Thinking About AH in San Francisco
I've been.... Well, awfully busy for someone without a job. Let's see, I've been:
Taking Mom to see the naturopath/Chinese medicine doctor, plus errands, once a week for a few weeks. For those in the PDX Metro area that's from North Portland to Gresham to Lair Hill to Gresham to North Portland. For those for whom that makes no sense, just be assured that it is a lot of driving around. These days exhaust me physically and emotionally, often well into the following day.
I've been working with my Zen community to address the pain trying to practice with them as a vegan has been for CK and I. Trying to improve things for us all. This too is uncomfortable and painful. I feel singled out around being a vegan and experiencing this now reminds me that this sensation was one associated as dangerous as a child. It is very hard work to try and learn that being singled out can be an expression of loving-kindness.
I also have been making art and trying to work in the garden. These things have been really good.
CK and I also started making plans for our wedding ceremony. This is filled with all kinds of exciting emotions, mostly lovely.
Then CK got sick. Then I got it. Then we drove to L.A. to see Peter Gabriel perform, I was still quite sick. A day there and then driving up to San Francisco with a friend while CK took a flight back home to get to work. I was still sick and slept much of the drive up I5. The drive through the mountains, away from the Interstate was beautiful.
It was outside of Gilroy, CA, when I got the news that AH had died uxpectedly.
And it hit me in the chest, between the heart and the throat chakras. Hard, cold, dark, painful. Today's massage tried to work some of it loose.
Where I got the news the cellular signal wasn't great and CK was still in the air, flying home. Besides, I felt like I wanted to be stopped, not driving, somewhere safe to try and convey the news. I didn't phone her right away, waiting until I was parked outside my friends' house in San Francisco, alone to phone her. Ultimately she felt disappointed I hadn't left a message earlier. I just felt so stunned at the moment I got the news, I just froze.
I also started to think of my mother and all the challenges to her life I have witnessed, including those she dangers she chose. These memories found me as I drove alone out of Sunnyvale up I280 after dropping my friend off for a short visit there.
So there I was, in San Francisco, staying with one of my very closest friends, on vacation. There's really nothing could be solved by rushing home and KK, the friend I'm traveling has plans she is looking forward to as well. Heck, I have plans and many friends who enjoy my company who have made plans to spend time with me.
No amount of DO-ing will fix anything at all. There is this dichotomy of new pain, old pain, feelings of inadequacy, and a holiday in a city I really love to visit with people who love me. Just staying put, letting life tick on forward. Trying to let myself just enjoy the company in the present moment, the present place.
In the mornings there I woke to the constancy of traffic noise, the busyness of San Francisco. I'd lay in my friend's office with my mind thinking about AH, my Mother and CK. In and out, back and forth. Having been coughing hard for nearly a week I found it even harder to settle my mind by watching the breath because of the painful way my breath moved in my body.
It was a quieter visit than many. I was still coughing badly and conscious of the sorrow I felt. I didn't feel capable of rushing. I mostly rested and relaxed in the mornings. A bit later in the day my friend and I'd go out. One day to SFMOMA and the second afternoon he drove us across the bay to Berkeley. Each day was quieter and more reflective.
It was in the glorious, golden light of evening that streamed across Berkeley that I was just struck at how happy I am - how lucky, how fortunate.
Right there with that simple joy I felt welling up in me was this hard, sharp point of AH's death. My mind returning again and again to her smile, sometimes so sly, and so often gleaming in her eyes with mischievousness. Her hugs, the warmth I felt in each and every one of them. Her curiosity about life which makes her death so hard to process. I nearly felt silly, but I kept thinking how I'll miss her wonderful sweaters & scarves and how seeing her in them often brought a lightness to my heart when it felt heavy.
I commented to SJ as we walked that there is this strangeness in practice where we learn to accept that we feel all of these things at the same time. If we are present to everything there in front of us, it is all in there together. The awful and the glorious.
There is the unspeakable grief that sticks in the space between my heart and throat chakras, stealing my voice, incomprehensibly intertwined with a gratitude & happiness that is too precious for words. All there, all together. I noted that I could just sit down with a thump into that dark sorrow, or rush back pointlessly to Portland, but if I did so I'd be turning my back on the dear friend with me that moment and the incredible beauty surrounding us.
So I was simply happy strolling across Berkeley in the evening light. Choosing that brightness and wrapping it around the jagged edges. There's nothing that makes that sharpness go away, but there is some cushion between the points in allowing myself to be present to the joy that exists simultaneously alongside them. I'm grateful to have so many loving people in my life, so many safe havens where no one minds that I go from tears to laughter within moments.
Good-by, AH, I will miss you.
May we all be at ease.
The Opposite of My Mother
Mom was having a bad day yesterday. She tried phoning the house at 10:30 to say I shouldn't come out, but I'd been gone all morning and was already headed out the Gresham. She didn't answer the door right away and I could hear her dog whining a little at the door. When she finally did I could tell immediately she wasn't alright. Her blood sugar was a little low and she was very nauseated, immediately lying down on the sofa with the crackers she was trying to eat.
I'd picked up a gluten, soy & sugar free muffin from Sweetpea for her as part of my morning errands and put it on a plate for her. As she started to try and eat that I took out her trash and put her outgoing mail in the drop. I went up to the office for her apartment complex and had them make a key for me. I also had them put my contact information down for emergencies since Mom's husband is sometimes up on Larch Mountain and could miss a call quite easily.
When I got back to the apartment she'd managed to eat the whole muffin and felt a little better for it. Mom hasn't been very forthcoming with details, so I tried to get a few from her about her health. Aside from just wanting to have a more complete picture of what is going on with her health, CK and I are hoping that an early October date for our wedding will be soon enough for her to be there.
Mom ended up saying something about it not mattering. She is so happy for CK & I and she loves CK. She doesn't mind it if she has to miss our wedding. Mom ended this exchange with the comment that if she had to feel the way she was feeling at that moment for many months she'd rather just die now.
And it hurt. It really hurt. She totally missed the point that maybe we were trying to have a wedding when she was well enough to be there for my sake, for our sake. That we wanted her to be there. I left pretty soon after this exchange to let her get some rest.
Later in the day she phoned me and we talked for a while. I said I wanted her to make sure I could speak with her doctors. Ultimately what I found out was that after being informed about the cancer Mom has cut off most of her contact with the doctors. She was referred to an oncologist, but felt like she was being pressured to sign up for tests, chemotherapy and all the things she doesn't want to go through. She hasn't done much of anything since, falling back into a typical behavior for her - throwing up her hands and refusing to deal with the situation.
I ended up talking her through some things. EB had advised me that Mom is entitled to ask for a hospice team and CK noted that Mom should be referred to a palliative care specialist. She's been given a very serious diagnosis and she shouldn't feel that she has to choose "treatment". I told her on Thursday we could look at some things at Kaiser. She also agreed to try acupuncture if I would help her find someone.
Once again I found myself stepping into the role of the "grown up" in dealing with my Mother. I've been the adult in our relationship most of my life. Even now we are each falling into the roles we know best.
I feel pretty beat up today. It hurts seeing her suffer, the familiarity of it has never lessened the pain of it. The inevitability of eventual death for everyone doesn't in anyway soften the blow. Her behaving exactly as I expect her to, exactly as she's always done doesn't make it any less painful. There's a part of me that just wants to scream at her and ask why she cannot be the grown up at least once in my life.
But she can't be the adult. If she couldn't at the rare times she was healthy, to expect her to do it when she is dying isn't very reasonable. As painful as it is for me to have to once again take care of things, especially the arrangements for her approaching decline & death, it feels wrong to mimic her. I really would rather throw up my hands, claim despair and not deal with all of this, but I have always done best in life when I choose to behave the opposite of my Mother.
The Weight of Her Regret
It has really hit me the past couple of weeks just how ill my Mom is. It wasn't that I was truly in denial, but just a real depth of grief that I've been feeling. I think the bittersweet energy of getting ready for a trip to the Oregon coast this past weekend, the sense of urgency around taking trips with her while she can still enjoy them is part of it. Another was overhearing her say to someone at a gallery that she was dying.
What occurred to me is that I've never heard my Mom make that kind of admission. She's always met cancer, or her other ills, head on and ready for a fight. Her response has always been that she's going to beat this latest assault to her body. Now she doesn't say that, she says that she is dying. She's does offer that she believes in miracles, so who knows what could happen, but that is usually an aside to saying she's finally, right now, alright with dying.
The cancer, somewhat at the top of her stomach, is late into Stage 2. This usually means it has spread to multiple layers of the stomach and/or the lymph nodes. It is causing her discomfort, nausea, and vomiting, particularly if she eats things that are difficult for the stomach to process. Because of these problems she's fighting some malnourishment already.
Last week CK and I picked up Mom and took her to a small place south of Yachats. She had been a little worried at first about what she'd eat, but finally decided she was up for trying new things. I spent much of last week cooking several dishes that were vegan and all soy-free except for the chick pea salad, which had Vegenaise in it. Mom has at times been a little sensitive to soy, although it has been hard to pin down.
We noticed she did pretty well with small meals. I made her a fruit smoothie each morning and added some brown rice protein. She enjoyed our vegan, some raw, dishes very much and didn't seem to get sick from eating them. She did end up eating too much of the lentil/walnut loaf with mashed potatoes & gravy, this made her somewhat nauseated, but she was alright after laying down to rest for a while.
One afternoon we ate out and she ordered a hamburger with bacon and cheese. We didn't say anything, at this juncture it seems rather pointless to bug her. After, back at the inn, CK and I went out onto the rocky shore and Mom lay down. She told us later that this overly indulgent meal ended up making her really nauseated and she eventually vomited. I was relieved when later that day she was able to eat and enjoy a tostada with homemade, refried black beans on a baked corn tortilla.
There she was, very literally made ill by her bad choice and regretting it. I would later point out, after she was feeling better and able to hear it, that the animal proteins and fats are probably more difficult for her stomach to deal with, especially in such a large serving. I don't think a vegan diet will save my Mom's life at all, but I did see in the long weekend that the smaller, vegan meals we're easier on her body.
I later recalled listening to her order that hamburger, hearing the mix of defiance and guilt in her voice. She knew she was doing the wrong thing for her body, but she didn't want to feel like she was somehow denying herself. My Mom's choices so often seem like a child is making them, a child who wants to be indulged and doesn't give a damn about any potential consequences. I've watched this pattern with her again and again, in so many different variations.
Like so many things it seems pointless, cruel even, to shine a light too brightly on her continually making poor choices. Once or twice something she said triggered a painful memory and I felt angry at her for trying to rewrite events in my life, trying to cast herself in a more favorable light. It would strike me how childish the behavior was in many ways, like the bad choices about food, and how sad. The anger would die down pretty quickly I noticed, leaving behind layers and layers of sadness.
I'm sad my Mom is dying. I'll think about something, like what she's doing for Christmas, and it will occur to me that she could be gone before then. I'm sad for the anger I still feel over many of the selfish, mindless choices she's made, but it seems so trivial to bring them up when I watch her and see the layers of pain she's dealing with. I'm sad for all the poor choices she's made and the many ways those choices have left her regretful and unhappy; I can see the weight of the unhappiness and regret on her.
Mom News & Poetry
My Mom called today to tell me I was off the hook for taking her to a 5PM doctor's appointment. I was relieved, it would have me driving from Gresham to rather near my house and back to Gresham, during some of the worst traffic. I didn't begrudge taking her at all and was glad I could, but I certainly was relieved to hear her doctor was needed in surgery.
Then she told me that the doctor was an oncologist who has treated her in the past.
It would seem that the stomach cancer she bested oh so many years ago is back. Or just a new cancer in the stomach. Either way, it is Very Bad News.
She's known for a few weeks now, from back when she was in the hospital the last time. They told her there. It had show up in her T cell counts, they'd looked there with some of the blood work they were doing.
She said she couldn't face telling anyone. She's only told her husband last week. I felt some anger that her great idea for telling me in person, because she'd wanted to avoid telling me over the phone, was to do so while on the way to an appointment with the oncologist. I'm glad she told me over the phone. I'm just glad she finally told me.
I've lived well over half my life, perhaps closer to two-thirds of my life under the shadow of my Mother's possible death. As a child it felt like icy darkness, dread of being forced to live the rest of my childhood with my aunt or my grandmother. I spent long hours sitting in waiting rooms, reading while she would get chemotherapy.
Cervical. Skin. Stomach. Breast cancer, twice. Who knows, there may be another cancer in there I'm not recalling right now. Additional problems too, angina & other heart problems, gall bladder, infections, cellulitis, and the list could go on. In and out of doctor's offices, clinics, hospitals. Always accompanied with dread.
The news hurt. It always hurts to hear she is sick, possibly hospital bound again. She doesn't want to go through another major surgery. I don't blame her. She's had radiation so many times they cannot really fall back to that. I don't recall her mentioning chemo. She said they've prescribed a lot of pain medication.
I remembered the last time she was sick and I mentioned it to Hogen. He reminded me that I know how to face this. I've had an enormous amount of practice facing the grave health of my Mother. How to keep moving forward in the face of fear.
So I moved forward. Running a number of errands we normally would have to cram into a weekend. Tasks made easier since I wasn't at work any more. The fear subsided. In it's place remains an ache, anticipatory grief for the loss that may possibly come sooner than anyone would like. Grief for myself, for bearing the burden of her fear of death throughout so much of my life. Deep grief for all the loss she's experienced, a whole lifetime of loss and very little joy.
Unsurprisingly the news has deeply touched my offering in the Poetry Challenge.
The Loss That Comes
The fear of
My Mother’s Death
Has shadowed
Most of my life.
I’ve grown older
Immersed within it.I easily touch
My child-self’s
Icy, dark fear of
Being left alone.I feel the grasping after
What was lost.
What never was.
What will never be.I become aware of myself
Endlessly spinning around
The same mythology of
Fairness.
Justice.There is a certainty we
Wish to avoid.We are dying.
From moment to moment.
First breath to
Last breath.
Every last
One of us.The news comes
And the shock is
Still as startling and
Painful as it always is.
It subsides more
Quickly than when
I was a child.
Left behind is a
Dull, hollow ache of
Anticipatory grief
For the loss that comes.
Congested Engergy
And how am I...
In the past several days I've been diagnosed with a vitamin D deficiency, my levels are pretty low. This is actually pretty serious and can affect a person in several ways. It is the leading culprit for my fatigue, not the chronic pain that I've blamed (on the advice of my physician). The new acupuncturist, JS, is the one who guessed it on the basis of my saying how markedly better I felt in Hawaii.
Am taking a pretty enormous dose of D right now. In 12 weeks they'll test again and see if I'm any where near "normal" levels. Apparently it is fairly common in Portland to be low on it. I guess there's been a lot more attention on it recently and more doctors are testing for it now.
Still having a lot of acupuncture done. Another session focused on detoxing the body, again the heart-protector. Again I suddenly went from feeling absolutely fine, doing zazen with needles in my back, and then I'm suffused with grief and feel a headache & nausea. Not quite as intense as the first time, but pretty significant.
Was doing better and then Thursday the head pounding came back again during our Zen community cohort dinner/meeting. We went home, I went to bed early. Friday through Sunday was down and up, and down again and a shaky even into feeling rather tired today.
Saturday was the big "up" in the middle of the lows of the weekend. We made breakfast together and went for a walk in St. Johns. Coming home we had leftovers and took a nap (more acupuncture causes napping in my life). We watched the first Blue Planet DVD and went to bed early. It was all pretty marvelous until I tried to go to sleep.
Friday and particularly Saturday night into Sunday was a lot of stuff triggered, pretty early pain. Sunday morning it went straight into my left hip and leg, turning into spasm after spasm. The hip pain that for years has been associated with the herniated disc shows up, after being all but gone for two weeks, when I'm seriously emotionally triggered. Can it be any more obvious?
I'm trying to stay focused on how I was able to be present to the pain, the terrifying shame I felt. I retained the ability to talk, to fully, if haltingly, communicate what was going on. I was even able to visualize the way my body felt inside - seeing the pain like lava. This is progress. I didn't shut down completely.
In the middle of the big down, feeling enormously triggered by childhood trauma, I taught yoga. One of those times where I just get out of the way and allow that lineage to teach through me. The class ended up running long and I felt grounded, if unsteady. Coming into a shaky evenness after the storm of emotion and memory.
I worked on small art projects Sunday afternoon, in part alone with the cats. I did no chores. I didn't feel guilty about it.
A picture I took Saturday really resonated with me when I saw it had come out. It was a quick decision to take it, seeing the lines suddenly and clearly.
We were walking back out of the SuperFund site of Willamette Cove.
Cables cut, restoration begun, but toxic areas remain. Native trees reclaim the shoreline.
Just Practice
CK was coughing on and off much of the night, her second full day without antihistamines was really taking a toll. When my 6AM alarm went off I had a hard time turning it off and tried to sleep a little longer. My entire head, neck and hips hurt, I felt queasy and exhausted.
Worked on a field definition document for building new database tables and was able to focus on it fairly well. After lunch I was able to get more done but at around 2 I was just overcome with exhaustion and actually napped for little bit. I woke up feeling more focused, so I must have really needed that nap. Had some mango lemonade leftover from the party and worked hard until just past 5pm.
Went rushing over to Dishman only to have no students show up again. Curtis looked up and said two people have signed up. They're going to phone them and make sure they're still attending, so I'll come back next week. This class has been moved around so much and the August/September scheduling will be all over the place. The big breaks aren't good for consistent students, people quite often don't come back after a 4 week break! Sometimes this feels like another hint that I need to move my teaching practice on.
I've had a couple of inquiries now about private instruction. I'm honestly befuddled as to what to say I charge! I have one barter offer, which is pretty interesting. It is just this big step, change so it feels a little uncertain.
When I came home from Dishman I cleaned up the deck a bit more then kept myself focused on doing a short asana practice. I've felt this low-level mental fuzziness, resistance, depression that just has me wanting to stick close to home and avoid interacting with the world. I have an awareness of wanting to curl around it, sleep. It has been getting in the way of my practice, especially my yoga practice.
It was gorgeous on the deck and I tried to soak in the gratitude I felt for the summer evening, the clean deck, my effort to make it so. Even still my asana practice felt so boring and uninspired. I reminded myself as I exerted energy through three classical sun salutations that sometimes our practice is just Tapas and Virya Paramita. Just the burning effort that sustains the perfection of diligence.
CK reminded me last night that it has been a heck of a year so far. It isn't unreasonable that I'm still feeling some of the anger and grief around it. Yet here I am, frustrated that I am still feeling the ripples of these emotions. Why am I always so impatient with my grief?
Yep, there's my Inner Critic calling me a "Remedial Zen Student" again.
This Fleeting World
Today afforded me the opportunity to practice with impermanence again. In this fleeting world each day offers us this chance, some days are just more dramatic than others. Today was one of those dramatic days. This afternoon CK and I were with Atari as he passed away.
His health hasn't been good really much in his life, the past four and a half years particularly so. We were now looking at trying to treat diabetes in a cat who couldn't be handled enough for the vet to perform a full exam. He's been uncomfortable, unhappy, and nothing that has been done, or could be done, would give him consistent quality of life. He would have a few, fortunate days strung together between days of tremendous anxiety, pain, fear, and the resulting aggression.
Of equal importance in my mind today was a close college friend having surgery - a total hysterectomy and "debulking" of cancerous tumors. They found that she has ovarian cancer that has caused cervical cancer as well. Given my history of growing up with the fear around Mom's several bouts with cancer, including cervical cancer, and other major illnesses, hearing someone has cancer always brings some echo, no matter how small, of the deep fear I felt for her as a child.
Last night I felt my voice desert me for a moment when I came to her JAD's name on the merit list while I was chanting service after zazen. I felt my words halting and catching, revealing the Love that causes my voice to shake. For a moment after service, during tea & cookies, I felt as though I would start weeping for JAD and Atari, for CK and I, for all the names on the list in my hands and for all the people who have added those names. I was enormously relieved to find a short, but positive update from her husband had been posted when CK and I returned from the vet with our sadly empty pet carrier this afternoon.
Over the past several days I've been considering that although we can come to intimately know the truth of impermanence that knowing does nothing to alleviate the sadness impermanence visits upon us. Regardless of this knowing, this certainty of sorrow, we go into life with an open, loving heart. This is the essence of Love. This is the rich ground where we are able to cultivate the fearless compassion necessary to offer one another as we face changes, illness, and losses together.
We sink down into the inescapable truths of the Five Remembrances and embrace the certainty of our own suffering. This is what it is to be fully engaged and present in our life. In On Love from The Prophet it is written that some choose not to fully live, preferring to avoid how Love is a thorough shaking of our deepest roots. This may feel safe, however, in choosing to avoid the vulnerability of loving fully we are doomed to never laugh all of our laughter nor weep all of our tears.
It is the hard, messy facts of Love that crowd in around us and require us to become fully present to life. CK commented to me tonight that it is easy to be present for the good stuff, but how important it was to her that I am willing to be present for the really awful stuff. All I know is that I feel grateful to be present for the hard stuff, together.
It is only in being open to Love, the the desperate, beautiful impermanence of it that we can really say we are truly present with our own life. When we become fully present we are able, finally, to weep all of our tears and laugh all of our laughter.
The Five Remembrances
I am of the nature to grow old.
There is no way to escape growing old.
I am of the nature to have ill health.
There is no way to escape having ill health.
I am of the nature to die.
There is no way to escape death.
All that is dear to me and everyone
I love are of the nature to change.
There is no way to escape being
Separated from them.
I inherit the results of my actions of body, speech and mind.
My actions are my continuation.
Taken from The World We Have: A Buddhist Approach to Peace and Ecology
Gratitude
Tonight I was in a rush to leave the office, to walk to the flat, to feed Atari, and rush over to SE to meet CK and DTH for dinner. I had planned to not rush, but got caught up in finishing setting up some things at work for one of my projects, ran late and then was rushing.
I was walking very quickly and felt tense with trying to remember what I needed to do. By the time I got to the flat from MAX my right knee ached. I changed into "zendo clothes" and rushed off to Belmont to have dinner. As I parked it hit me that I'd forgotten my zafu, wagessa (a small cloth "scarf" I wear to signify that I've taken the first five of the 16 Precepts), and a little flax seed pillow I use to support my hands. These are not minor things to forget.
During dinner, which was a lot of fun, I felt myself stiffening up. My knee and my hips ached. I took some ibuprofen when we got to the Dharma Center, hoping it would help. I tried to walk evenly, but felt myself favoring my right leg a lot.
At the Dharma Center there's extra zafus around, even of the inflatable type I have that was made at Great Vow. I popped up to the zendo when we got there and set up my spot with a zafu I adjusted until it was the same amount of air as mine and a bench, so I can switch if my hip gets too sore. I set my wrap down on CK's zafu and went back downstairs.
HB caught me before I was going up with one directive for the chanting I'd do later, "Sweetly." he said smiling.
I laughed and said I was trying. He noted the progress I've made from rushing anxiously through the chanting service, now he wanted me to work on bringing sweetness to it, treating the sutras with affection and care in addition to precision and projection.
Then I headed up to sit. Only the zafu I'd set up for myself was gone. I quickly looked at the shelf at the back and didn't see another inflatable one. This set off some worry in my heart. The last time I'd tried to sit without an inflatable zafu my legs fell asleep and I had hip cramps from the pressure on my sciatic nerve. I dashed downstairs quick and HB spotted me. I noted quickly that someone had grabbed my zafu.
HB and I have discussed how to manage my chronic leg, hip and back pain during zazen and part of that management is an inflatable zafu. He and I both looked around the downstairs and didn't spot one!! He ducked into the teacher's room, came out with some of the zafus he & CB use, we sorted out the right one for me to take, I quickly went back upstairs and settled myself down.
After the bells finished I took some deep breaths to settle myself after the rushing around, so much rushing tonight! As I started to settled down my mind finally hit upon my teacher giving me one of their cushions to use. I suddenly found myself in tears.
I think it is more of that perspective shift. I was suddenly struck with profound gratitude and love for the community I have around me now, I see how it continues to include me and provide support. I have never felt the support of an organized group like this. I've always felt a bit on the outside. To feel this way provides as disorientating shift in view where I can suddenly grasp the profound lack of this kind of community I've felt. Hence the tears.
Normal
On Sunday during Sanzen I told HB about my Mom, about the two possible cancers. As we talked about it he reminded me that this is "normal", it is normal for me to be coping with my Mother's ill-health. It was something I really had to sit with for several days, this shifting in the concept of normal.
I talked with GM today during our session. She found it very interesting, HB pointing me to the normal-ness of the situation and yet I feel sorrow overwhelming me at times. I feel just pummeled by what feels like an unending litany of pain both present and past. CK commented to me this evening how deeply someone can be affected when they grow up with their primary caregiver gravely ill. When she wasn't ill I was unsupported in other ways. None of it good.
GM surprised me today by commenting that each time she sees me I look younger, lighter in energy. She liked the sweater I was wearing and noted the energy in the colors and pattern of it, how it suited who I am now. Finally she that I looked happy.
I pointed to the grief.
And she agreed there is a lot of it and probably more to come. She noted that in my practice I have cultivated far better tools for working through it. What we eventually came around to what that the support and love I feel now, regardless off it being in the middle of chaos going on around me, has given me a huge perspective shift. I suddenly can gauge the enormity of the grief and fear I felt, particularly as a child when I was expressly forbid from expressing it or punished when I did show it.
My childhood was a near-constant state of extreme tension, fear, uncertainty, and anxiety. Broken up with long periods of being grounded, which was peaceful since I generally passed the time reading. The adults around me weren't supportive in the ways they really needed to be and seethed with anger at most times, always kept just below the surface and let out in vicious, small sentences. And Mom was ill, so often. So many doctor's visits, hospital rooms, and the raw fear of losing my only parent.
That was "normal".
Not that it was good or that I should rejoice over any of the awfulness, it was just my version of normal. I didn't really come to figure out until my 20s just how different my concept of normal was. As I mentioned to CK tonight, I thought it was perfectly normal not have the ability to recall most of my childhood.
To have a relationship that is truly nurturing and mutually supportive feels so unusual from what I'm used to that I feel somewhat destabilized by it. It creates this enormous perspective shift and I suddenly can gauge what merely felt bad was actually horrible. With this shift it seems like I'm being closed in on by all the grief I lacked the clarity to see before.
More Metta
I feel like I'm slowly pulling myself back towards practice -- sitting, writing. Last night during sanzen Hogen reminded me of doing Metta practice for myself when I was talking to him about my Mom. He said to avoid the spiraling grief, as a way anchor myself to positive practice, I needed to focus on doing Metta for myself, most importantly myself.
I had done Metta in desperation the last time my mind stumbled across horrible realization during zazen. I'd been amazed at how well I could stay with myself that time. It had been the first time I was able to do Metta for myself and it made me feel like I could stay on my cushion, not break down crying, screaming or running.
Hogen talked about there being the well of universal grief, all of us share parts in it. Whenever we experience the many sorrows of our human lives we are part of that grief. I can very easily turn towards all of that grief, focus my energy on generating compassion to all the people suffering. Turning away from my own suffering, refusing to face it. In doing so I do not offer the same love and compassion to myself that I easily can offer to others.
He brought me back to the instruction of loving-kindness for myself. That I must learn how to do this practice, whatever it takes. Start by focusing my energy on someone I genuinely love, really touch that love and then switch that energy to my face. Laughing he said even if I had to imagine the most adorable puppy ever, then put a photograph of my face on the puppy's head. Or the sweetest kitten, "With Sherri's nose ring!" he said.
Even I had to laugh at Hogen coming up with the image of a fuzzy kitten with my nose ring. He urged me to think of this, to find some way to make myself recipient of the love and compassion I so easy turn outwards. That he said is how I need to practice with the grief, to keep working with the awful intensity of it that just seems to keep building up.