Ready or Not in the Land of the Dying

I was sure he'd have died by now.

He was sliding fast last spring. I hoped he'd see his birthday in late June, but was positive he'd be gone by August.

Positive.

Come his birthday, and he rallied. I mean, really rallied. Not just ceasing to slide, but returning to a place he hadn't been in many, many months.

• He was awake for hours at a time.
• He looked people in the eye.
• He cracked his distinctive self-depreciating jokes.
• He laughed and sang.
• He thanked the caregivers for their help.

The visiting hospice nurse was shocked--pleased shocked. "Now I know why you all say he was such a great guy."

I couldn't help it. I began to fantasize.

• He isn't dying, at least not soon. We'll have years together, yet. Good years. Awake, aware, and happy years.

This went on for about a week. Then he rapidly slid further than he'd been before--barely opening his eyes for more than a few minutes--mostly staying distant and unfocused.

But the damage was done.

When we first approached hospice, I was not remotely ready. I only tried it because they evaluate you after three months. If you aren't clearly dying, hospice kicks you out again. I figured that would happen to us.

It didn't.

One evaluation. Two. He was certified dying--even if at slower than the proscribed, gone-in-six-month rate.

Since the beginning, I'd assumed that when the time came I'd say, "I'm fine. Don't hold on just for me. It's okay."

That would be a proper monk-like attitude.

Now the time was imminent, I found I couldn't do it.

I wasn't fine. It wasn't okay. I desperately wanted him to hang on for me.

My whole mind and body screamed, "Don't go. We were supposed to be together for many more years. Don't leave me."

Nine months passed. A third evaluation. Still, hospice kept us. And I changed. I began to feel that I could let go.

Listening to his cries of confused pain in response to the most benign bodily care--a wipe on the chin, for example--that helped. The stress of life with caregivers also helped --selfish as that may be.

Mostly, time helped. I just got used to the idea again.

Then came the day he said he was dying. Right then. I found myself saying, "Don't worry about me. I'll be fine."

It was true. With my whole heart and body, I knew I would be fine. I was finally ready. What a relief.

Until his birthday rally.

Now, that is a lie.

Five months and several hospice evaluations later, my only thought is: 

"Please, don't leave me. Not yet. I can't live without you."

*  *  *  *  *  *

Living with Strangers

For nine months, I barely tolerated my narcissistic weekend caregiver and his slovenly ways.

He never cleaned.

He broke my dining room chairs.

He wore his pants so low, he graced me with his bare butt when he bent over.

He grumbled, grumped and demanded that I meet his latest need.


Finally, I could no longer stand this man radiating bad temper through the house while my uncle was dying. Yet, the company who supplied my caregivers refused to replace him.

So, I decided to do what I should have done long ago: get my weekend caregiver from a different company. I'd put it off and put it off, not wanting to rock the delicate, care-giving boat.

I've gone through a lot of caregivers since my uncle has lived with me. I feel incredibly lucky to have a great person five days a week. What if I went to another company, yet got another dud?

      It's not easy being a live-in caregiver. It's much harder when
      a competent person is living right there. To succeed, my
      caregivers must do everything for my uncle - who can do
      nothing for himself - PLUS get along with me.

I sympathized that someone might find the situation stressful.  That didn't mean I should tolerate a resentful person skulking about.

Then, like a miracle, without my doing anything, the annoying caregiver disappeared. I was assigned an amazing man from Southwest Nigeria (the region Shell and BP have made into an environmental disaster area). Highly educated, experienced, and with an optimistic sense of humor - he was good with Milt and with me.

I couldn't believe my luck or blessing or whatever it was.

I felt more relaxed than practically since I started this gig.

Living with a dying man is an emotional wringer, but that is not so hard. Hard is sharing my house with an endless parade of well-meaning or not-so-well-meaning strangers while that emotional wringing is in progress.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *

Death Practice

I knew it was time for Milt to be in hospice last fall, but I still didn't like it. When I agreed to do this, I thought we'd have at least five years together, hopefully longer. Two and a half years? I couldn't make sense of it. I gave the hospice folks a lot of grief as I twisted and turned, pushed and pulled, unable to lie comfortably in this new bed.

I'd expected that when Milt was ready to let go, I wouldn't hold on. I didn't want him to linger just to take care of me. But the fact is, last fall, I could not honestly say that to him. However much I didn't want to, I clung to him, a desperate hunger in my throat. I needed him to live.

Luckily, he was not in a hurry, either. We coasted along, immensely helped by hospice, as Milt slid slowly toward the end. The change was so gradual, it was only obvious when it was time for his six months review.

To stay in hospice (at least paid for by medicare), you have to be in a steady decline. The expectation is that you'll be dead within six months. You can take longer - as long as you are making steady, downward progress.

When I made a list of Milt's losses over that six months, there were many. No question we could stay in hospice - thankfully, as we had grown dependent on their services - but it was a great reprieve. He might be dying, but he wasn't dying all that fast.

Then, about two months later, he suddenly said, "I'm dying." His voice was softly wondering, as if he was simply cataloging an interesting fact.

Now, Milt has not wanted to discuss his impending demise and had never previously said anything remotely like this. Not only was it a strange thing for him to say, his whole affect had changed. He was oddly blank and floating - lying back with his eyes rolled up to show the white.

"Are you dying right now, today," I asked.

It took awhile to get his attention, but he said yes.

"Your brother is visiting tomorrow. Will you still be here."

"No."

Nothing was hurting and he wasn't scared. He was simply ready to go and he was going. I held his hand and for the first time, was able to honestly say that it was okay for him to go. I would be fine.

Turned out to be a practice run. It seems it is not uncommon for people to dip into dying and then come back. Like they need a taste before committing to the real thing.

At ten months and counting, Milt has had two more hospice evaluations. He is still on a steady slide out. He's also had four more of these dying practice sessions. He had one today.

Am I still ready? Well...

* * * * * * * * *

Dying in Peace

My uncle lives with me. He is dying. With hospice at our sides,* his passing has a good chance of being gentle and sweet. He’s on the last stretch. I hope he makes it to his birthday in late June, but don't expect him to be here for long after.

Still, his body has a fair bit of letting go to do. He eats less and less, but still eats. (Those truly ready to go often stop eating altogether.) He mostly sleeps, but has short periods of wakefulness and engagement. For an entire day a couple weeks ago, he suddenly returned to the man he’d been – chatting and laughing and showing the astonished hospice folks why he’d been voted funniest professor year after year.

Although his actual slide out of here promises to be easy, in the meantime life has gotten very hard. The slightest touch brings on screaming, swearing, and pleas to stop. Dementia has eaten the part of him that would have let him steel himself through necessary pain, leaving only the moment of agony.

“They’re mean to me,” he replies to my morning greeting. "They tortured me."

In the U.S. with our lack of social services, my uncle is lucky. He can afford decent home help rather than being warehoused under the care of overworked, underpaid, demoralized “nursing” home employees. I’m there to make sure his care is as attentive and kind as possible.
After a year struggling through one comically inadequate live-in helper after another, we stumbled into the arms of a gracious, attentive CNA. A Sunni Muslim from India, he quietly prays when it is time - his devout observance, my uncle’s atheism, and my own eclectic spirituality coexisting without tension.

Finally, reliable care for my uncle. Respite from anxiety for me. 

Yes, we are lucky. For those poorer and less lucky, how much more traumatic dying must be. I expect I will be among the mass of poor and unlucky ones when it is my time. Having watched my uncle, I frankly don't know if I can let myself down into that well or not.

* Medicare presently pays for hospice home care visits during the last six months of life. This serves the caretakers of the dying as much as the dying person. We must not let greedy, corporate privatizers and their political henchmen take this rare benefit.

* * * * * * * *

The Fast Track Outta Here

Over brunch, my friend mentioned the study showing that multiple childhood traumas could knock 20 years off your life.

I grinned. "You mean I have a good chance of going home at 70? Wow" (Taking a wild guess at the longevity of various relations.)

Some years back, I saw a bodyworker who heard the voices of numerous disembodied beings. Once as we discussed the pains du jour, one of those beings said, "Of course you're in pain. You're doing such great work."

Ha.

People with a trauma history tend to have a slew of physical ailments. Because we signed up for the fast track. Because we are doing great work. We get such masses done so very fast, we are in the early release program. We get out while others have to keep at it for decades more.

'Course, I don't have enough of the studied traumas to get the demonstrated 20-year early release, but surely - given that I haven't slept well for over 40 years and am in constant pain - surely, I've managed to shave off at least 10 years.


*  *  *  *  *  *

More on Fear & Gratitude

There are lots of external reasons I might be having trouble finding a job - not least, Wisconsin's continued employment hemorrhage under Scott Walker that keeps us mired in the worst of the recession while other states begin recovery. And the one thing a writer must do to be published (or produced) is write & submit & write & submit & write & submit - letting the rejections wisp away like so much morning mist under the rising summer sun. So to greet job-seeking failure and play-submission failure with gratitude, as I talked about in my last post, does not mean I should stop applying for jobs or stop writing & submitting.

It is primarily a directive to release fear, be open to what is as it comes, and not to internalize social "failure" as a comment on the nature of the universe or my place in it.

Hard enough even without all the good reasons to fear. Such as being on the edge of not covering my bills. Or aging painfully in a country where, despite oodles of wealth, the only workers allowed access to good health care are fully employed professionals, politicians, and soldiers.

Still, fear is of no use. My conditions won't change if I greet them with fear. Worse, fear eats my creative energy while insisting I should quit.

"Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?" is one of the more useful Jesus sayings. Great teachers from other traditions similarly say to let go of fear. Forget insurance. Forget living your life in order to amass enough fortune to protect you through old age.

There is no guarantee, here, that bad things won't happen to you if you do not fear. It is not a magic prayer bullet that can bring you money & cars & a hunky guy or curvacious gal. Your health may crash. Your home may burn. Your loved one may die. You may be exhausted day after day by the struggle to get just enough to go on. However it happens, you will experience loss and will need to morn. But moving through loss and grief without fear is one way to get on the road to the greatest good - directly perceiving the delicious, brilliant, flowing energy in which we swim and of which we are all made.

Whatever my pains and difficulties, on that road the only things that make any sense are joy and gratitude.

* * * * * * * *

Fear and Gratitude

Say we really, really want something and work very, very hard to get it and... fail. If our first response was, "Thank you. I didn't realize that thing I wanted was bad for me" how would the world be different?

That's what fills my thoughts as I ponder months of job application and play submission with no success in either department.

I lost my present house twice before finally getting it - once when it was listed as a short sale & once in the bidding after the foreclosure. But I WANTED it. So I kept going back - pushing, pushing, pushing. And then, the first buyer of the foreclosure fell through & it was offered to me.

"Yay!" I thought, "Look what dogged persistence (+ some earth energy manipulation) can do."

Now I think someone or something or the general synchronicity energy of the universe was trying to get a message to me, "This is not your house." I refused to listen and so here I am struggling along in an unduly difficult house.

Unemployment or massive underemployment (as is my case) can be miserable. Not to mention lack of access to medical care in the medically medieval United State. The future looms fearful. Time gets lost in a numb parade of unmarked days. Sense of self drifts into strange space. If only I could get up every day and do work wanted by someone who was willing to give me a paycheck for it!

But what if I just don't realize that, for reasons incomprehensible from my little, earthly, human point of view, this is bad for me?

Do not fear. Do not fear. Do not fear. Do not fear. Do not fear.

*******

Back to School Simply?

I left full-time academics in 1999. It took a year of exploring the idea before I handed in my resignation, and another year and a half before I finally left. Academic institutions have a year-long hiring cycle and so it was professional to hand in a year's notice. Yet also, when it came down to it, I didn't want to go. My dean would ask me to stay for another term and I'd say yes. I might still be there if I hadn't been scheduled to go to Siberia to look at schools and talk to teachers. I could ease myself out by moving right after my return.

That was my first step in simplicity. A three bedroom flat full of furniture, all full of stuff, got pared down to an 8x15 U-Haul's worth. I sold a few things, but gave most away - to friends and to a resale shop that supported people living with AIDS.

I didn't miss the professorial 60-80 hour work weeks, but I did miss the work, itself. I loved most aspects of academic life - even committee meetings. This was helped by the fact that I was in a collegial department with an interesting student population. But still, there is something about that life that suits me, no matter what the department or who the students.

Two years later, I was back in academics - working part-time on an education evaluation project. It was a temporary position and as it ended, I took the next great leap in simplicity. I got rid of my remaining stuff in order to go into a monastery. 

This was a physically and emotionally wrenching task. Most of the stuff I shucked on leaving DePaul was the unnecessary detritus of your typical middle-class life - like fancy, never-used dishes from Grandma. Now I was dumping stuff that mattered. There were my brother’s sculptures and my mother’s photographs, a closet full of colorful, eclectic clothes, gold earrings I bought in Ethiopia, an amber necklace from Siberia, and a string of ivory elephants my dad brought back from his first trip to Nigeria in 1963. There were read and re-read science fiction and children’s books, travel guides, world music CDs, the Madame Alexander doll my mom gave me for my fifth Christmas so I wouldn’t ask for a Barbie, and the so-o-o comfy, blue armchair I bought with my first paycheck from Arco Alaska.  My car, my computer, my blankets: the list was daunting. But of course, it wasn't really the giving up of objects that hurt. It was the releasing of what those objects symbolized - the self I had spent 50 years creating, getting to know, grieving over, and finally loving. Yet, I did it. I let go of the objects and the memories those objects represented.

When I left the monastery, I thought, "That was way too hard to do in the first place to turn around and undo it now. I'm not getting the job, the house, and the possessions back again."

Fast forward half a decade, and I want to do just that - if I can - well, not the objects, but the rest of it. I already have the house. Now I am applying for jobs. 

I still miss the dynamics of academic life. I miss going to an office and being part of a work group. I miss students. I miss tussling with intellectual challenges. I have all these skills that I rarely use. So I want to return. Maybe that is impossible after such a long hiatus... in this economy... in a town full of young, under-employed academics, but I am going to try.

So we'll see. In my semi-employed/self-employed state, it was a struggle not to accrue stuff. I wonder how that struggle will play out if (when) I get that academic position.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  * 

Stuck in Trauma Thinking

"The voice of the perpetrator says it is all your fault and you should give up in despair because what you did was so awful," my spiritual counselor said, "Believing you are hopeless and stuck is trauma thinking."

"What would happen if you dismissed the voice listing all the things you've done wrong and just let yourself feel the feelings?" she asked. "Describe the feelings. Where in your body are they? What texture do they have? How old were you the first time you felt those feelings? Just stay with the feelings and see what emerges."

I tried that this morning. The voice started in on all the ways I've messed up: hiring a bad contractor who wrecked the floors - that I can not afford to fix, buying the wrong house, deciding it was a good idea to take my uncle out of the nursing home in the first place, not applying for a full-time job the minute I was out of the monastery, not doing whatever it took so the sisters would keep me in the monastery, throwing over my tenure-track position at DePaul, not...

You get the picture. Starting with the most recent, a long litany of every major decision I've ever made, or had made for me, marched accusingly through my brain. All bad. All wrong. All adding up to why I was now lost in a morass of despair.

All to say I wouldn't have these feelings if only I was good enough.

I let the list of bads go and watched what emerged.

A little girl was crying in wrenching, gasping hopelessness. She had just been shut behind the gates of Hell with no recourse and no way out. A little girl, no more than three. What was she doing there? How could she possibly have done anything worthy of eternal damnation? That makes no sense. My stomach hurt.

So I held her. She cuddled up on my breast until her sobs were exausted.

"I love you, sweetheart. You are wonderful. It wasn't your fault. I love you," I said.

It still took me awhile to get my taking-refuge-in-freeze-response body out of bed, but my sense of upwelling trauma went from an 8 to a 3 (on a 1 to 10 scale).

"Just be with the feelings" is the most common thing my spiritual adviser says. "They've come for a reason, to bring you information. Let yourself receive the information. The only way out is through."

Not sure if I went very far through today, but at least I opened the door and went in.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *

Simplicity is a Struggle-some Dance

I don't like buying & owning & taking care of excess property, but go where things are sold & I get the twitchy desire to buy something. Anything. Even in the monastery, avarice constantly whispered in my ear, just like it does with everyone everywhere else. It really helped to have a tiny, monastic allowance to cover all my personal care products, clothes, etc (I entered seriously lacking in black garments and we were required to dress well). My desire might twitch, but my purse, being empty, could not answer.

Of course, one of the big disjunctions between the older sisters' words & deeds was their attachment to property. It was easy to dismiss, though. We were all there to struggle with our ego issues, I thought. If that was theirs, it was none of my business. Eventually, I understood that they were not kidding when calling themselves "free of ego" (to quote the oldest sister). Being "free of ego" they had no issues to struggle with. Their love of property was, therefore, a monastic value - as was every other personality foible & ego-attachment. Still, I could swim in the freedom of not owning stuff - 'though it  was a grind that we were required to pour our life energy into care of the monastery's excess property.

Now I am poor-ish, but have some cash, not to mention the need to fill the material needs of myself & my dependent uncle. Buying & owning still feel uggy, but not feeding the desire to buy is a bigger problem.

sigh.

Seven years post monastery, I constantly struggle to find balance. It is necessary to own some stuff - in & out of the monastery. It is convenient to own other stuff. 

An incessant, judgmental, inner dialog creates just as much mental fog as being pulled hither & yon by freewheeling indulgence in desire. Clarity lets the light in. Space for breath lets the wind blow through. Taking things easy opens a silence where still, small voices can be heard. So where is the balance? Not attaching is one thing. Not attaching to the desire not to attach is another.

double sigh.

What if this struggle for balance is all that our job entails? What if we are not here to achieve some angelic freedom from ego so we can coast through earthly life until our spirit is ready to give this body up?  Perhaps instead, our job is only to knowingly engage in the struggle. I hope this is so 'cause "engage in the struggle" is the one thing I can actually do.

Namaste

*  *  *  *  *  *

Reflections on the Wisconsin Uprising

One of these days the people in the U.S. will rise up and toss down our presently growing corporate tyranny. It has happened before & will happen again. Just won't be so easy as a few rounds of voting. For one thing, the prevalence and ease of manipulating electronic voting machines (including visual scanners) makes it unlikely that votes for a sane state are counted
Yet, even if the vote doesn't bring real change, the organizing energy is precious. Rejection of our rising capitalist dictatorship can only come when enough of us are willing to loose everything, and even be shot at. That kind of desperate courage arises out of economic & social suffering - the kind some in the U.S. are already experiencing. The suffering will spread due to the economic collapse being ushered in by extremist Republicans & appeasing Republicrates (like Obama & Reid). As we discover that we do not suffer alone, more and more of us will join together to choose life over survival.

It will take time. The tools used to jolly populations along have always been so very effective at dividing & conquering: fascism built on fear & hate of trumped up social enemies, & keeping folks silent out of fear of homelessness, starvation, and reprisal - while they must work more & more for less & less.

BUT capitalist dictatorship, like any dictatorship, like monoculture, is inherently unstable. IT CAN NOT LAST. The structure of any controlled system IS the very source of its destruction. Nature abhors perfect forms. Inherent in biology is pressure for diversity and new growth in small, overlooked spaces.

We had a vote in Wisconsin. Two entrenched Republicans were turned out of historically Republican districts. That's amazing. But it is also a bare beginning.

So the question is: how do we keep our spirits up so we can engage and live and have full, compassionate hearts for the duration?

* * * * * *

The Necessity of Hunger

"The number one reason to fast is that food tastes better when you are hungry." Augustine said that (more or less - I paraphrase 'cause I can't seem to locate the source). Augustine's not a guy I quote often given that he invented the doctrine of original sin, and blamed male lust on the women men lusted after. But I like this.

And I find it comforting. Especially as a strange coterie of Republican extremists and center-right Republicrates (Obama, Harry Reid & like-minded congressional "Democrats") eagerly pass legislation guaranteed to take the present, U.S. economic recession-bordering-on-depression into a full-fledged, undeniable depression. (We can't have a "double-dip" recession if the recession that started under Bush never ended - CEO salaries, global corporation profits and stock prices notwithstanding.)

But what if, in the larger spiritual picture, the role of these insulated, corporate politicians actually is to explode the U.S. economy? Could that be a spiritual good in the largest, universal picture? A creative passage of fire, a dark road that many people of this nation need to walk? Yes, huge, visible suffering will be visited on masses of folks - I expect to be one of the suffering. But out of that ash land, what might we grow?

So many of us, myself included, have lived with such a surfeit of guaranteed comfort for so long that we have no idea what food tastes like, a dry bed feels like, or how water quenches thirst. We need to rediscover hunger. For our spirits' sake.

For ten years, I walked the terrible dark road of despair and grief and self-hate. Many don't make it to the end of that road. I came out the other side with help from those I met on the way. I wouldn't wish the same journey on anyone. Yet I am also immensely grateful I was forced to go there. The perspective, compassion, presence, and humility I learned were worth the price and the danger.

I've yet to meet anyone who choose such a path. We have to be driven. Our coping strategies and comfort blankets have to be forcibly stripped off.

If the impending economic depression is just such a forced stripping away, maybe our national journey into the dark could bear equally valuable fruit.

* * * * * * *

Of what use pain?

My left hip is the most painful, and my right knee has hurt for the longest time. Yet in a recent Reiki session, those two places were completely open. Sometimes Reiki energy is sucked up by an off-kilter part of the body like dry earth thirsting for water. This was different. Energy flowed freely into my hip and knee - no obstruction at all - as if it was poured through empty space.

What if chronic pain is not just the unhappy indicator of a broken body? What if a body in pain is not even broken. What if pain is the side effect of the body serving a purpose - and doing this job well?

Yes, my sciatica results from decades of poor skeletal alignment. Yes, that skeletal misalignment was caused by muscles held tight all my life - with other muscles pulling improperly to compensate. Yes, those muscles first froze into a trauma response during childhood. And, yes, that scenario created an unbalanced whole whose misplaced wear ended up pinching and inflaming sensitive, sciatic nerves.

But what if, ultimately, pain serves another purpose than pointing up failed function of a purely physical machine? Perhaps an invitation to life-style change. Perhaps a call to heal buried trauma. Perhaps a loving-parent-push out of the comfort zone and onto the road of spiritual awakening.

Or perhaps a sign that the body is clearing and opening to receive greater energy.

Perhaps.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Fallen Woman

I'm falling down a deep chasm, grabbing desperately at branches, only to have my hand slide down, stripping the leaves off, and go on falling. There's the constant niggling of home repair when I have little energy and no money, the anxiety of poorly-paid, part-time employment, the suffering of chronic pain with no access to health care, and the struggle to give good care to my uncle.

"Why not just fall free?" my friend asked.

What a relief. Desperation and the mad scrabble to hang on is so exhausting. How much sweeter just to let go and fall.

Yet I am poor, aging, in bad health, and overwhelmed by unfamiliar responsibility. My choices led to this life, one that society judges as failure. So I feel shame as well as fear for my future .

Spiritual teachers say to live in the present. Can't say I've managed that when I was often swamped by regret and what-ifs. But I've lived as if I had no fear for the future - abandoning social and financial security when I felt called (by my creative muse or by God - feel free to choose the label you prefer). Not that I didn't notice the fear, but I set it aside pretty easily as unimportant. Until recently, I had no dependents - which allowed me the freedom to do so.

"Maybe it was never so easy to make fearless choices," my friend said, "but you weren't present enough to feel your fear until now."

This is likely. So is my present work to be fearless while truly feeling the fear? Not distracting from, suppressing or denying fear, but feeling how strong it is, acknowledging it, and then setting it aside as a bad guide?

Every morning I practice being grateful before I get out of bed. I have never lacked for any necessity. I lack for nothing now. If anything, I have too much. Okay, I have physical and emotional toil, but those struggles aren't the problem. It is fear and shame that fill my inner space with grinding tension as if I chewed on greasy metal filings.

My choices led to a life that society judges as failure and left me open to certain material challenges. That doesn't mean the choices were wrong. Not if what matters is doing my divine work in the world.

Choose Poverty

"Choose poverty in order to be present to the world." The sentence rose into my dreamy, mental drift during a guided meditation. Choose poverty to gain the freedom to be fully present.

On a Friday in early March, 2005, I turned my credit cards over to the monastery's Formation Mistress and closed my bank accounts - on Sunday I was entering the novitiate. As I left the bank, I felt an exhilarating rush of freedom. The freedom not to own. The freedom not to fear the loss of things.

Didn't last long. On Monday, I found that an old check hadn't cleared and I was suddenly in debt. But even that much taste of real freedom was illuminating.

Recently a fire wiped out a large, upscale apartment complex in my town. One young man lost everything, but when asked how this felt, said it felt like freedom. I knew this is what he was talking about.

Of course, it is a lot easier to live free of fear when your shelter, food, clothing, medical care, books, work, and anything else you might need were guaranteed by a well-off monastic community. Those sisters' homes might be owned by a non-profit corporation, but they had control as the corporation board. And that corporation owned some pretty cushy digs - better than I'd ever afforded on my own.

Sometimes I heard sisters boast of their feelings of freedom compared to ordinary folks in the world - who are so often eaten up by worry. The sisters think it is their superior lifestyle and practices. Perhaps. But I imagine their security is an important factor.

Still, so many spiritual teachers insist it is possible for anyone - in the world or within a well-off monastery - to give up the control and fear that comes with ownership. I hope some day soon I can be like the man who lost it all in a fire: let go and rediscover what real freedom tastes like.

* * * * * *

A Parkinson's Peak

"Read to me on evolution," my uncle said as I came in Saturday. "Give her the book so she can read to me," he told the caregiver, shaking a slim volume on evolution that came with our subscription to Scientific American. "Your Ph.D. was on evolution. You should like this," he continued.

After dinner I read to him from the book. Then he asked me to look him up on the computer. I did and found a lot of his old papers... And a newspaper with his name among other young men who had just been discharged after WWII. I showed him the newspaper on my laptop, and read out titles of his research. He talked about various co-authors: the crazy student who broke all the glassware in the lap, and the reliable student who died in China of kidney failure, the nasty lab head who purloined my uncle's postdoc work, and the kind lab head who encouraged a group of young researchers.

"It's good to know my work hasn't just disappeared," he said dropping into a moment of sadness.

"It hasn't. Your work is still out there. You're famous," I said.

"Tell them the famous biochemist has gone to bed," he said later, laughing as he clumped down the hall leaning on his walker, one foot dragging.

None of which sounds terribly earth shattering except I haven't heard that much energy, or intelligence, from my uncle in a long time.

We had a substitute caregiver that day. The man loved to talk, and knew how to draw my uncle out of the vague country his mind so often wandered. Our present regular caregiver is meticulous in his physical care, but never talks to my uncle except to give instructions as part of that physical care.

More importantly, Parkinson's can be an up and down disease. Facilities return that have been missing for awhile, and then disappear again. Today, my uncle was equally bright-eyed and awake. How long will this energetic, intelligent period last? There is no way to know.

* * * * * * *

The Demon is Winning

"Tell the Demon Should to can it," I exclaimed.

My friend wanted to spend a nice Sunday afternoon lounging on the deck, but didn't think she should - never mind that she had just come through an emotional & physical wringer. Anyway, why does anyone need justification to lounge?

"A voice that speaks in shoulds always takes you away from the divine," I continued. "Shoot, it takes years of practice to be able to relax into stillness, in nothing-to-do. Most people never manage. They're too addicted to action - needing busyness for distraction or to numb out or to cover the hole left by their missing self-esteem."

My friend agreed and prepared to lounge.

As I drove away, a tiny voice whispered,"Tell the Demon Should to can it," and I started to cry.

Not that I have trouble lounging. Just the opposite. Add together a contemplative spirit, a mind fascinated by watching, and a body used to the freezing habit learned during childhood trauma, and my problem is moving, not stillness. How often have I missed something I'd been looking forward to because I literally could not get my body to move? An hour before it was time to leave, I might start haranguing myself, "Get up. Move," only to stay frozen immobile as the time to leave came and went, as I became five minutes late, ten minutes late, half an hour late, too late to go at all.

In fact my talent and need for stillness was the real reason those constantly busy sisters kicked me out. The monastic schedule was a reliable goad so I was rarely late, and the easily accessible, divine energy was so enlivening I rarely froze. But on my designated "desert day," I wanted to lie on the earth and drink the sun washing over the grass - not get busy with house and yard work like the rest of the sisters. Before I entered, I was told the "desert day had no one's agenda but yours"... except the sister forbore to mention that your agenda had better be cleaning the garage and raking leaves.

No, the Demon Should can't get me over lounging, but does it ever wring my heart over my mistakes. I should have done this. I shouldn't have done that. An endless cacophony of angry accusation overwhelms my mind, leaving no room for human or divine relationships.

"Tell the Demon Should to can it," the tiny voice pleaded, tired and sad, "I don't know if I can go on this way much longer."

* * * * * * * *

Sailing in the Sea of the Most Evil Practice

"Why not embrace the decay, relax into it," a spiritual friend of mine asked as I winged on about the toll of home ownership. Suddenly I remembered, I like weathering: crumbling brick, rusting metal, rotted wood. Not just like, love. I take pictures, collect pieces, sit for hours contemplating sun/wind/rain/snow working their weathering wonders across exposed surfaces... And gaze when I can into hidden places where bacteria, fungi, plankton, plant roots, and the byssal threads of molluscs so diligently run the great recycling continuum of life.

What is it about ownership that changes all that? Is it the money I spent? The sum was so much more than I would normally see in a year. Is it the weight of responsibility? If anything goes it's my fault. So one cracking brick means I am too awful to live. (We are talking 2-year-old perceptions, here, since that is the age of my home ownership trauma. So my life is presently being run by a catastrophic-thinking 2-year-old.)

Or is this just the difficulty of material existence in a system of nothing-but-change - the "suffering of having" in Buddhist terminology.

In his Rule, Benedict called private ownership, "this most evil practice." Since the Rule is a guide for bringing people into union with God through life in community, "evil" means anything which places a barrier between God and people - as individuals or as a group. Private ownership is a most evil practice because it so effectively derails our ability to let go and be at one with the divine in and around ourselves, or perceive the divine in others.

So what are we to do - those of us who need to live in the world and for one reason or another can't shuck our possessions, much less be wandering monks in truth (versus in name only as I seem to have become)?

Listen to Syncletica, that generous pragmatist. She talks much about the nastiness of possessions. For example, "those who live without possessions [can't be] harmed, since the majority of our griefs and trials originate in the removal of possessions," and the need for possessions is insatiable since "one who has nothing desires little, and on acquiring this little reaches for more. One with a hundred gold coins longs for a thousand. Unable to establish their limit, they constantly lament their poverty." Yet she also often says that not everyone is cut out to be a monk, but all are called toward the divine, no matter their path. Besides, those tidily ensconced in a spiritual community may face the worst difficulty:

"We [hermit women] seem to be sailing in the calm part of the sea while secular people sail in the dangerous parts. We also sail during the day, navigating by the sun… while they sail by night, swept along by ignorance. It often happens, however, that the secular person has saved her ship in the midst of storm and darkness by crying out and staying awake; we, on the other hand, have drowned in calm waters through carelessness in letting go of the rudder.”

An odd sort of comfort, but I'll take what I can get.

Namaste.

* * * * * *

Is it Enough to be Clean?

With my first caregiver, every day brought a new, urgent crisis. Most required shopping to fix - and I loath shopping. Though for the $150 home visit from a lock smith only my fingers had to shop... And wasn't I lucky to discover that the elusive gas smell in the garage was the caretaker running her car with the garage door closed before this amazing habit led to disaster. "It cold," she said complacently, unmoved by my concern.

That caregiver had an engaging, goofy presence with my uncle that he adored, but I had to let her go. After six weeks, I just couldn't take it anymore - what with her lack of English, talent at creating crises, and stubborn refusal to listen to any information I gave her about my uncle ("I have idea. You have idea," she finally explained, "My idea good. Your idea bad.")

So last week a new caregiver arrived. He is less engaging, but calmer, steadier, and more reliable. Yet... from the same country (Mongolia), and with some of the same issues. Since they are vastly more experienced caring for elderly folks, what could I possibly tell them about this man, even if I have lived close to him for years?

Both caregivers are early 50s, with grown children, and professional careers they left behind when they came to the US - the "evil empire" of their upbringing, BTW. Though they make 4 times my salary, and spend the bulk of their day watching TV, talking on the phone and playing computer games, they both regard me with barely disguised distain, as if I was the Ugly American personified.

No wonder I rarely sleep.

BUT: I haven't used since I moved into my new house. Mostly. Searching out library books for a new class, I stumbled on a mystery and... But just that once. Otherwise, I've been clean. I don't even have the desire to use - an unexpected side-effect my present situation shares with monastic life.

Another unexpected shared trait: all my demons are flocking for the kill, cawing their ascendancy as they dig talons into my flesh - eating my sleep and causing a constantly upwelling, childhood trauma state. At least now, I know more about the spiritual usefulness of trauma. Although my overriding desire is to GET OUT by any means, a part of me watches calmly saying, "Just stay in it. Let it process through. This will take you someplace you are going to appreciate. Minimally, an old wound will be healed." And so, with the help of friends, I stay in.

OTOH, there are some monastic traits that I'd relied on getting, but do not yet have: 1) a regular schedule, and 2) a regular spiritual practice within said schedule. Instead, I expend copious amounts of time driving and shopping - hated activities I was glad to do little of in the monastery.

Even now, without caregiver #1's endless needs, I can't seem to stop driving & shopping.

I suppose any new parent will understand my present inability to get on top of things. But some of you did eventually get the chaos under control... at least partially... Didn't you? (She asked, pleading.)

One would think all this would drive me right into my book addiction. Yet it hasn't. Maybe I'm too emotionally drained... Or too busy shopping to get to the library. ;-}

* * * * * * *

Home In The Dark

Most of my life, I agreed with the proverb writer who said, "give me neither poverty nor riches, but just enough to satisfy my needs" (30:8). Too poor and one is overwhelmed by the body's needs, but too rich and one is obsessed with watching over possessions. Neither allow access to a sense of the divine.

Objects have one, very intense desire: to disintegrate and come to rest in complete disorder. That's why it takes such volumes of human energy just to keep them from falling apart. It is their nature to weather, compost, change, be recycled. I hate pouring my life into that loosing proposition. So why at 57 did I leap onto the American Dream of home ownership (in a still-rapidly-declining housing market, no less)? Why did I imagine I could do this?

The issue has never arisen before because I've never had sufficient income.

So here I am a first-time home owner at 57 - after an exhausting home search, and an even more exhausting remodel of a foreclosure - with some not-so-good results, and one, ten thousand dollar mistake. That mistake cost more than half my year's salary.

Whoa! you say. If you're in such a low income bracket, how can you get a house?

We-e-e-e-l-l-l-l... It's the reason I'm doing this in the first place. I didn't pay for most of it. My uncle did.

Ever since he moved to Wisconsin and into a retirement community to be near his younger brother (my dad), he's been asking if we could live together. "I don't have a house," I said, "And besides, you are better off here with all the activities and the friends you've made." And he was better off - first in an apartment, then in assisted living.

The nursing home was another story. Despite being one of the best in the area, it was... a nursing home. Skilled and caring as the staff were, they had lots of folks to look after, and there was just an institutional coldness to it all.

So I finally said, "Yes."

I'm no altruist. My uncle is one of the nicest people out there - even now with the creeping dementia and slow, physical, downward slide of Parkinson's. I wouldn't have done it if we didn't get along very, very well.

Yet I wake each morning crying, "I can't do this. Why did I think I could?"

But then I sit with my uncle, and he is so sweet and relaxed - not at all the guarded, lost person he was in the nursing home, and I think, "I've got to find a way."