Quickly The Body Passes Away

"This body is as transient as dew on the grass, Life passes as swiftly as a flash of lightning, quickly the body passes away, in a moment life is gone." Dogen from Rules for Meditation

My mother died peacefully yesterday afternoon in her own bed. I had the privilege of sitting with her and holding her hand as she took her last breaths. It was interesting timing and not without its own meaning. I had just turned to the pages on the process of dying in "The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying" by Sogyal Rinpoche and read a part that said we only have a certain number of breaths based on our karma. A few minutes after that as I sat holding her hand my mothers face turned upward and seemed to open and she took a peaceful, long breath. There was a long pause. She took a few smaller breaths and then there were no more. A large digital clock was keeping us company by the bed side and showed that this transpired between about 2:05 -2:12. I sat and cried a bit and then could feel the inclination to do something, get up call my partner, call the Hospice Nurse. I resisted this urge and sat a while longer, said some prayers and at 2:55 according to my digital friend I felt a great peace arrive.

It has been a long journey with my mother but over the last 8 months we had some deep and healing conversations. I believe my mother's deep karmic work revolved around this statement she made at one point, about her inability to express love to others: "I realized why I was the way I am but I didn't realize how it affected other people." Is this not an amazing realization for a woman of 94? This came out of my search for some healing in our relationship when one day I asked myself after a particularly difficult encounter with her "how can I be helpful?" I came to see that I needed my mother to know how I felt in a kind and open way. This helped us move our relationship to new levels that seemed to defuse my anger and her wanting. It helped me to see her as a full person, filled with both compassion and suffering. She got to be just who she was. We reached a plateau of respect and caring. And this opened a space for us to talk about her impending death and what she wanted to do before she died. There was true healing.

So I could be with my mother in a tender and open way as she died. We could negotiate the fact that she did not want to go to hospital as the community nurse suggested. She did not want to die in an institutional bed in an emergency ward with noise and hustle and bustle and strangers mulling around in a samsaric way. In the end the community health nurse could hear us and made quick and seamless arrangements for the Hospice Response Team to visit. They were the most lovely, gentle, caring folk you could wish for. Arnold and Catherine brought peaceful caring energy to my mother's apartment and some meds to make her breathing easier. So between 4 pm Friday and 2 pm Saturday my mother made her final transition in a graceful, peaceful, uncomplicated way, in a way I belief typified her true being. When asked by the hospice team where she wanted to die, she said, "here if it's not too much trouble." And she truly meant that. It was the exit she had been waiting for. Please say a prayer for my mother if you feel so inclined. I am wishing her an auspicious rebirth where she can build on the realizations of this life, where she can happily express love and feeling. May her life and death be of benefit to all beings. Yetta Leslie 1915- 2009.

Every day is Strange

Today was a strange day.  Maybe all days are strange?  In the morning I heard that Tricycle magazine will use my mixed media "Forest Buddha" in their summer issue, yay!  In the evening when I talked to my mother on the phone she told me that the doctor had been round to visit her and she has decided to slowly go off the medications she takes, in an effort "to speed up the process" as she puts it.  She is 94 and has multiple health issues and as she sometimes likes to say, she is half dead and the other half refuses to go.  

If you've read this blog before you will know that my relationship with my mother is not an easy one.  I find her prickly and difficult.  So here is the challenge.  Of course I want to be compassionate and helpful to my mother through her process of leaving this world, at least some part of me does.  But to be very truthful a part of me doesn't want to do the work, feel the pain, or just be with her.  In many ways it would be easier to feel angry toward her and push her away, to grumble and blame.  And there in lies my work, to do the best I can, to try to be helpful, yet to acknowledge my own humanness.  So it will be an interesting ride.  Part of me eyes her suspiciously, what will she get up to now?  Part of me feels exhausted before I even start.  Couldn't I buy a ticket to somewhere else? (also today a friend sent me an email that said "Discover the Buddha by Indian Rail")  Doesn't that sound more interesting?  But here I am and I will muddle along this leg of the journey as best I can, sometimes with a flat tire, sometimes on my bike, with the wind in my hair.  

My mother knows how to push my buttons, that's for sure.  I used to think it was intentional but I have come to see recently (as I peel off the layers of projection) that in truth she doesn't know how to be anything but prickly.  She is like a little porcupine trapped inside that shell of quills, firing them off in all directions.  She doesn't even know that she can take this little costume off any time she likes, in fact she believes the zipper is stuck and she can't possibly get out.

I have picked an old book from the shelf this evening, Sogyal Rinpoche's "The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying".  It will be good to read this, although at this point I can feel the hard knot of resistance in me, this feeling of my mother making me do this, of wanting something from me.  We have a long history of this.  In the book, Rinpoche says "the dying need our unconditional love, but in some situations this may be far from easy.  We may have a long history of suffering with this person ...."  And then he suggest two ways of working with this "first, look at the dying person in front of you and think of that person as just like you, with the same needs, the same fundamental desire to be happy and avoid suffering, the same loneliness, the same fear of the unknown .... The second way, and I have found this even more powerful, is to put yourself directly and unflinchingly in the dying person's place. ... What would you most need? like?"  Not bad advice for being with the living either, don't you think?  So if my mother is the porcupine, I am the furtive little ground squirrel, peeking my head out of it's hole, hoping not to get my furry little self ripped or torn.  Wish me luck and courage.