great time watching the otters.

Anemones at Vancouver Aquarium

June. Chinatown, Vancouver. The "only" Seafoods?

June. Vancouver Aquarium. Jellyfish made a fabulous underwater fireworks display!

June. Vancouver aquarium. Beluga Whale. He seemed so sweet and playful.

Tents at sled dog camp!

June. Near Lincoln Park Beach in Stevensville, Michigan

January. Fun night taking my mom to see this jazz band, led by Ed Bagitini, now in his 80s. They worked together at a music store in Michigan in the late 50s. 

January. Silver Beach in winter. Michigan

January. Sledding with my nieces and nephews and brother and in Michigan.

June. The Super Moon!

January. The Box Factory Art Galleries in Michigan with my mom

January. Cookie and Primo go for a snowy walk in Michigan.

January. Alpines in Michigan