My creative meander in March that started with Receiving the Precious Gift of Time led me back to familiar ground in June. During the uncertainty and upheavals between March and June, I revisited chapters from “A Year to Live” by Stephen Levine. Noticing, Gratitude and A Commitment to Life helped me befriend the unknown. His book provided hope and structure during the months of change out of my control. Here’s the first paragraph from the Introduction:
This is a book of renewal. It is not simply about dying but about the restoration of the heart, which occurs when we confront our life and death with mercy and awareness. It is an opportunity to resolve our denial of death as well as our denial of life in a year-long experiment in healing, joy, and revitalization.
When my calendar was cleared in March, I felt the loss of routine and social interaction. I was naively hopeful, expecting that we would return to something new in April. There was no return in April but there was something new: Stay At Home orders.
With nowhere to go, few distractions, I kept writing about what I encountered during the global pandemic. Changes out of my control and transitions experienced during long-distance caregiving and end of life care (2010-2017) helped me in many ways during the Stay at Home months. I had experienced a micro of this unexpected macro that started in March.
Ten years ago, an orange leaf on the front cover of a book caught my attention while browsing in a bookstore. I saw the title “Parting” and then “A Handbook for Spiritual Care Near the End of Life.”
My initial thought, “It’s too late for that book.” My dad had passed away in April 2010 and my grief was raw in June 2010. I had believed he would live into his nineties due to his love of life and learning. Everyone was blindsided when he was diagnosed in March and offered a hopeful prognosis.
Instead of dismissing the book, I picked it up and read the Foreword, which included: …Spiritual care for the purpose of this handbook is soul care, helping the human spirit in its search for peace. It is the attempt to help those near the end of life feel whole, fulfilled, and in harmony with their world and higher power. Religious experience may or may not be spiritual, and spiritual experience may or may not be religious. Regardless of the dying person’s religion or persuasion or faith tradition, spiritual care near the end of life supplies a deep human need.
I bought the book that day in 2010 and read it during Father’s Day weekend. An odd thing to do—dive into the dying, but my motivation was to dissect the misery and what had transpired in forty days. I needed to understand and “helping the human spirit in its search for peace” offered a light of peace in the unfamiliar darkness that descends with death. I accepted the light. It was as gentle as a single candle flame.
Found of page 3 in Parting:
One physician says that the best way to improve spiritual care for the dying is to improve it for the living. All too often, the day-to-day business of life gets in the way of the inner life. Death clears the calendar; it uncrowds life so that spiritual needs come to the forefront.
I asked myself, “Why wait? Why wait until end of life to pay attention to our spiritual needs? Why not now?” These questions have stuck with me since 2010. Time and time again, I cycled through change and transition due to a loss or a death. I would find peace and then lose it. Some “thing,” or connection, seemed to be missing. The physician touched upon it in “Parting”, the day-to-day business of life gets in the way of the inner life. In March 2020 there was suddenly time to pay attention to the inner life. The two-week “hold” that transformed into a Stay at Home order was lifted on May 22. Plans for 2020 died. The death of the familiar day-to-day routines cleared the calendar. Ways of doing changed. Ordinary events were no longer ordinary (or no longer existed). There have been many endings and each ending carried varying degrees of loss and grief. There was familiarity but disconnection, and a lot of unknown. The outside world looked the same, but there was an unseen hill of loss.
I had been here before.
And so Levine’s words return, replacing book with journey, and dying with what has died:
This is a journey of renewal. It is not simply about (what has died) but about the restoration of the heart, which occurs when we confront our life and death with mercy and awareness. It is an opportunity to resolve our denial of death as well as our denial of life in a year-long experiment in healing, joy, and revitalization.
Next: The Intimate Familiarity of a Place Known is the Not Knowing Place
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