Today I attend another “celebration of life”. My son pointed out that lately my life seems to consist of a great many “celebrations of life”. I reflect and agree.
The first funeral I attended was my father’s in 1969. He died in a motorcycle accident when he was 47 and I was 19. Because of his age, the church was filled and a Soprano sang Ave Maria during the mass.
Because we moved a great deal when I was young, and transport wasn’t like it is today, when my father’s mother died, he flew from San Diego to Chicago for the funeral and when my mother’s mother died, she flew from San Diego to Bloomington, Indiana for her mother’s final goodbye.
We didn’t talk about death in those days. Now, people my age are studying aging and dying, wanting to meet it openly and fully, and so what was once called a funeral, and then, a memorial, is now a “celebration of life”.
I’ve always resonated to the artwork of Paul Klee, and now I sit with his words.
A drawing is simply a line going for a walk.
A line is a dot that went for a walk.
A simple flourished line is an active line on a walk, moving freely, without goal. A walk for walk’s sake. The mobility agent is a point, shifting its position forward.
I wonder if a funeral is simply “a line going for a walk”. People gather in a sacred place usually wearing black. Voices are quiet and subdued. They come to listen and reflect.
With the memorial, the dot goes for a walk, but with a little less of a container. There are no sidewalks. I see a dirt path with grass along the sides, a little more freedom, flowers a little more colorful and looser in their vase clasp .
Now, a celebration of life includes a video of all the years. Photos and music, laughter, food, and wine are offered and shared.Often, the deceased has planned it all, has planned a celebration where the funeral and wake are combined.
Fred Astaire comes to mind, dancing in his top hat and tails, swinging his cane with precision and grace.
My plan is simply to be scattered, each person scattering and remembering, silent as the movement in leaves.
Yesterday I rode the ferry from Sausalito to San Francisco and back again. I was content to sit, watch, and feel the movement of fog and waves. I’m still with the rocking and the float, the carriage. In some ways, it’s like climbing up into a tree, being held as the earth turns round.
I met my daughter-in-law for lunch, and because I was early, sat in the shade and watched an array of people parade and stroll by. We are a diverse bunch, we humans, and I wondered what was going on in each person as we were gathered together in one place, the ferry building and its surroundings, for a time. And yet here we are on one planet, gathered together for a time.
This morning I ventured down to our local grocery, Good Earth. The produce is a gathering of summer light and delight. I chose peaches, raspberries, and blueberries, and two kinds of lettuce from Green Gulch, a few miles away. I came home to make a fruit salad, eased in honoring the seasons as they turn in each of us.
Students are back in school. We turn toward fall as the sweetness of summer fills the grocery store bins, our stomachs, our hearts.
This morning, eyes moist with tears, I consider different types of tears. Today’s tears feel sweet, like dew drops, acknowledgment of connection between earth and sky, and the vulnerability that is Love.
I spent over seven hours yesterday with a friend along the shoreline at Point Isabel dog park. In my usual way, I arrived early to sit with a latte and watch dogs bounce and play, ears flopping, tails wagging. It’s a happy place.
My friend and I walked and talked, sat and ate, walked and talked.
The subject was grief. She feels I’m not “over” grieving my brother’s death, which leads to false valor perhaps, my words, not hers, though she did mention, a shield.
We talked about my book Airing Out the Fairy Tale. She knew me then, but didn’t know the thrill I felt when I bicycled in New Mexico, speeding down one hill in the early morning light, shouting and singing out, “I feel good, I knew that I would now, so good, so good,” and though James Brown says it’s because he’s got “you”, I think in that moment, it was a full embrace of who I am. I was invulnerable in that moment, one with my bike and nature, love and the world. I felt free, and she knew that place, and we both understood.
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed at times, a word I’m hearing and feeling more and more. I think now of the words of William Wordsworth.
The world is too much with us; late and soon, getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: Little we see in Nature that is ours.
And yet here we are: Nature, Power, Love.
If you live in the Bay area, Point Isabel is a lovely place to be, walk, and enjoy a bowl of chili. A dog is not required, though my friend has two who love to snuggle and warm the feet.
Unusual for me these days, I took no pictures. The view is never still. When I arrived, there was an enclosure of fog that cleared bit by bit, so there was Mount Tam, the bay, and then, the city of San Francisco. I felt the movement reflected inside, the movement of fog, fear, love, grief.
And now my husband sends me this column by George Will.
The fog snuck in during the night. I went to bed with stars and woke up enclosed.
I saw Tea Obreht speak last night at Book Passage. Her latest book, Inland, A Novel, was already highly acclaimed and then Barack Obama announced it’s on his reading list, so she’s pleased, excited, and gratified.
What most struck me about her talk was her life in Yugoslavia until she was twelve years old, and then her family had to flee. When she says she is Yugoslavian by birth, people say but that country no longer exists.
It exists for her.
I went to the event with a friend who teaches poetry to middle schoolers. She’s hoping to get a little more bite into their poems this year so is thinking of asking them to write about the landscape of where they live. It’s beautiful here, and perhaps they could delve like Mary Oliver and Wendell Berry into sharing the landscape of their home.
I’m reminded of the poem “Home” by Warsan Shire. The poem invites us to be even more grateful for where we are now, and to be open to refugees when they’re forced to come here for refuge and adapt to a landscape which then becomes their home.
My neighborhood book group met last night. Walking home in the dark, I heard rustling in the bushes. My flashlight revealed that a skunk was rummaging through grasses; he or she was intent. At first, I felt a bit of trepidation, oh, great, I might get sprayed, but then, there was such serenity in the encounter, each of us with a mission and destination, one for food, and one for home.
I continued on, honoring that we each have our niche, our paths, and our meeting in the night was simply awareness, one with nuzzling, and one with steps.
I’m with arriving. What it is to arrive and be with ourselves all along the way?
I’m reflecting on arriving because two friends and colleagues, Pamela Blunt and Francesca Khanna, are offering a monthly workshop on Presence and Sensitivity. One can be anywhere on the planet and call in or participate in a Zoom call.
Their invitation and introduction shares the words of Rumi from his poem “Bird Wings”.
Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced as birds’ wings.
Sinking into that invites a pause. I feel the beat of my heart, it’s transmission through arms to hands and fingers that touch this keyboard sending thoughts who knows where and who cares. Shoulder blades and neck wing, whisks stirring the lift in air. Spine responds, answers a call.
The Presence and Sensitivity invite offers the words of the Vietnamese Buddhist monk and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh, “Don’t say I depart, I am arriving …”
A few years ago I participated in a Sensory Awareness workshop with Lee Klinger Lesser at Tassajara. Tassajara is a sacred place of enchantment, and after I’d checked in, I was standing in front of the office smiling, feeling gentle with peace, joy, and gratitude. Lee walked up to me smiling, and asked, “Have you arrived?”
“Yes,” I said. “I have arrived”, but after being there working with stones, lying on rocks in the creek, walking back and forth, aware of cleanliness being more than body and teeth, but also mind, a cleansing and flossing of mind and space and intertwining, I knew that with time and this space, I’d embodied a new understanding of arriving.
This moment, right here, enough.
Perhaps arriving is knowing enough – fullness and emptiness and all that is between. My head comes forward and rises, occiput soft to receive.
And now I introduce Crissy. The woman who hosted book group last night has a daughter with special needs. Crissy is in her 30’s, and unabashedly creative in what she wears. Yesterday when I walked up the stairs to their home, she saw me, and gave me a great big hug. She doesn’t know my name, but that didn’t matter. I was clearly there for a hug.
When we gathered in a circle outside, she went around and everyone received a hug, and not a touch of a hug. This was a full body hug that went on and on and on. What a way to begin each moment, with a full body and spiritual hug. It’s not always possible perhaps, but then, intention can be set.
In 1966,Thich Nhat Hanh learned the power of hugs when a woman friend took him to the airport, and asked if it was okay to hug a monk. He thought since he was a Zen teacher, that yes, it must be okay, but then he realized that he was stiff and uncomfortable with the hug. In response, he created hugging meditation.He teaches:
According to the practice, you have to really hug the person you are holding. You have to make him or her very real in your arms, not just for the sake of appearances, patting him on the back to pretend you are there, but breathing consciously and hugging with all your body, spirit, and heart. Hugging meditation is a practice of mindfulness. “Breathing in, I know my dear one is in my arms, alive. Breathing out, she is so precious to me.” If you breathe deeply like that, holding the person you love, the energy of your care and appreciation will penetrate into that person and she will be nourished and bloom like a flower.
That might be enough but he continues on.
Hugging is a deep practice; you need to be totally present to do it correctly. When I drink a glass of water, I invest one hundred percent of myself in drinking it. You can train yourself to live every moment of your daily life like that.
Before hugging, stand facing each other as you follow your breathing and establish your true presence. Then open your arms and hug your loved one. During the first in-breath and out-breath, become aware that you and your beloved are both alive; with the second in-breath and out-breath, think of where you will both be three hundred years from now; and with the third in-breath and out-breath, be aware of how precious it is that you are both still alive.
When you hug this way, the other person becomes real and alive. You don’t need to wait until one of you is ready to depart for a trip; you may hug right now and receive the warmth and stability of your friend in the present moment.
You won’t physically hug in Pam and Fran’s offering, but if you want more information, contact me, and meanwhile enjoy the continually expanding and contracting, the breathing hug of air we all share.
Yesterday I learned of the Ok glacier in Iceland, which was declared dead in 2014 because it was no longer able to move because of its shrunken size due to climate change.
On August 18th, mourners gathered to commemorate its loss and climbing to the top of the mountain on which it once lived, placed a plaque to mark its loss.
The words written by Icelandic author Andri Snaer Magnason, melt the heart. May our melting hearts bring greater connection and awareness, not more loss.
“Ok is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as glacier. In the next 200 years all our main glaciers are expected to follow the same path. This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it.”
Today in my Zoom call quartet, one person mentioned an anecdote from Frank Ostaseski’s wonderful book, The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us about Living Fully. He’s in a consignment shop with his daughter when he realizes many of the items for sale wear tags “As Is”. He thinks how great it would be if each of us wore a tag saying “As Is”, and believed it.
We decided our little group should sport t-shirts pronouncing, “As Is”.
As I peruse The Five Invitations once again, I come across two death poems from Japan where the tradition is to write a poem on the last day of your life or soon before.
Here is the death poem of Dogen Zenji who died in 1253.
Four and fifty years
I’ve hung the sky with stars
Now I leap through –
What shattering!
Here, with a different tone, is the death poem of Moriya Sen’an, who died in 1838.
Bury me when I die
beneath a wine barrel
in a tavern.
With luck
the cask will leak.
And with that, I consider how we meet the moment as it comes, honoring gathering and scattering as One.
Losing a piece, this rock wears a new face, continuing a tradition “as is”
The light continues to astonish me. I’m waking at 4:15 to watch the moon play peek-a-boo through the fog as the fog moves in and out, thickens and thins. Then the sun tickles everything pink as it ripens the day and twinkles right through this being I perceive of as “me”.
It must be my age, my rising in years and ripening, but these days, this “me” seems to be living in geologic time. I’m thrilled that the land mass of the earth was all one and then it separated into seven continents.It feels like my moods, coming together and apart, allowing unity and expansion, and within that, intention to give space but not divide, judge, or compare.
It doesn’t seem that long ago that the first cells emerged, though it was 4 billion years. That’s a great many candles to put on a cake.
I wonder if I remember 3.9 million years ago when photosynthesis emerged. And then 2 billion years ago when multicellular organisms came together to energize on oxygen. I think of all the cakes I’d bake if I’d been there, but of course, in an evolutionary sense, I was. My components formed inside the stars. I come from expansion and contraction. It is my base.
Meanwhile, my politically positive daughter-in-law is pregnant with a little boy and we are eagerly awaiting the arrival of a new energy and buoyant voice on the planet. He’ll be wearing this soon as he makes the rounds in his stroller to Get Out the Vote!!
It’s Saturday. I rose at 5, and looked for the moon, but she was tucked in fog.
I sat on the couch with Tiger and Bella, a blanket over my lap, and closing my eyes felt them moist and expanding, cells like wands.
I fell asleep to wake from a vivid dream. A window was open and that made sense since in the dream it was the room where my brother passed away. I picked up wet sheets and pillowcases, and rocks fell out, and feeling what we leave behind, I burst into tears, and sobbed and sobbed. I thought I can’t stop no matter what, and then I woke up disoriented, wondering if the dream was telling me I haven’t cried enough tears, haven’t mourned enough.
I sit here now, the fog quiet and still. Early this morning, wind chimes sounded like church bells. I felt how when someone I love dies, this world seems like a matte painting, as though I’m missing something, which of course I am, but somehow today, there is fluidity and fullness in the layers, waves in the embodiment I seem to think I am.
A bison who lived in the bison paddock in Golden Gate Park died yesterday. 8-year old Brunhida had kidney disease.
I am with loss and change as I sink in and out of this beautiful poem by W.S. Merwin on gratitude and honoring thanks.
ThanksBY W.S. Merwin
Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
standing by the windows looking out
in our directions
back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks we are saying thank you
in the faces of the officials and the rich
and of all who will never change
we go on saying thank you thank you
with the animals dying around us
taking our feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
thank you we are saying and waving
dark though it is
Gratitude scents and colors the air outside The Legion of Honor
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