My take on Science

 You aren't meant to change anyone. That's the theory of living peacefully on this Earth. The argument goes, 'how much success do you have changing yourself, so good luck changing anyone else'. This is so.

The interesting aspect of a long marriage is that you would be pretty remiss if you didn't notice patterns emerge. I have indeed noticed patterns - good and bad. I try to be subtle about the bad ones but sometimes I go just for broke and state my opinion with no expectation I can effect change. I know I cannot effect change.

There are many times to be in 'bardo' - in the gap, in some intermediary state - in life, and sometimes in my marriage, I feel I am in bardo, just watching someone commit all those crimes against living a long life.

It's so interesting to me that intelligent people - let's call them educated people - can focus beautifully on their diet, their supplements, medical tests and all those 'adding on' elements of maintaining good health, but possibly fail to notice that they go through life as if a saber tooth tiger is chasing them.

Can you even begin to imagine what sort of damage a routine fight/flight response does to your nervous system? The heart, the brain can't possibly be saying, 'oh super, lots of supplements coming my way, plenty of kale, so that should protect me against the fact that the human body in which I reside is in a constant state of threat and angst'. I don't think so.

If you have ever seen a baby being born as I have several times, you know that they come into the world with only one thought: where's the lover of me?

If you have ever seen a person leave this world, is it not the very same thought?

Yes, things need to be done in a day, often very important things. We need to jump hurdles. We sometimes need to do a sprint. Once that's done, returning to a state of homeostasis, of equanimity is incredibly important. 

Here I am. Breath in, breath out. Sound of a truck far away. Sound of a bird close by. Alive, aware, awake. Happy to be so.

We can get caught up about our health as if it's somehow not about the body attached to the head; as if what we put our nervous system through isn't involved; as if we can deny the bleeding obvious - sleep at night, get up in the morning and get sun in your eyes, move daily - and not pay the price.

I wonder if -aholics are refusing to acknowledge their own behavior. If, for example, the workaholic knew what he was doing to himself, and to the partner and family,  would he re-evaluate? I am not sure he would. The nervous system has been disrupted - what they often call PTSD now - and until that is addressed, it's just more of the same.

I think that's why Bessel Van der Kolk (The Body Keeps the Score) puts so much credit on a yoga practice; it's an opportunity for mind and body to get back in sync and for equanimity to arise quite naturally.

I am all for the benefits of science, but a science that includes a doctor asking a patient about the way they conduct their life, and most importantly their inner life. Without that, you are just shooting darts at a board.

The Gap

I cannot say I have a great deal of experience with the loss of loved ones but each loss has been felt acutely. In the case of my father, it was a sense of regret that he was alone at the time of death. I had visited him a few weeks before his death but needed finally to return to my young family. And there was a mix up with contact details for my mother so they couldn't reach her. 

I felt sad about his dying, and when I returned again to Australia for the funeral I remember the weight of the feeling just as I was about to enter the Church; the Church where he had been married and I had been married. I recall it as a sinking feeling; like I was being pulled down and back.

Thinking about it now I felt he had a good life; the life he wanted. It wasn't a privileged life and he had his sorrows like us all, but he had a marriage that fulfilled him, largely, and work and interests that engaged him. Although he died relatively young, almost 77, it had been a life such that when he passed, there was a relative lightness about it; an end to the cancerous state.

I have lost others I was close to. The loss of David who I met through his blog 'Room at the Top' is still felt. We were chums and could shoot the breeze about almost anything. He had an old world charm about him, a man that shined his shoes, you know, and I appreciated all that. 

 

He was a darn good friend, and someone who offered sound advice lightly; respectfully and sometimes quite firmly. I suppose I just look back on all those conversations with gratitude and affection. Again, it wasn't a privileged or perfect life, but he had so much sense and he had made peace with the world and his world. The sense of his passing was also a degree of lightness.

In the case of Deity there is a sense of heaviness about the passing; that it should never have been this way. I am struck with this sense of weight about it at the same time as a sense of release; for him and for me. For whatever reasons, this world was too weighty for him and as I think about it now perhaps no one that finds the days so heavy should be asked to endure beyond a certain point.

To be clear, he had a sense of silliness that was light and breezy, but the darkness was never terribly far away. He just couldn't get out of its clutches. It wasn't like Churchill's 'black dog' at all; not depression. It was the difficulty that ensued when carrying the wrongs of the world; when searching for relief not easily found.

It has a sense for me of how I felt when my father in law died. There had been so much passion; so much angst, drama, anger, intensity; conflict; resolve, commitment, that on passing, the world did seem lighter for the passing; the warrior at rest; the battle over.

When we lose someone who has made up our reality, it's a new reality for us. Everything looks a little different. There's a gap and we have to decide what to do with that gap.  It's an opportunity to look out at the world with fresh eyes. We need quiet time to process the passing at the same time as we need to engage with this new life of ours.

It's a strange phenomena for me right now. As much as I know with absolutely certainty that Deity is gone and  will not be returning in that form again, I do feel him around me and I sort of want him to be proud should it be that particular cloud above my head from which he is peeking down.

Do you ever catch yourself walking down a street and looking out with a sudden understanding that what you see isn't actually 'real? I am not at all sure that here we are on Earth and there are the dead, somewhere else. Souls linger about, at least some of them; maybe those we want to linger about.

Maybe that lingering we sense might also be called the love that remains in the heart. As a Buddhist might say, rupture becomes rapture.

Addiction

 At the (Zoom) memorial service for D they referred to his addiction a number of times. I had personally known about the addiction for over four years and attempted in any possible way to assist him.

To that end I read a lot about addiction. I must have surely written about addiction here, although I see I have no 'addiction' tag.

In the past year I needed to talk about the situation with someone and my youngest son, living with us and being a particularly emotionally intelligent human being, would talk with me about addiction. This was important for him to do so too because as a young man he had come into contact with some troubled souls himself.

He had also been subject to a vicious verbal attack by a troubled young woman and for some time had a trauma response to those incidents and the false rumors she spread. 

We talked again this morning around the sense that the addiction can't be healed until the person shows some self-compassion. One thing I distinctly recall Tara Brach say about addiction was that she never saw someone heal who wasn't compassionate towards themselves. 

I would say this to D but I am not sure it registered. I think he had given himself some lofty goals to achieve in life and when he fell short of those standards, he blamed himself, along with others who rightfully deserved to take some blame.

From our discussion this morning I recall J saying something like 'it's about achieving balance' and I think balance was a tough thing for D. He went hard at life, at his goals, to the point of exhaustion, never resting on his laurels.

One day, he had achieved something pleasing, probably more funding for his not-for-profit and I remarked that was great news. But, no, it wasn't near enough, he said. I suggested to him, 'celebrate the wins. Celebrate the moments of your life'.

However, as one speaker noted at the memorial service, the song that came to mind was Frank Sinatra singing 'My Way'. D did it his way and although I know, and for sure, that D appreciated my efforts, it didn't make a mark on the fact that he would always do everything his way.

I haven't kept chats or emails, and I did that with purpose. So, I have only my memories of what he said, or shared.

It's such a funny little anecdote but one that endures. He was holed up in a hotel in an extremely bad way after a shock that would destroy most people. He simply wasn't able to function and I got a bit bossy to try to get him to move.

"Where is that paper? You need to find it. You need to read it out to me."

"I am looking for it." 

There was some agitation in the voice but only slightly.

And then, as if an aside in a Shakespearean play, "She is so nosey."

I laughed out loud. In this desperate moment, he had made me laugh. Classic D.

At the memorial service the sentiment and some peoples' words were summed up in the notion that 'the addiction was beyond any of us', which is true. But, it is only true in the sense that it was eventually true.

I agree with Gabor Mate that addiction begins with unmet needs in childhood. We need to feel unconditionally loved. Any hint that we have disappointed our parents is a very heavy load to carry through life. D felt that. I tried to put a different spin on it; that fathers often felt the need to toughen up a son because they needed to prepare them for what can be a very tough world here on Earth.

From both his parents, he needed unconditional love, consistently. That love would have grounded him; given him a faith in his own goodness. He felt he carried darkness and to some extent, he did. 

Along with the darkness he carried great light. As his wife said, he was full of contradictions, a very complex man indeed.

There is something I say to my prisoner correspondent each time he writes of an execution, something that, of course, is deeply troubling to him.

I say, 'Remember, we are all just walking each other home.' (credit to Ram Dass)

When I was in Sydney in September Olivia Newton-John died. I heard of her death via D who sent a very brief email. We had stopped chatting at this point. I was emotionally exhausted by June this year and suggested we just email for a while. He thought of it as a "disposal". I said, no, you dispose of ice-cream wrappers not VIPs on your friendship list.

Anyways, we exchanged emails about Olivia, an icon and secret love for him, and then I asked how he was doing. He was doing well, he said, a dream job, a new girl. (might have said that already in the past week). And, he said to please look after myself; that there would always be a tender place in his heart for me.

I sensed danger, a danger I have only just now tapped into. I sort of challenged him; wanted to know what it had all been about. I basically wanted to keep him talking. He knows me so well, knows that I will keep digging. He replied very briefly.

"I love you. I have loved you for a very long time."

Now the danger was sky high. It was all sounding near the end. But, he said he was great. It was so confusing.

Some stuff after that; my protective nature abounding; his continual message of different kinds that he could look after himself. Such bullshit. He must have been so unwell; maybe sensed he had limited time.

My eldest son went to school with Sam. They met in the fifth grade and he was one of the lads that made up a thick and rich group of friends. Sam wasn't able to wing school like the other boys; to play hard, do a bit of homework and still get good grades. In response to this, he didn't try much at all.

Eventually the school thought it was time to move on and another very good school picked him up for the final year of his schooling. When he overdosed, after being clean for a good period of time and probably not really meaning to die, I secretly felt the Headmaster was responsible for the end of his life. What they had done was to remove his support; remove him from those who loved him; given him confirmation that he had not met expectations.

His memorial service was attended by hundreds of people; desperately sad for he was only in his 20s. I hugged his mother after the service. Sam had spent many a weekend with us. She said this: The boys didn't know how much he looked up to them; wanted to be like them.

In some way, addiction comes down to the relationship with the Self. Does one measure up to the expectations one has created for oneself and that those special people in a person's life has for oneself too? Is one unconditionally loved? Certainly, all the boys adored him. Sam and D had an almost identical cheeky boyhood smile.

Kim Eng said something interesting in the past day. She suggested that there are no relationships but just relating to someone in the present moment. In this way, we could avoid all the pitfalls of relationships; the judgments, the expectations, the comparisons. It definitely sounds more kind.

States of Mind

Whilst we all experience a range of moods and emotional states, some people experience, almost randomly, a heightened state of arousal. If you happen to be with the person when this happens, it's discombobulating. You can't be sure exactly what they are saying or why they are saying it, because it isn't particularly related to what happened just before their state reared itself. Most importantly, the sense of anger or even rage seems so out of kilter for the moment. My husband is inclined to do this; to be relatively at ease and then to suddenly speak fast and intensely about a subject. 

Last evening we were cuddled up on the couch, perfectly content, when at the end of the episode of a Netflix series we had been watching, he began to talk fast and emotionally with many, many f-words sprinkled into his language. The character's predicament was the trigger, I believe.

Of course, I know him (though don't necessarily always understand him) well enough to keep quiet whilst this is going on. He's not looking for conversation, unless it happened to be the words, "Yes, you are right."

I'm no Mother Theresa and I make mistakes and when he made a comment that seemed, to me, perfectly ridiculous and simply not true, I made a statement saying so. I didn't say he was wrong. I just stated what I felt I know to be true. This wasn't a good idea and escalated his sense of fury. I just left the room.

I've read enough about relationships to know that the ideal outcome is repair. Earlier in our lives, this happened a lot such that I said one day, "It's nice that you apologize, but I wish that we could avoid these situations altogether." Er, unfortunately that's not the way it went.

I believe that my husband sort of 'talks to himself' and by that I mean tries to do better in this regard. But, each brain is its own unique entity and it continues to be hard for him to stay on a even sort of kilter.

The next time we talked, this morning, he wants it to be as if nothing troubling happened. It's a new day. Not able to snuff things off quite that easily, I keep to myself.

For me, as much as I know it is part of his makeup to lose the plot with emotional hyperbole, I hate it. I try valiantly to not think about it, but I just do. On the nights when I can get through the night asleep after such a rant, I count as a great blessing. The norm is for me to wake up after a few hours or sleep.

I remember PP (the psychologist I saw a few years ago for a few sessions) say to me, "Look, people argue over spilt sugar", as if it was somehow my fault that I don't want these emotional tirades in my late evening repertoire. Hmm, maybe an insight into his own marriage.

I mention all this as a way into explaining my remedy...

There are different ways to meditate for different people and in different circumstances. When my interoception is high; that is to say when I am aware of my distressed emotional state and struggle to take my mind elsewhere, such as my external environment, the last thing I need is to focus on my third eye. Breathing exercises can be good, longer exhales than inhales, because that is calming at almost any time, but there is no way focusing more on what's going on inside me is a good idea.

If I am just awake in the middle of the night because something is vaguely on my mind, but not intensely so, Steven Snyder's 'Absolute Peace Meditation' does the trick. He takes you to a vast blackness, so black and so deep there are no edges. He then talks about the qualities there and the first one is peace. Everything that peaces touches become peaceful. And, so it goes. Blissful.

However, if I am stewing (I have a strong sense of justice and won't take the blame for things I didn't do) that's when I go to a Sound Meditation where it is a whole lots of disjoint sounds that mess with my  mind and simply will not allow me to think, at all.

When Deity and I got to know one another he did a bit of a research project on me and discovered - we both discovered - that I love to have an empty mind. He used to send binaural beats amongst other scripts.

Same goes for the people at the Ayurveda Retreat who quickly established that bliss for me was having someone pour a substance from above my head onto my third eye and then stroke it away. In fact, two women sat on either side of me doing this wiping away whilst I lay there like a person on a surgical bed with my veins full of anesthesia.

I mentioned it to the chiropractor last week and he said, 'That's a method for torture!' Well, not for me.

Earlier last evening I did a slow flow yoga class. The teacher is very gentle, has a gorgeous, soft voice and the class is as slow as a class can be. I said to her afterwards, "You are amazing. That hour always seems to me like 10 minutes."

I think one has to be aware of how one takes in information. I am a kinesthetic thinker. This was established when a meditation teacher asked us to listen to a script and raise our hands if we saw ourselves, heard ourselves or were there as ourselves. I was in the third category.

Hence, to move slowly in a meditative way is ideal for me. To breathe and move slowly in this way is to experience bliss, as opposed to moving fast, which also closes down the mind but in a more taxed way. (An example of this would be a challenging hike where the brain closes off but so too does common sense. I completely forget to drink water.)

I am very naturally drawn to experiences of deep peace (and a sense of connection), but it's more than that. I had to focus on them for my own well being under the circumstances in which I found myself.

Grief

 Grief, as we now know has various stages, not necessarily linear. When I first heard the news D had died, there was no 'I can't believe it' stage for me. I think that came a day or two later, when I wrote those words to his sister, 'I still can't quite believe it.' No, immediately, I knew it was absolutely true. I was gutted; quietly emotional; reduced to a flood of tears.

Of course, like so many other thousands of people who are or have been in grief, I played the 'if only' game with myself. If only I had been in touch on chat in the last few months; if only I had been more persistent, more loving. I finally realized that I don't have and never did have that sort of control. This sort of thinking and feeling is like the bargaining stage.

There was a bit of anger in the mix. Why couldn't he have taken better care of himself? I had tried in any number of ways to achieve that goal. Grief has a component of desire for something to happen, so I wasn't without some desire, but protected from that physical expectation that usually associates grief.

What I didn't have to contend with, as his partner now has to do, is the expectation that he would walk through the door sometime soon. I only had to contend with the fact that he would never answer my final email to him; that our chats were now over forever.

Depression is another stage of grief and I suppose my waking at odd times in the night is associated with that stage. I think it's all part of the acceptance stage and trying to make sense of these things that happen. In the right circumstances he had another fifty years to live, to love, and to achieve more great things for the communities he had served to date.

Although it hasn't been a long time since his death, I have in large part accepted what happened. I think I had some time to prepare for this knowing what I knew for some time. I think, and I am trying to pry open the door of my subconscious here, it is why I didn't communicate so often in these past few months; I expected it and found it too painful to watch too closely. I wanted to believe the song I had been sung; that all was well and I could do that better with some distance.

So, my grieving is also about giving myself some self-compassion. I tried valiantly to protect and I failed. But, I did try and I did care. I find myself with profound compassion for those professional people who work with people who have experienced terrible things.

A final stage of grief has been added to the model of the five stages of grief and that is meaning. There is no meaning in his death but there was great meaning in his life. He loved and was loved by a great many people. He was frustrating at times, bloody stubborn in moments, but he was a very lovable character who vehemently worked to make the world a better place. His time on this Earth had great meaning for many, many people, including me.

He was someone who was tolerant of difference and deeply caring of people; particularly those underprivileged. I once told him it seemed he was trying to carry the weight of the world and maybe he needed to take a rest. No, no, he said, there was too much work to do. The world had to be made a better place.

As his mother wrote, he was overcome by beautiful women. It wasn't easy for him to see the entirety of a woman because he was besotted with love; not necessarily romantic love, but the deep caring a compassionate woman could provide. Mostly, I think he felt safe with a caring woman of any age.

We both appreciated Ricky Gervais's 'After Life' and discussed it one day this year in quite a lot of detail. He wrote to me, 'Do you know the female character that sits with him (Tony) in the graveyard?' Yes, I did. 'She reminds me of you.' 'Oh?', I replied, though I had a fair idea what he was meaning. 'She listens to him and she cares about him. But she calls him on his bullshit too.'

Of course, I smiled. It meant a lot to me. My more strident comments didn't appear to be well received and I didn't make them often,but I carried on when I felt the need. This was his acknowledgment of them as a form of my care and it felt good to be seen in that way.

All he ever really wanted was peace. When I would ask him what he wanted, and I must have asked a half dozen times over the years, it was always the same; just the one word, 'peace'.

May his ashes fertilize the landscape where he grew up. May he find the peace he so richly deserves