Living with Dying

 

2/22/2018 at Cape San Blas

Received from a friend:

I recall as though it were yesterday seeing Michael on a number of occasions answering a cell phone call from you. It was so touching to see the expression on his face — gentle, loving, happiness.  I recall feeling as though I was witnessing something precious [something that few married couples achieve].  

I will also confide in you something I witnessed sitting in the waiting area one day at Eastwind. You had a very dear moment standing in the hallway in front of an open office door. No one else was present.

There was this sweet moment in which you both kissed gently and hugged briefly with the sun streaming in that window behind you. I have not told anyone because I felt I had accidentally invaded and witnessed a private moment.  That image has never left me and makes me happy to have seen such deep love.

I am living and Michael is dying. It’s the simple and profound truth that we face every day. Of course I’m dying too, but that kind of thought goes nowhere and doesn’t really touch the living reality of our time together.

I can see the dying in his bruised face, his swollen legs, his atrophied muscles, his increasing lethargy. Since we are at the ocean for awhile, we are together all day, so there’s literally no escape from these truths. This means that every day we must face grief yet again. Another fresh dose of sorrow awaits us each morning with its pale insistent face, and whether it is acknowledged then or not, it is sitting there waiting to be seen – the sad, persistent, and inevitable guest in our relationship.

When I awaken there is always a brief time in which the pain isn’t there yet, it hasn’t been realized yet, and I’m simply myself, waking up. It’s such a relief, this brief time of waking, but it is short and soon reality sinks in again.

What I realize is that it’s absolutely necessary to acknowledge this suffering every single day. How I wish I didn’t have to! But I’ve noticed that if I try to ignore it, it doesn’t go away. Rather, it turns into some sort of ugliness or falseness, something unreal.

This means we are truly living with dying. And because of this, I’m seeing that Michael and I are on completely different trajectories – his gradually declining into greater and greater helplessness while mine is working mightily toward greater living. It is hard for me to maintain this within an atmosphere of death and I have to concentrate to keep myself from falling into an exhausted depression, or worse, an angry resentment. It is a daily practice, sometimes a moment to moment practice, of striving toward life and love and liberation. Meanwhile he moves inexorably toward the dual-faced liberation and resignation of dying.

I find myself wishing for his death more often these days. Not out of anger, though anger still sneaks in from time to time, but now the wish is riding in on waves of exhaustion. I’m truly sick of this situation. Sick and tired. But I also know that this time is sacred and that it is teaching me more about love than I ever knew was possible. I keep wondering how much more there is to learn, and then I know that the learning is infinite.

I don’t want to get sick in order to express these feelings. But they are very strong and they need to find words to fulfill them lest they turn into anger or disgust or some kind of distancing diversion. Then I realize that this, too, is love, that this striving toward expression forces me to stay honest, to speak what needs to be spoken, especially when it is hard to speak.

Love is so different from what we think it is, so different from what we’ve read or seen or been told. It’s the daily emergence of all that arises in you and your loved one, and then finding the most compassionate and most truthful way to respond. It’s the encounter with the Beloved, with the deep raw heart of God.

Today I find that Michael is crying and when I speak to him, I am crying too. He says, “I know you will feel relief when I die, and I don’t blame you.” It’s the first time he’s said this and it is such a hard truth but I acknowledge it.

“Yes,” I say, “there will be relief. And there will also be horrible, desperate loss.”

“But you will be free!” he says.

“And so will you,” I say. Now we both hear the truths we are speaking and we cry together. It is the kind of crying that brings real comfort for we have touched each others’ hearts. Now that we have grieved, and only because we have grieved, this day can move forward within feelings of gentleness and peace.

Since neither of us is denying Michael’s death, things are easier in some ways, and more stark. I’m feeling other dimensions of this experience, and the confrontation with the huge abyss of loss allows fear to arise. For a moment, I fear his death, I fear being alone, and more than that, I fear being without him in my life. I’m not sure who I’ll be on my own. I’m not sure that I will be strong, or that I will move through the world and its deep suffering with any kind of grace or calm.

Now I go to the sea for renewal. I find my emotional self stumbling when I’m alone. I stumble and wobble and cry and I wonder how I will face another month or two months or twelve months of this living death. But as I walk, I know I will. And what then? What when he is truly gone?

Far away, I see his familiar figure approaching me on the beach. I’ve been out for an hour and now he makes his slow progress in my direction. But it’s still his very particular silhouette even though it is bent and slow, it is still Michael coming toward me on the beach. How many times have I seen this? How many times has my heart gladdened to see him coming closer until we finally meet? We kiss, more a peck than a kiss, but still, it’s contact. I know there will be a time when this man will no longer come toward me on the beach, and when I say this to him, I find that he is crying along with me, and my heart breaks open once again.

Our friend was so right. She saw these sweet moments, this huge blessing of a life lived with deep love. We meet and once again we are washed clean by an ocean of tears and grief — freed in this wild, beautiful, endless water.