Pestilence and Redemption

July 29, 2019

On my way out of the Unitarian Church this morning, a place that still doesn’t feel in alignment with my deeper self, a woman I barely know stops me to talk. She is old and infirm and she saw me as psychologist a few times for pain management many years ago. She tells me she still uses the hypnotic suggestion I gave her. And then, she says, “Please say hello to your husband, Michael.”

“He died last year,” I say, and all at once I find tears in my eyes, sudden and insistent, tears that I didn’t know were there. She sees them and says, “Oh, I didn’t know.” And of course, I understand. I offer her words of comfort for she is feeling bad for me and I don’t want to burden this good woman with my grief. I try not to break down completely but I can feel it coming. A long hard sob wants to escape from my throat and my heart, and I rush down the aisle to escape out the back door of the church.

It’s been a difficult several weeks, and I feel besieged by tasks, small and large, tasks that demand my attention, an attention that is feeling tired and overwhelmed.

For the past month I’ve had a systemic staph infection. My left eye is infected, and though it’s mild, and mostly without symptoms, it still speaks to my immune system being compromised. It speaks to things being out of balance. My doctor really wants this cleared up, so now I’m on my third round of eye drops and my second round of oral antibiotics. Ugh.

Also, my dog has fleas. I hear the piano notes in my head as I think this phrase. And really, I’m hoping my dog had fleas. But she had them for the fourth time in three weeks, and I’m not feeling up to dealing with it again.

Flea treatment requires a complete vacuuming of everything. Everything! The carpets, the floors, the baseboards, the furniture. Then there is the washing of the dog with flea bath. It’s arduous and it hurts my back. She hates these baths and I don’t blame her. God only knows what the shampoo is doing to her skin. This is followed by washing all the bedding, hers and mine, and three days ago, spraying everything with some poison given to me by the vet. It takes an entire day to complete, and I feel overwhelmed just writing about it. We’ve had four flea-free days now, and I’m praying this is it.

Five nights ago, I came up from the basement after watching some kind of mindless TV. My basement is still a mess from the flooding that occurred almost three months ago. The new flooring I ordered has been perpetually on back-order and my basement, though finally dry, is still covered only by cold, gray cement, neither welcoming nor beautiful. My sister and her family helped me move most of the furniture out of the finished basement and into the unfinished part so that the old damp carpet could be removed. Now there is only a couch and the TV, and as unwelcoming as the environment is, it’s the only place I can watch movies – a distraction that has been my way of avoiding my long and often lonely evenings.

As I climb the basement stairs, I hear a loud buzzing sound and I find a swarm of flies in my kitchen. A swarm! I’ve never seen anything like this in my clean Virgoan home. There are at least 40 or 50 flies, droning, and incessant, and actually a little frightening, circling endlessly around my kitchen light. I spend over an hour killing them. It is gross and nerve-wracking. In frustration, I wildly swing the fly swatter in the air at times, because they do not land. After awhile, I realize that this is useless, so I wait for them to settle on the window, and then I smash at them. I am Fly Killer, an identity I’ve never had before, and it feels odd and brutal. Eventually, their little blood-filled bodies are all over my countertops and floor, and always when I think I’ve killed the last one, another buzzes toward my head, scattering my nervous system and setting me ajar once again.

At the end, there was still one fly alive but I couldn’t kill it. It was small and quick and it knew I wanted its death. I finally gave up, turned off all the lights and shut my bedroom door so that it couldn’t find me in my sleep.

That night I had a dream: I am standing on the ground floor of my white house and there are cars at the curb. Medical personnel are unloading two men on stretchers who are ill and have come to me for healing. As they unload a third stretcher, I see that the third male figure is the gray color of the Death card in the tarot, and I realize that he is, in fact, dead. I close the door before he can be brought into my living room, vehemently saying over and over, “He can’t come in. He can’t come in!”

Clearly this is a dream about healing the Masculine self and about Michael. Yet another in the long round of dreams that are trying to help me come to terms with his loss. I’d had a “clearing” a few days before from a friend who is a master of Applied Kinesiology. In it, we’d discovered that I have been holding a belief that I am somehow responsible for Michael’s death, that I could have done more to save him.

This belief is replaced during our session by giving Michael “full responsibility for his choices and his spiritual path,” and by taking full responsibility for my own choices and spiritual path. I have no trouble taking responsibility for my own, but there is the niggling sense that if I hadn’t started to pull away from Michael some six years ago, if I hadn’t stopped letting him feed off of my heart, he wouldn’t have died.

It was the pattern we’d established to deal with his Asperger’s, and it had worked for a long time. Essentially, he supplied the logical, and I supplied the emotional in our connection. Thankfully, we both had the spiritual as well. But we had made a deal, an unconscious one, but a deal nonetheless: He would heal my physical self, and I would heal his emotional void. It’s the contract we made, and I truly do accept it. It’s taken me this long since his death to see it so clearly, and then I realize that this is exactly what happens as the death of a loved one begins to dissolve into memory.

The time since Michael’s death has been full of layer after layer of meaning and depth. I see who I was with him in a way I could not have seen while he was alive. At some level, I think we both knew that we had come to a natural ending between us. As one of my good friends said, “The only way the two of you could end was through death.” I see now she was right and that our end wouldn’t have happened otherwise.

And I can look back and realize we had a great time of remarkable growth between us, and then later, a time of stagnation and difficulty. And finally, during his dying, we were close again. We needed the seriousness and tragedy of a long death between us because we didn’t know how else to say goodbye. I find myself feeling deeply heartened to say this.

At a spiritual level, I know this belief I’ve been holding, is nonsense. I know I’m not responsible for his death. I was part of the dance around his death, but I was not the dance. I know that Michael felt loved by me, and I know how deeply I loved him. It was our karma, both his and mine, to play out this particular drama. But still, the sense of guilt has been there, lying quietly underground, waiting like a spider for me to discover it.

The following night I awakened with a hard, fast shock. It was as if a nuclear explosion had gone off and I was annihilated in a flash of light. I lay awake for hours, and for only the second time, I was enraged by Michael’s dying. I felt the intensity of the trauma I had endured “at his hands,” and I couldn’t let it go. The trauma of watching him die, of watching his body decay, of witnessing the savagery of his illness and its effect on me, is more than I can encapsulate in words. I know it’s still haunting my dreams and my body in ways that I cannot yet fathom.

Two weeks ago, I had a vision in a meditation. It was of The Lady, for this is what she called herself. She came as a thick green vine and she grew around me in a spiral from feet to head and up into the heavens – a beautiful green vine calling me to come find her.

I’m struggling with how to make sense of all this – the pestilence suggested by the flies and the fleas, the endless and exhausting cleaning of my home, the flooding of my basement, the undigested rage, and finally, the vision of The Lady.

I’m well-versed in the symbolic and metaphorical world, and I look for the meaning in these symbols. Clearly, the basement flooding is the manifestation of the feelings I’ve pushed down around Michael’s death, and around facing the world alone.

Flies have multiple meanings – from Beelzebub to the quick manifestation of desires, and maybe it’s both. The Devil is here in the distortion of ideas that arise around Michael’s dying. I’m hoping that the “quick manifestation of desires” is something positive, but this remains to be seen.

Fleas are globally identified as negative, though one site talks about the idea of rebirth. But fleas are the purveyors of the plague. They also represent “accumulative damage,” and god knows there’s enough of that in my life. One site talks about a representation of sensitivity to the environment, and another speaks of hurting the ones you love. A third one mentions vampirism, and I wonder if I’m the vampire or whether Michael was the vampire. Of course, he is dead, so it has to be more about my feelings toward Michael who unwittingly lived off of my heart. And about me, who unwittingly, let him.

The Lady is clearly the Goddess, and she is attempting to guide me. I have never been “called” like this before. And now, I’m listening more intently, looking for signs from her, trusting I will be shown. I’m waiting to see what it means to be called.

I keep being told by others that I look “so strong” to the outside world, and I guess I am being strong. I’m getting through the worst three years of my life and I’m still functioning. I’m doing my work as a psychologist while running Eastwind, and I’m receiving visions of how to improve our healing center. I’m reinventing myself through a new program in psychedelic medicine. I’m meeting wonderful people and becoming involved in two groups of community singing. And for the first time in years, I’m starting to enjoy my life again.

But these difficult outer events are taking a toll. I see that they are showing me things in my inner landscape that I would just as soon forget. These are potent symbols, and for me to ignore them would go against the very foundation of my spiritual practice. This is Life trying to teach me something, and it’s all still a bit opaque. But this is the redemption. It is seeing and acknowledging the symbols as they arise, allowing them to have their sway within the psyche, and finally, opening to learn what they are trying to teach.

So, for now, I gather the meaning of these symbols and I’m cleaning up the messes. I’m hopeful that my newest medication will clear my staph infection. The flies are gone, I think the fleas are gone, and in two days I will have flooring in my basement. I can finally manifest new light and new life into the underground realm. I know that the underground is one of the realms of the Lady, and perhaps all of these events have been messages from Her. I am trying to listen.

Oh, let it be enough, I pray. Let it be.

God Is Not A Masochist

August 20, 2018

Three days ago, I didn’t cry for the first time in almost two years. I didn’t know this until the end of the day when I was reading in bed and suddenly became aware that there had been no tears that day. Then I obsessively counted the days, for I remembered being dry-eyed on the 18th day after Michael’s diagnosis. So, it’s been 728 days since I haven’t cried. It made me wonder if I’m moving into a different phase of grief, and perhaps I am.

I’m realizing how small a thing is Michael’s death. For more than 2 years, his living and dying has been so central to my world that it’s sometimes hard to remember that others aren’t in the same place.

Of course, I know that they are not, and I’ve known that all along. There are only a few of us who are deeply affected by any death, and of those few, I am the one most affected by Michael’s death. It’s the way it is and it’s the way it should be. But I’m realizing how small his death really is.

In the past few days I have heard from a neighbor about the imminent death of her granddaughter’s mother. I’ve heard about a woman whose husband was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and died only two weeks later. I know a woman whose father, father-in-law, and dog all died within a few months of each other. Death is all around us, all the time.

And the death of a single person, while terribly sad for me, is just the death of a 68-year old man who loved and was loved by his wife, his family, and a few close friends. And isn’t this what all of us get if we’re lucky? Isn’t this just how it is?

As much as all of this is true, it doesn’t change the sometimes desperate loneliness that engulfs me. I am more alone than I have ever been, and there’s a strong bend toward isolation and numbing out. Fortunately, my worst addiction at this point seems to be too much time with mediocre television and old movies, and I figure as isolation and numbing go, it’s not so bad. And to some degree, my isolation is by choice.

Thankfully, there are beautiful, kind people who offer their company. Sometimes I take them up on it, and sometimes, I do not. I’m so grateful for their reaching out, so grateful that many make the attempt to keep me connected to life. But this latest phase of grief seems to be about finding the healthy mixture of solitude and company. For often I end up feeling lonely when I’m with others, and then I make a concerted effort to stay engaged, to be truly touched and touchable, and for the most part, I’m successful. Of course, the person I’m really missing just isn’t here, and there’s simply no replacement for him.

One thing I know now is why widows and widowers often die soon after their spouse is gone. They are literally lost, literally unable to function, literally anchorless. I don’t feel quite this intensity of lost-ness myself, but I can feel the pull of it, and I understand.

Similarly, a woman I know said to me this week that she’s aware she’s been spending her whole life waiting to be rescued! This really hit me, for I have had the same feeling. It’s ancient and unreasonable and a complete fantasy, but it’s there – I’m waiting for rescue. I discover it lurking beneath my tears these days, and once I discover it, I’m usually able to let it be, and fortunately, I don’t act on it. But still, it’s a strong feeling, a deep and usually unconscious desire.

As little girls, many of us were raised on fairy tales. In these tales, there was always a beautiful princess who is rescued by a handsome prince. I don’t know if little boys bought into the handsome prince story, but I completely bought the princess scenario.

My fantasy life was filled with the Prince. As a child, I would ride in the backseat of the car on the endless trips to our grandmother’s house in Waverly, Iowa, and dream of the Prince, coming the other way on the highway in his car, somehow traveling through rural Iowa. At some point, I would always lean up against the car window so that I would be more visible. I knew that one day, quite suddenly, he would drive by and happen to glance into our car as he passed, and of course, he would see me! Immediately, he would know that I was to be his Princess. He would stop us, take me into his car, and rescue me forever from my wretched life. It was all quite dramatic and totally unbelievable, but it held my attention for years. I think I can even say that my first marriage was my slightly-matured version of this fairytale.

My “mature” version is that somehow Michael isn’t really dead, or that his Spirit is so strong that it comes through to guide me, or even that some other Prince is driving down the highway looking for me now.

It’s all ridiculous, and I know it, but it’s part of the subtle experience of Michael’s loss that I am currently working with. It’s the Child Self’s sad realization that there is no “rescue,” that this is real life, and that this is exactly what I signed up for. It’s a blessing to know this for it allows me to observe these feelings rather than to believe them. And like all feelings, they pass, and the Higher Self is left to watch them passing, and to be at least a little bemused by their intensity.

Clearly, part of the lesson is learning to live with loneliness without being taken under by it, and part of it is finally loving myself enough to grow up.

I just returned from a week-long meditation retreat in which the teacher stated that as far as he knows, “there’s no upper limit” in terms of consciousness and how high we can go. I feel that now. Growing up is never complete, for consciousness is infinite and alive, and as much as we grow, it is always outgrowing us.

I feel that at a spiritual level I have asked for this crash course in independence, and I’m getting it. But it is a “crash” course, and it is sometimes startling, terrifying and bruising. Regardless, it’s important for all of us to be as awake as we can be when death arrives at our door. I’ve signed up to be challenged to go more deeply into my spiritual center, to ride these waves of grief with as much consciousness as I can summon, and to delineate this journey with whatever truth and clarity I can embody.

My friend Fran always says that “God is not a masochist.” Think about that for a moment because it gets deeper as you do. From the highest level, the first implication is that God is Good and that we can have utter faith in that goodness. The second implication is that God never does anything that hurts God, meaning that any death, all deaths, are part of a greater plan. The One thing is always evolving, and even if we don’t understand Its movements, It is always growing toward the higher Good. Finally, it is a statement of absolute trust in the unknowable evolution of consciousness.

I cling to this idea at times when I’m overcome with sorrow, and I meditate on it in times of peace. God is not a masochist. And finally I understand, neither am I.

Metaphors

August 23, 2017

I’ve been thinking about metaphors — the metaphors of Michael’s illness, the metaphors of caregiving, the metaphors of the larger world. In my way of looking at the world it is a metaphor-creating machine, always showing us the way, always showing us when we’re in alignment and when we are not, always showing us exactly what is going on if we can be still enough to comprehend it.

To understand our life, all that is required of any of us is to pay attention to what is happening in our personal and our interpersonal worlds, and to really look at how reality is arranging itself for us. Then we begin to unpack the deep messages and responsibilities it holds. Once we do this, we can see exactly where we are, and we can choose how to proceed.

A few weeks ago when my son and I cleaned our basement, a huge metaphor presented itself. Finding black mold in the trunk that was holding Michael’s mementos, and finding it only there, was a clear message. But then after the clear message comes the complex and layered unpacking of the metaphor that presents itself. God is speaking to us. The problem is that we don’t always know how to understand what is being said.

For instance, it is interesting that it is my son and I who are the ones to find the mold and who get rid of the mold. Michael’s illness prevents him from doing this kind of work right now, so we are the stand-ins. And what are we standing in? We are standing in something that it is dark and dangerous, something that was hidden in the unconscious chaos of our basement. And clearly, it is about cleaning up Michael’s representations of old memories in some way. But then the questions arise: Is Michael not involved because he had already let go of these mementos and so they were returning into the mold of the dark earth? Or is he supposed to see that the mementos are no longer necessary in some way? Or is it important for my son and I to encounter this dark mess and clean it up for him or for ourselves, to let go of something that we didn’t even know we were holding onto?

I’m still pondering the meaning of this and all I really know is that something that was hidden in the Great Below got cleaned up. Beyond that, I’m still trying to figure it out.

This past weekend Michael and I were blessed with witnessing what is perhaps the most potent metaphor of the natural world – the total eclipse. It is a sight that neither of us will ever forget as we bathed in the timeless energy of totality. The sudden stillness, the growing darkening of the sky, the weird shadows, and finally in totality, the stunning black hole surrounded by the most brilliant diamond light floating in the depths of Mystery.

It is such a beautiful metaphor – the dance of the Sun and the Moon coming together in radiant beauty and utter peace. And for a moment, the Masculine energy of the sun is “eclipsed” by the Feminine of the moon — an integration that is desperately needed in this tumult of personal and collective earthly events. It brought tears to our eyes for we knew we were seeing God in one of Its many magnificent guises.

The next day we bumped smack into another metaphor when we had our monthly meeting with the nurse practitioner at the hospital. We got the new numbers that indicate Michael’s progress, or in this case lack of progress, with his disease. Last month the misshaped protein was at its lowest level since we began this whole process a year ago, and we had dared to hope. Yesterday, the bad protein had almost doubled in number. So what’s the metaphor here?

First, protein is called the “building block of the body.” It is vital in the maintenance of body tissues and energy. Michael’s body is producing too many “misfolded” proteins and both his tissues and his energy are suffering. The building blocks aren’t working the way they are supposed to and this is happening in the marrow of his bones. In other words, at the physical level, the metaphor is that there’s a deep part of him that is trying to die. In fact, it is the deepest part of his physical being. It is the very marrow of his bones that is producing this illness and this metaphor simply cannot be avoided.

Second, and this seems to be a continuous learning, it means we can’t count on anything within the course of this illness. Of course receiving this news was a blow in many ways. I had dared to think that things were getting steadily better and obviously, this isn’t the case. There’s not a straight line in any direction.

Finally, there is an absolute necessity to let go of expectations. The truth is that it doesn’t matter what we think or what we want. And in some situations, it doesn’t even matter what our conscious intentions are. All that comforting New Age philosophy about our intentions creating reality is true to a certain extent. But when it collides with fate or karma or whatever you want to call that deeper underlying force, all the intentions in the world may not change things. There are forces at work that we simply cannot understand or control, and they have things to teach us that we’ve either forgotten or that we desperately need to learn.

All I know for sure is that it is this spiritual understanding, these metaphors, that  allow me to keep my head above water. For surely, without them, I would drown. They allow me to see that things happen for a reason, that there really are no accidents. For if we debase life’s “accidents” by not believing in their meaning, we undermine the deeper meanings that strive to inform us. Life is far too complex for us to imagine that we can control it, or halt any of its huge underlying movements.

I cry this week because I have to. I feel how pure and beautiful life is, and sometimes, how desperately sad. I feel the rawness and the grief and the utter simplicity of it all. I see the metaphors and realize that they are all telling me something about myself and about the human condition. Over and over, I surrender to this Mystery, this wisdom, knowing it is teaching me exactly what I need to learn. And always, it is teaching me about love.

I talk with my son about Michael’s results. He says, “Well, some metaphors will kill you.” He’s right of course. We’re all going to die and hopefully, we’re all going to receive the immense opportunity to face death and to receive the meaning of our metaphors. And finally, in the end, we can know that life, every bit of it, is a blessing.

A Week in Hell

8/1/17

There have been 3 weeks of hell in this process so far. This past week has been one of them.

The first one was the week of frantic driving to the Mayo Clinic, three days of invasive tests to receive Michael’s devastating diagnosis, the reality and shock only beginning to settle in as we drive home through the most terrifying storm, the most Biblical storm, I’ve ever driven in. On the way, our Iowa City doctor calls to tell us that Michael has ventricular tachycardia and he must stop driving “Now!” because he could die at any minute. I slip into the driver’s seat with no ability to assimilate this latest information as we drive through the horror of this night. We have to stop three times on the way home because sheets of rain are so dense that they cover the windshield obscuring vision that only lightning illuminates. The terrifying weather resonates perfectly with my inner terror – the shock of lightning, the horror of thunder and blinding rain, the bleak dark landscape with nothing but empty blackness ahead. This was a week from hell.

The second week was when Michael was near death in the hospital after his transplant with a white blood count of almost zero, not eating or drinking, with diarrhea and diapers, and only able to grunt and moan in communication. He literally doesn’t remember this week which is burned into me like liquid iron. This was a week from hell.

And then there’s this past week…. It started on Friday with Michael’s 5^th bone marrow aspiration. It’s a horrible procedure to watch but it’s the kind of horror that I simply cannot turn away from. Sometimes I wish I was the kind of person who turns away, but I’m not. When horror presents itself, I feel I’m there to witness it. The aspiration literally involves having a large needle screwed into the hip bone so that the marrow can be extracted. It’s one of the ways the doctors keep track of what is really going on with Michael’s body and it happens every 3 months.

Luckily Michael is on morphine during these procedures and says they don’t bother him at all. I, on the other hand, am not on morphine though I can definitely see the appeal. It’s one of those squeamish procedures in which one sees bone being breached by a large, long needle, the needle literally thunking into the midst of the bone. Then the marrow, a bit thicker and darker than blood, is extracted and examined. It always makes me a little bit sick, nauseous really, but I am duty-bound to be there, to observe it, to undergo it with him.

We come home and Michael sleeps it off while I steady my stomach with some food, a walk and yoga. As I’m walking I think, “Darby is coming tomorrow!” and it makes me happy.

My son Darby has said that as an early birthday present he will visit and help me clean the basement. Michael is not allowed to be around dust and molds and of course, the basement is full of them, so Darby’s offer of assistance is necessary for any kind of movement in the vehement cacophony of basement trash.

The Basement! Like many basements, it’s become the repository for all the things we don’t want to deal with, don’t want to see. And it’s really bothering me. I know there are things in the basement that need to be cleared, need to be encountered, need to be revealed.

It’s been piled with boxes of stuff since we moved into this house almost 3 years ago. There’s a large pile of old area rugs. There are boxes of taxes, foodstuffs, lamps, bookcases, kitchenware, paint, art supplies, camping equipment, and luggage. There are Christmas decorations, mementos of my children’s childhoods, and record albums and CDs we haven’t listened to in years. There are old chests, old artwork, and really old photographs and written records tied up in boxes. The list goes on and on.

Darby and I work like dogs, or at least that’s how I feel — hard, physical labor. Up and down the basement stairs a hundred times carrying every heavy and awkward thing imaginable. Loaded car trips to Crowded Closet, the Crisis Center, and the recycling center begin to make a dent in the chaos.

Finally we come to the 40-year old painted wooden toy chest. I open the lid and find the box Michael has been looking for! It’s all his childhood stuff, family stuff, his baby pictures, his report cards, his school photos, him in his college Corps uniform, pictures of his son from babyhood and childhood. It’s his memory box. As soon as I move the box a cloud of black dust rises into my face. I look down inside the edge of the chest and there is black watery mold all along it. There’s a moment of horror as Darby and I both realize — this is black mold!

We look at each other and immediately know that all of the chest’s contents are contaminated and have to be destroyed. All of Michael’s mementos are full of death. I tell Michael and he goes and sits in his study. I think that this is hard for him but we don’t talk about it yet.

Darby and I put on masks and gloves and get the handcart that will allow us to move this ailing behemoth of a chest. The whole bottom of it is covered with the mold. It’s almost falling apart and it feels like it weighs a ton. We carefully walk it onto the cart. Darby pulls it up the stairs one awful heaving step at a time while Michael, who is now also gloved and masked, and I push the thing up from below to keep it from toppling. We finally get it to the curb with a huge sigh of relief and the sense of having dodged some sort of odd worldly bullet.

Michael goes into the house and Darby and I get into the car to head for Crowded Closet. “Well that was certainly an obvious metaphor,” he says. “Yes,” I agree. “Could it have been any more obvious?” We’re both laughing somewhat hysterically. “I mean, what did God want to say here?” Darby booms. “I mean, I’m not sure what the message was, God, so maybe you want to make it clearer!”

“Yeah, it’s not entirely clear, is it?” I laugh. “Hmm. Michael’s memory box is full of death! You think? Maybe Michael is supposed to let go of his memories….” Darby and I riff on this for awhile but we’re both pretty impressed. Metaphors this intense don’t come along every day.

We spend the next day and a half finishing the huge and filthy task of cleaning this basement, this unconscious mind that Michael and I have created, this part of ourselves that we haven’t been wanting to see. It feels Herculean, the cleaning of the Augean stables. Eventually, it is done. It’s been difficult but is entirely satisfying to my Virgo’s need for order and beauty.

Monday dawns well. I receive a lovely email from Darby’s wife and Michael gets the news that for the first time since we started this journey of illness a year ago, his bad numbers are finally coming down, moving toward the normal range. It’s phenomenal! Joyful! Hopeful! He goes to his chemotherapy appointment with more positive energy than either of us has felt in months.

Then a phone call from radiology arises. I’ve had an unusual mammogram. There are two spots that need to be looked at again. How soon can I come in? Tomorrow? Great. So as if any of us needed another reminder of Impermanence, there it is. A bad mammogram, a test that can mean so many things.

I have another mammogram and an ultrasound the next day. One of the spots is a cyst, the other one isn’t so easy to classify. The doctor says I can wait and watch it for a few months or I can have a breast biopsy. Of course I choose the biopsy. I can’t imagine walking around for several months wondering if I have breast cancer but this decision has many consequences – the largest being the emotional toll it will take on me and the people who love me.

I text Michael and my sons with the news on the way home. When I come in the door Darby says, “Want to hear something really weird? I just got a call saying that Dad got taken to the hospital in an ambulance! He’s having heart problems. There’s some kind of bizarre déjà vu going on here!” And it is bizarre.

Eighteen years ago on the very day that I was diagnosed with kidney cancer, my children’s father was told that he would need a quadruple heart bypass. Both of us ended up in the hospital at the same time, both of us with life-threatening conditions, both of us seriously ill.

It turns out that while my ex-husband was on the Great Bike Ride Across Iowa in the desperate heat of late July, he had become dehydrated. His heart went into atrial fibrillation, a fluttery and chaotic heart rhythm, and soon an ambulance is carrying him to a hospital in Mason City. We’re all a bit shaken and we wait uneasily for more news. Luckily, his heart recovers quickly and he ends his bike ride to come home.

Darby sees his Dad the next morning for breakfast and then I take Darby to the airport to go back to LA. I shed a few tears as he leaves but only a few. I’m not sure what is happening in my emotional field but I’m not reacting in ways I thought I would.

That afternoon we have our first appointment with Michael’s new doctor. He seems friendly and busy and he delivers news we haven’t heard before. Apparently the hope was that Michael’s numbers would be in the normal range long before this, and they’ve never even gotten close until now. The doctor sees the progress of his current chemotherapy regimen and he tells us that once Michael is at a normal level, he will have another year of chemo to endure.

Another year! I am floored. My heart sinks and there’s a heaviness in my chest that is almost unbearable. We’d been told at the outset that there would be a year of chemo after the transplant. We had accepted that and had been expecting we would be done with these poisons in the next 2-3 months. Now we’re looking at 14-15 more months. I feel like I can’t take this in. It’s simply too much.

When we arrive home we hear from Michael’s sister that his mother is in the ER after she became dizzy and nauseous and then fainted. Later she is admitted to the hospital for observation of her heart. We are more than a thousand miles away and all we can do is wait to hear what’s going on. Michael is completely worn out while I continue to be in an odd state of detachment.

I know I’m going through a lot – the bone marrow aspiration, the breast exams and the upcoming biopsy, the basement cleaning, the black mold, the additional year of chemotherapy, the heart problems of my ex-husband and my mother-in-law, my son coming and going. It’s all too much! And yet, still I don’t cry, I can’t cry, and I’m not sure why.

That evening Michael is so tired he’s in bed by 7pm while I watch some mindless thing on TV, just trying to find a break from all the chaos. I go upstairs and look in on him to find that he is barely awake. He reaches for me and I go to him, hugging and kissing him, and for a moment I bury my face in his neck.

It’s Michael’s smell! It’s the smell that I’ve known for 34 years. And now 34 years of memories come tumbling through me, moment after moment of this smell, this smell that I’d almost forgotten, that I hadn’t smelled in these last 12 months, this deep animal comfort, this home.

I leave the room, leave him to sleep, and find that at last, this smell has brought me to my knees. At last I am crying. It’s all been too much, all of it, all of these last 12 months, all of this suffering, all of this fear and worry, all of the heartache. I cry and cry.

I go to the breast biopsy alone. Others have offered to be with me but I’ve decided to face it alone and I’m not sure why. My blood pressure turns out to be the highest it’s been in years which isn’t that surprising, though I am surprised. I’d been feeling calm, feeling I could face whatever might come. And now I see that my body is really nervous. I send it messages of love and understanding. I tell my breasts they are fine.

The procedure isn’t as bad as it could be. There’s a lot of numbing beforehand, and the doctor says that the “vacuum” biopsy will be over relatively quickly. It hurts deeply for a brief time and the nurse tells me I’m being “so strong.” I wonder if she says this to everyone, but it doesn’t matter. It makes me realize that in spite of the fact that I feel like I’m ready to fall apart, that just one more nudge would put me over the edge, I’m doing ok. I’m hanging on. I go into a meditative state, and the biopsy is over. Seven days of hell ends with this.

Today we hear that the biopsy is benign! We also hear that Michael’s mother won’t be able to visit this week because of the medical problems she is having. When I hear this news I realize that this is the Way of the World. Perhaps it’s been a condensed version of it in this week of hell, but this is how it works. There are ups and there are downs, there are gains and losses, and sometimes the ups last for days or weeks or even years, and sometimes the downs do too.

And no matter what, it’s all about learning to find that sacred space in-between. It is the space that recognizes it’s all grist for the mill, that every moment, every event, is here to teach us to grow our souls ever more consciously, ever more kindly, with ever more love. It’s all here to wake us up. Bless it all. It’s all a gift, a kismet, a mystery, all unfolding exactly as it’s supposed to.

The Labyrinth

6/29/17

I go to a retreat center for much needed relief. I’m in a hermitage, the small solar-powered straw bale houses set off on a quiet place on the property. I’m immediately struck by the fact that I have chosen to hermit myself away from the hermitage of illness that’s been created by Michael in our home. I am completely burned out.

After I unpack I go to the labyrinth which is close by and for the first time ever, I am blessedly, unrestrainedly, alone. What a gift! As soon as I enter, I begin to weep. Just soft tears, realizing how sad I truly am, as I walk so slowly through this journey of the soul. I ask over and over to know my spiritual path. “Show me my path, show me my path.”

As the twists and turns unfold I am taken into the Eastern quadrant and there I begin to sob, to cry my heart out, alone in these woods, alone on this path. I am desolate with sorrow and loneliness. There’s no other word for it. Desolate. I realize I’m not prepared for how lonely the caregiver in me has become. Once I move into the South I begin to calm and other thoughts enter my mind – thoughts of the mystery of Spirit, thoughts about being taught this deep hard-edged lesson, thoughts about my astrological north node which has always cautioned me that my learning must be about independence.

Then I am in the West. I notice the animal tracks that I’m sharing this path with – deer, rabbits, chipmunks, birds. I notice the small branches that cross the path and instead of removing them I recognize them for what they are – the things which cross the path, the things that mark a brief stop or a need to step over or go around. I move even more slowly now. As I enter the North it becomes a place of recovery, a place for rest in which I am more sure-footed. But as I enter the East again, I am besieged by grief – overwhelming, heart-stopping grief. And again, it begins to abate in the South. I am curious but still crying.

I honor all the sacred directions and the powers they represent. The East – the realm of Air and Thought. The South – the realm of Fire and Spirit. The West – the realm of Water and Emotion, and the North – the realm of Earth and Groundedness. But I am drawn to stop in the West.

In the West, the King of Cups comes to me. I had drawn his card as the outcome for my summer solstice tarot card reading and had been wondering what the lesson is. He is “the fire of water” and his picture is one of a King sitting on a throne that is riding on top of the water. He is not taken under the water, into his emotions, in any way. He recognizes them, feels them, but does not dwell on them. And he holds the paradox of fire and water – Spirit and Emotion – a paradox that is held in balance as he sits on top of his feelings rather than being overwhelmed by them.

By the time I finally reach the Center, it all comes tumbling in. All the disparate parts of the self, all clamoring for attention, for simple recognition. I cry more deeply and then finally, I am calm. I sit for some time and leave the labyrinth without retracing my steps, knowing this is not the holy way, and not caring at the moment, just needing to be moving on, just needing to understand the lessons of the labyrinth.

I realize I have been dwelling in my sad emotions of late. It’s hard not to. There are times when I look at Michael sitting on the couch and I can barely stop myself from crying. His life has become so much smaller – days of reading, writing, meditating, computer surfing, and various distractions of food and TV. He even looks smaller. He’s curved inwardly and his spine is rounded and knobby. His arms are thin and he’s losing strength and grace.

Somehow the lessons of Water and Fire come pouring through me now – “Feel it all,” they say, “feel everything, and then turn it over to Spirit! Let yourself burn in the purifying fire. Let yourself be taken up to heaven and released.”

Outside the labyrinth there is a path called the Cosmic Walk and I decide to take it. There are markers all along the way starting with the appearance of modern humans, then prehistoric peoples, then mammals, then lizards, then sea life, then plant life, then bacteria. All of this occurs within a relatively brief span of the walk and there’s a great walking distance between this and the creation of the earth and the solar system – billions of years. Finally, many billion years later, and many more steps along the path, is the creation of the Milky Way and then all the way out to the Big Bang, or as the walk says, “The Great Flaring Forth.” I love this – the Great Flaring Forth. It reminds me of the Dazzling Dark on the Tree of Life. We are so small in our little lives, our little deaths. I emerge from the walk feeling cleansed and renewed.

I go into the retreat center’s meditation room. Again I am blessed with solitude in this soft silent space. When I emerge I see a prayer book for those who come here, a book to petition God for intercession into our heartsick lives. As I look through it, page after page contains the words, “Prayers for my dear husband….” I catch my breath realizing that countless others have come to this exact place before me with these exact words: prayers for my dear husband. It breaks my heart wide open and I cannot write these words for Michael. Not yet.

I walk the labyrinth alone again the next morning. So slowly. I wonder if I will once again encounter the deep grief of my thoughts in the East. But, remarkably, I don’t. There is a sinking, a swamp to be avoided, but I can walk through it without tears today. Then, unexpectedly, I break down in the West, the place of emotion and realize that maybe this is exactly the right place to break down. Today when I reach the Center, it is very peaceful — steady and calm and full. I walk out in the sacred way this time, unwinding my path from the Center to the beginning, to the end, and feeling the wholeness of this journey.

I go back to the meditation room now, then back to the prayer book. I write: “Prayers for my dear husband, Michael.”