On Trying To Be Buddhist

Gone

Our next-door neighbor, Dot, died two days ago.  She was elderly and very ill - bed-ridden and barely able to speak for the last several months of her life.  We were so aware of all the comings and goings while she was sick - nurses, family, friends, doctors, her priest, so many people each day.  There was a sense of anxiety about it all - we were hoping she was receiving the care needed to make her comfortable, that she wasn't suffering.....  The terrible thing was that her family left her totally alone each night.  It was at her request - she was one of those mothers who hated even the thought of being a burden on her children - and each night they would ask her if she wanted them to stay.  Each night she would tell them, "No."  They had to lean close to even hear.  I can say nothing more about this except that it was a source of pain and concern to us, as her neighbors, and to her friends. 

Now that she is gone there is a certain peace.  It is quiet - the house is empty for the first time in years.  Not cleared out yet - that will come later.  But empty.  Even so - Dot herself is part of the reality of this place....there is a presence that I do not understand.

What Pattern?

Every morning, over coffee, I think of things I want to say here - and then the day passes without my writing a word.  To some extent this is a good thing.  It does weed out the junk, the half-formed thoughts that should be allowed to fade and not have artificial life pumped into them.  But still, I'm not happy at total silence either.  So today I'll talk about my dreams. 

Lately I've dreamed a lot about people who are long gone.  My father, who died back in the '70's, has been showing up frequently - in a sort of peaceful, family sort of way.  And other relatives have showed up as well.  But last night's dream made the most impression on me.  I was on my way to give my own eulogy - though in fact I was also quite alive in the dream, and there didn't seem to be any inconsistency in that.  I should mention that this whole dream had a strong flavor of my mother's memorial service last October.  In any case, I arrived, with a few elderly friends, at our destination - not a funeral home, but a restaurant.  It was one of those old-fashioned places, and evidently we had a private room, all dark wood paneling,  with dark paintings, mostly portraits, on the walls.  The room was narrow with a long table running the length of it. 

Entering the room, I pass my Grandfather - my mother's father - and stop to talk with him.  (He also died, almost fifty years ago.)  I say that I regret so much not having known him in my adulthood when I might have really seen him as a person, and appreciated him.  Feeling very close to him in that moment, I put my hand out to touch him.   Then I move into the room. 

Many people are milling about - most of whom I barely know, or don't know at all.  When I stand up to speak, many of them continue their conversations, until, by my own silence, I get their attention.   I'm pretty irritated.  I'm speaking extemporaneously, very aware of working to weave the events of my life into some sort of meaningful pattern. 

Well - the dream went on a bit further, but that's enough.  When I woke (this was one of those last dreams that come just before the alarm) what continued to resonate, other than the discomfort of dreaming, yet again, about death, was the business of finding patterns. That sort of thinking has always been my passion.  Of course I'm hardly alone in this, it's what people do.  We're pattern-finders - that's how we survive.  But there's the question - what patterns exist and what ones are just our imposition?  In my dream I wasn't having much success finding the pattern of my life, but I was very aware of my facility at imposing the appearance of one.

My Mother

My mother died almost two weeks ago, on Saturday, October 20th, just a bit after noon. Her death was very peaceful, though quicker than anyone expected.  I spoke with her just the day before, Friday morning, and she was quite clear although very tired.  I was making plans to visit her, because we knew she was going downhill, but no one expected it to quite so quick.  My brother and niece and the hospice care nurse, Nancy, were all with her.

In the late afternoon my brother called to tell me that there was a double rainbow. 

This week I went to the memorial service - it was held on Tuesday.  There had been so much to do before then that Mom's passing did not really hit me.  But now I feel it more strongly.  This loss feels  extraordinarily different from any other I have experienced.  I loved my father dearly, and knew him far less that I wished when he died suddenly, years ago - I had so much grief and so many regrets.  But Mother was my connection to life itself - not because of anything special in our particular relationship, but because that's what mothers are.  A sense of rootedness goes with her, which surprises me, because we were certainly not rooted, either in terms of home, or relationship, or social circle, or any other measure.  Nevertheless - an anchor, a strength is gone.

Justifiable Anger

I'm reading Tulku Thondup's Peaceful Death.  On page 124 he writes of a woman who had died and was being judged by the Lord of Death, that although she had a lot of good deeds to her credit, "she also harbored resentment toward unfair bureaucratic systems of the society."  Not a good thing, evidently - and a source of suffering for her in her bardo experience after death.  This is a little surprising - it seems pretty natural to most of us to have such feelings, especially at times like the present when so much that our country and its leaders are doing seems so wrong to so many of us.  Frustration, anger and so on run pretty high.  But here in this book, the question is not whether the feelings are justified - it's pretty clear they were.  The implication is that such feelings in themselves are a source of later trouble. The justified resentment felt by the woman being judged, counted against her. 

Anger is one of the so-called five poisons - the negative emotions out of which all of samsara is generated.  Though I understood this, it had escaped me until now that this includes even justifiable anger, righteous anger.   It doesn't mean no response is possible to injustice - but it puts the choices and possibilities for response into a very different light.

Sadness

I've started several times to write today's entry - and find little to say. 

A large package arrived in the afternoon - two paintings done two decades or so ago by my mother.  She had given them to her younger sister and when that sister died earlier this year, her daughter offered the paintings to me.  One of them is of a great 450 year old oak in Granby, Connecticut.  I went online to find some photos of the tree for my cousin.  The site that has the best pictures also has some others that are exactly the countryside in which I grew up, a long time ago.  It made me homesick in that really profound way that comes when the place no longer even exists, at least not as it was then.  In fact the whole world I grew up in is gone.  One part of my family had lived in another small Connecticut town for more than 300 years - and no one is left now.  Places that felt like home to me are now distant and impersonal and opaque (and, by the way, so damned expensive that I couldn't afford to live there now anyhow.)

Should this matter to me?  Buddhist practitioners leave home - become monks and nuns, hermits, wanderers.  They impose on themselves the same sort of loneliness and detachment I'm feeling tonight.  Longchenpa says, "Whatever happens, let it happen......." 

A Death

I received the news this morning that my mother's oldest sister died last night.  She had been very ill, though only briefly, so it was not unexpected.  She had a long life - she was 98 - and passed quickly, which is a mercy.  So today I've been somewhat occupied with breaking the news to my mother and making sure she has as much support as is available.  She lives too far away for me to go there.   

I have no energy tonight for a longer entry - except to note how even writing this brief post reminds me of the awareness that can be brought to everything, to sadness, concern, and even tiredness.