On some level I think we have talked about preparing in almost every post. But I want to try to go further. Maybe there is no further to go but you can see it dancing in its flesh and blood suit all around you.
Today it danced rings around me.
We sat in the waiting room with Logan and his parents. We don't know each other. But his mom and dad spoke about four decibels too loudly, which is how I came to know his name. They spent most of that breath on telling Logan's two year old sister not to do ANYTHING. Yes, we certainly wouldn't want that child to get a hold of The Roughing Grouse Society magazine. Then they called her name and we went downstairs.
Look at her. Big blue eyes. Full lips. Arched eyebrows. Soft hair. Sprinkles of freckles. Laughing. What a lark. Everyone was so gentle, letting her be a part of the process. First they asked her to stand on the big yellow feet and then they gave her purple pajamas with little aliens in cars all over them. All part of the lure. Everyone that came into our room spoke to HER. How that tube and bag would be attached to her hand. What scent she wanted inside her mask (bubble gum, to each his own). Booties with grip. Look at Momma, she's wearing a funny hat and gown too. It's all hilarious. Even the machines look like b-movie robots, nothing to fear.
Breathe in deep, honey. "Ok, Mom, she's going to be a little goofy and then her eyes may role back and her breathing will become sharp and rapid. All normal......she's asleep now. You can give her a kiss and then Arla will take you to the waiting room." "ah, ok."
Whoopi Goldberg is on the television talking about men that leave the seat up and asking why there seems to be piss in places there shouldn't be when men are done. That's fine.
The father three seats away is crying quietly into his hands. He is a big man. His wife is expressionless but she was pretty, maybe even a little sexy, once. Their 10 year old son has brain cancer. He won't have to have another surgery for three or four months. That's good. They get up and roam the halls, stricken.
Oh...the heart...
Why did she look so small? As she drifted off her skin seemed to turn transparent. This is a strange time to be alone. But. Really. It's ok. The cancer patient's parents are back and all the noise in the room is being provided by those four women and their ground breaking conversation about 'Going Green' causing marital problems. Logan's parents are back too. I hope they keep it down and not for my sake.
She's done. Oh, she IS so small. And she is pale now even if she wasn't then. Keep it together. How many countless times have you been in this place? Never. With her. All went as planned, a breeze. That's wonderful. It was so easy for her to be taken in, wooed. The recovery room is dim and she doesn't want anything but for me to lie in the bed with her. The father of the cancer patient goes past, his son is in the next room. I hope he doesn't look like that when he goes in but maybe there is no helping that and maybe no one should.
Ah, Logan and Co. are on the other side. "You want an owie!? If you don't stop it I'll tell that man to give you a shot too!" "We traveled a long way for this so just stop it!" "Logan are you fine, you're fine." "What?! WHAT?...you better fuckin’ tell me!!" "Come on, crabby girl. You're going to the car" "Gimme a hug." "And a kiss."
The father from next door goes by again. His son is complaining of headaches. They are in new places.
We cuddled in our dim little room. We are a good match. She dosed and I thought about how we prepare people. Anyone. Everyone. Gets prepared.
It was scary to send my child into surgery. I'm her mother. They are supposed to do no harm and I'm supposed to keep her from harm. We could have both failed. But we didn't. And it was very unlikely that we would. Breathe easy. No one else here can. Be grateful. That man will never again think that a little ibuprofen will get rid of a headache.
Earlier, a social worker was sent to speak to the cancer patient’s parents in the waiting room. I was the only other person there so they talked quite freely. It turns out that the parents have been shying away from telling the boy much of anything, other than he has cancer. Leaving the room. Changing the subject. Cagey. The boy is ten years old. They were carefully instructed to stop doing these things. They were not preparing him to survive or fight or live or die. They were just changing the subject, it's own preparation to be sure. [I pass no judgment on their handling of this, I will not even think about that possibility or the unimaginable task they have to face.]
Prepare. Preparation was the theme, the thread, of this day. Maybe everyday? It seems preparations effect is unavoidable. Preparation leads somewhere, as lack of preparation leads somewhere. Is life found in our preparation? Not just in the morning but all day long.
Whew.
Now I will prepare a very stiff drink.
Ach, Sara. Crushing. All I can do is report in.
ReplyDeleteTina Rowley? Here.
Can't say anything else just yet. I promise to return and do my best to give you what you deserve.
I should note, my daughter is better then fine. Home, happy, bossy and uneffected.
ReplyDeleteAs You Like It
ReplyDeleteAll the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts ...
There's rehearsal for all of this I suppose; a form of preparation.
Sara, your entry sent my head in all kinds of interesting [to me, at least] directions. Firstly, there is this: since the day my daughter was born, I've been preparing myself for her death.
ReplyDeleteYep. Melodramatic, neurotic bullshit.
But.
She's the only person in existence I don't think I can live without. And when she was a baby and learning to sleep a few hours at a stretch --just as i was re-learning to let go of my own consciousness by the same span -- my first thought on awakening, eyelids slammed open, was: "Oh god. She died in her sleep. I wasn't there. I didn't stop it." Every single fucking morning.
As she gets older, the scenarios are tied to whatever she's doing at the moment: the staircase taken at too rapid a clip, the scissors that SHOULD NOT BE HELD WHILE RUNNING, the goddamn, tinted-window, high-water SUV that can't be arsed to stop, let alone slow down, the gymnastics class where the liability waiver turns out to be predictive, not prophylactic. I'm much more efficient now: two, three seconds on the worst-case scenario, and I'm out. No helicopter parent, me.
I've rehearsed her death a thousand times. I'm not any more prepared for it than I was the day she was born.
[I'm glad your daughter is healthy, and has a robots-and-bubble-gum story to share, with gusto. Hospital visits play really, really well in third grade.]
This begs a new thread re: proximity to death and faith in God viz frontier America. Lots and lots of accidents back in the day, e.g. changing wagon wheels, getting kicked by horses, and tons of disease forced us to confront the everlasting much more frequently (and have more children). Laura Ingalls Wilder gets us into that mix notwithstanding the Little House Episode when Albert kicks Herion which always seemed to me a bit gratuitous ...
ReplyDeleteLivingstone's As You Like It quote takes me to bit from The Libertine. The Earl of Rochester is arguing with the manager of a theater, who cuts him off to announce that he has to change his costume for the next scene. I'll have to paraphrase Rochester's response. It was addressed to theater folk in general:
ReplyDeleteYou make time so important. I must change my clothes NOW. I must make my entrance NOW. Whereas in reality life is a series of listless why-should-I's.
Your best, the worst, dinner, CPR, 401K, other people's deaths, and so rarely our own.
From The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, a quote from Gyalse Rinpoche:
Planning for the future is like going fishing in a dry gulch;
Nothing ever works out as you wanted, so give up all your schemes and ambitions.
If you have got to think about something--
Make it the uncertainty of the hour of your death...
I'm thinking about the difference between preparing for grief - which, can you? but I know I rehearse every day - and preparing for death.
Quote city. Forgive me. My boy, George Harrison:
ReplyDeleteThere'll come a time when all of us must leave here
Then nothing Sister Mary can do
Will keep me here with you
As nothing in this life that I've been trying
Could equal or surpass the art of dying
Do you believe me?
Village life in Tibet. When someone dies, the whole village essentially moves into the home of the bereaved. There is no talking. Just proximity.
When my father died, everything was so absolutely new. Every day that passed was an affront, as his death gradually came off the front page and slipped farther and farther back into the Life and Style section.
They're serious about this. We are going.
Listlessness, generally. Panic, rarely. Forgetfulness, nearly always.
I must prepare for death NOW. Why should I?
Middle English from the Middle French, pre (before) + parer (to make).
ReplyDeleteSo, it’s what we do before, but is inextricably linked with, making something.
Lasagna. A speech. A baby.
(assemble recipe and ingredients)
(organize thoughts and folding chairs)
(imagine you are capable of success)
What are we making in death? An end. Which is not a thing.
And it comes anyway, regardless of choice.*
There is no reasonable assembly for the unknown, other than chanting words and hoping they are heard by what you are pretty sure is down there in the void, but which wouldn’t show itself physically because…because…that’d ruin the surprise.
To reiterate: we don’t truly prepare for death because we aren’t making anything.
Death is not noun. It is un-thing. It is ghost of verb, action taken instead of made.
Ah, Jumpson, you say. Semantics!
No.
I agree you can “make” peace with yourself and others. You can make investments for loved ones. You can make gestures, however feeble. You can be gentle in your last hours in the hope that a thin coat of nicegloss on your jokey, cowardly, spiteful, anxious self will win the game. That’s preparing for death, but it leads NOT to making. Pre, sans parer.
Ah, Jumponymous! you say. This is a fool’s game.
No!
*Even in suicide, one doesn’t prepare to make death. One makes the conditions right for it—tie rope, corral fumes, swallow pills—but there is no making. It is surrender to the abyss. You, preparer and maker, are taken.
In murder, there are actions leading up to death. The pre is there. The making, though, is still maddeningly absent. Not a thing is made, but subtracted. Like 1 minus 1, or better, 27.3 times zero. Anything, times zero. Remember that small shock in grade school? “What about…a googolplex times zero?” some daring or incredulous boy asked.
Well, son…
No matter how many lives you take, you make exactly nothing.
Ah, Jumpfrog, you say. Subtleties.
((you’re not still saying that, are you?))
NO.
I read once, from an earnest young writer, these words: “I honestly believe that if people weren’t afraid of death, there would be a massive increase in suicide.”
Yes. And I honestly believe that if people weren’t afraid of bears, they would play with bears. And snuuugggle with bears.
Jung famously corrected his teacher—it isn’t sex we’re afraid of. All this you do because death is your greatest fear. Let’s take that one step further: What you fear in death is the lack of parer, the lack of make. Making is our lifelong habit—making poop, making rumor, making love, making wealth, making misery, making wonder, making babies, making meals. Making. All of these require a degree of preparation.
Death is different. To do the pre and not get to the parer—that is the greatest fear.
That's a very Jewy view of afterlife, Jumpson.
ReplyDeleteWhere, oh, where to begin? Hooray.
ReplyDeleteLots of assumptions here, Jumper.
To wit:
*Death is an end, and only an end.
*We must only make nouns? I have a noun: readiness.
"But there's nothing to get ready for!" Tell me how you found this out. (Also, with the exception of investments, everything you described was something looking backwards, something valedictory.
That's not the preparation I'm talking about.)
*The unknown. Well, it's unknown to you. This doesn't mean it's unknown to everyone. Just because you (and I) haven't investigated the capacity of our minds to remember/know what came before this life doesn't mean no one has. This disrespects thousands of years of hard, empirically-earned wisdom, training, investigation by mystics. A long line of people have put their noses to the grindstone to plumb the mysteries of this existence, and there are widespread reports of success. You don't have to believe it, but you're not going to prove otherwise. I mean, go for it. I'd like to see it. I mean, I wouldn't like to see it, but whatever. I'd see it if you have it. So the void, mystery, the unknown - they're that way for us. But that doesn't define them as such. The lid is not slammed down, there.
I subscribe - and who cares if I have to subscribe? That's okay, right? I remember a friend of mine in an email saying something about 5000 years of philosophy and not reinventing the wheel...who WAS that? - to the notion that you can make ready for death by mastering your mind, conquering fear, so that you can stay steady in the face of...whatever faces you...and benefit by this steady, trained mind.
Buddhism talks about the Clear Light (capitalizing this because they do - hat tip, Buddhists) which is the ground of all existence. (Let's remember, also, that the Buddha said not to believe anything just because someone told you - find out. So, guilty, Buddha. But, again, a long line of people took him at his word and found out.
ReplyDeleteANYWAY. The point -->a theory, as good as any. Refer if interested to the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying if you want the real thing and not my pitiful summation:
Your moment of death arrives. At some point, after the dissolution of your senses and separation from the physical form, you are confronted with this clear light. How this meeting goes depends entirely on how you have prepared or not prepared. If you haven't prepared at all, maybe it happens in a flash. Split-second, maybe not even that long. You miss it and cycle onwards helplessly, unconsciously, reborn into this trap with no say-so.
Maybe you've spent some time meditating and prepared your mind a little more, you're steadier. The moment comes and you recognize it. But you haven't killed your fears and you reject this clear light in favor of something softer and less intimidating. The dimmer lights of rebirth. You head that way. Seems easier. Still on the wheel.
And maybe you've been a consummate preparer of your own readiness. The moment comes and not only do you recognize it, but you jump into its arms. You've seen it before. This isn't the first time. You got to hang out here in its presence during your physical lifetime. This is your old friend, your greatest beloved. Reunited and it feels so good. You merge with pleasure. You're off the wheel and are free to spend the rest of eternity in bliss.
Yes, for us it's a theory. But it'll do for saving babies from bathwater. Come here, you sweet thing. My word. What was that man trying to do to you?
I'd rather prepare and be wrong than not. The preparation, in any case, isn't a waste. Meditation is so multi-purpose. It's the sport of the future.
Ah!
ReplyDeleteWhen I was in high school I heard some Bill trying out his new rejection of religion. "Religions are death cults." In that high pitched time I was shocked, how viscous. But if the preoccupation and the preparation are for the end it does follow a certain logic. (Jewy?!) (sigh)
No death preparation for me. I refuse. You're dead, you certainly don't need to set the table before the guests arrive.
You prepare to live. So much scarier to exist well then to cease existing.
But to grieve......being able to prepare...it would be like preparing to have a piano dropped on your head. Still, it is how people live in those bright moments, when you can't get out of the light, that takes you from the "before" to what you "make"(thank you, Jumpy). Desperation or elation. The before is all the preparation you will get for any instant. Whatever the instant. And you know some people are better prepared. Why?
Maybe under the best of circumstances your preparation is a faith, or some kind of examination. In the not-best of circumstances it could just as easily be nothing or worse. Nothing and overhead lighting, antiseptic smells and bad tv. Like stepping out onto a paper bridge. Still preparation. Whatever it is, it applies to living not death. Even all the deathbed atonement is, ultimately, concern for this life. Functioning under the rules of this reality. Fear of survival versus fear of death.
How do you prepare?
"I know. Let's fake laugh." - My son.
I reserve my right to turn on a dime, change my mind in an instant. Cloister. Rebel. Evangelize. Vow of silence. Hedonism. Past lives. Next lives.
ReplyDeleteJust not yet.
I could refute all the ridiculous things I am credited with having said, but I'm busy tonight. I will distill it, sans jokes.
ReplyDelete--One doesn't KNOW--one has varying degrees of faith. PERIOD. Don't confuse faith with empiricism. (ps, faith is better anyway. Don't get me wrong on that too.) One reason we are such a lovely shambles of a race is that the question of "next" or "after" goes unanswered.
--I'm not saying "preparation" is futile. if it calms you, good! Do it! Ninjas meditate on dying. Ninjas are pretty cool. I'm only saying that it ISN'T ACTUAL PREPARATION. (see below)
--You seem to have missed my point. This for me was not about IF there's an after...if so, great, I'll try to remember to embrace the brightest light I see. This was, for me, about language. About the fact that it is logically impossible to "pre + parer" for death, as there is no (ok, jesus, fine...DEMONSTRATED, MASS-MARKETED, DISSECTED) known afterward or nextness.
For me it's about the word Prepare, silly Tina. There is no "make." And that you did not refute.
ps, yes, Sara, excellent. Livver, I don't know that it's so much Jewy as Jewy writer.
I'm saying that it's a serious and strong assumption that we cease to exist. One worth questioning.
ReplyDeleteAwwwwwwwwwwww TINA ROWLEY!!!
ReplyDeleteJust testing you. Come on now. WWBD?
And JC on a corndog stick, I am NOT saying or assuming that we cease to exist. Please reread my posts and take me at my word, feel my thrust, and whatnot.
ReplyDeleteI know we are moving on. good. One last thing...
ReplyDelete(I said cease to exist. Me. Not you, Defensive Dan.)
It is serious.
My first swim in deeper waters:
I was reckless to say cease. I do believe that what we do and how we do it effects what comes next. We have talked about the timeless cycles of energy, the age old dictum to strive for the better self: learn and improve. My disconnect is the idea that this consciousness, Sara, who has specific experience etc., will still be the dominant force in my soul after I die. I imagine that after dying this consciousness becomes latent in the soul. And the soul will move onto the next dimension, form, bliss, reality...I do think "I" will still hold space in my more powerful and capable soul, if you will, a past life. Yes. A past life. Past.
Meditation is NOT a waste. Nor do I think your practice can be wrong, per se. My leanings tell me to keep my efforts tied to this life. This life is the only action that can effect what comes next. Do I need to be more open? I don't know. I have received bursts and images of something outside of myself, outside of this time. The path and course of how those things brought me to this consciousness I do not know or understand but I have an overwhelming sensation that I have something very particular to learn in this present. Somehow, to me, that means my focus is required here so that what comes next will improve, though I'm not sure I will even know if it does.
This is a big, comforting, uncomfortable conversation.
Oh, well, ya gotta be in it to win it.
But, seriously, who moved my cheese?
I hear you, all of you.
ReplyDeleteDeeeeeep down, I believe in the work of Mystics, believe that we are but a synaptic connection or two away from a comprehension of something greater all around us (please to remember my fluorescent light analogy).
But one wants some hard fact, or some hard statement. Something resembling truth in a compromised discussion. This stubborn goblin lives in the heart of the science v. religion argument, an intellectual injury that won't heal.
So I play devil's advocate from time to time.
And that's the bottom line.
cognitively dissonant. all of it. wordz.
ReplyDeleteLivingst.,
ReplyDeleteHere's another business dictum:
"Solutions should accompany complaints."
Accepted: Don't whine without a new idea.
True: " "
Where ya been anyway?
WBWD. Livingstone will appreciate.
ReplyDeleteAlso a far preferable bit of final punctuation for my part of this thread than OH FUCK IT FORGET IT.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_Silence"