We are all born. We all die. And almost all of us have elders to consider as we ourselves age. Without exception, that complex relationship, has its ups and downs (as well as karmic complications) through the relationship's continuum, and inevitably impacts our intentions to our aging loved ones.
At a certain point in a person's life, decision-making is necessarily abdicated due to advanced age or infirmity. The decisions regarding the circumstances as to how their life will run its course is left to others: adult children/family or institutions. As adult children of aging parents, how do we consider what our relationship will be to our loved one's last laps?
For some, its a "no-brainer"; their parents have put into motion through long care term insurance purchase, or moving into an elder community that sees to the layered needs of the aging, or specifically voiced to their family how they would like to live the last years or decades of their life. For these adult children, it's about follow through, respectfully adhering to their parent's wishes. Even this ideal scenario is complex. Possibly the adult children are not in a position physically, geographically or financially to honor these wishes. Perhaps the aging community chosen is not so ideal, needs to be monitored on a regular basis. Whatever the arrangement planned, the adult child's committed engagement is required, therefore, altering many aspects of their own independence. Becoming clear to one's boundaries, capacity and level of commitment is essential. Setting an intention that corresponds to the relationship you seek to create or maintain with the elder in your life is also required.
Making an intention opens the field. The field being one's perception, one's sixth sense. It's possibly a growing up of the soul, an internal awareness of oneself and other. It's a path of deepening oneself and one's possibility. All the facts of the circumstance take a minor role and the relationship rises to the surface of prominent importance. This is healing. A possible healing of karma for those engaged and definitely a healing of what has been hard in the relationship.
With an intention, this is practically guaranteed. How can I say this? Because with an intention and a commitment to this journey comes a letting go of all that ultimately does not matter. Whereas the details and circumstances are important, they are very secondary to what is shared. The cream rises to the top, a softening of oneself allows for perception to descend into parts of our self we didn't know we had. This changes everything. It also allows there to be this type of change in another. If we only hold on to the details, the specifics, schedules and external needs-- and only allow that to run this lap, we miss the opportunity the initial vow or intention created for us.
An intention might start with questions: What percentage of my time do I want (not necessarily can) to spend with my parent? With my parent's life affairs? What are aspects of our relationship that are asking to be healed, would I like transformed? What are the grudges, resentments and hard parts we share? How can I forgive? How can I ask for forgiveness? How much hands-on caretaking do I want to do (again, not necessarily can do)? What is the necessary sacrifice on my part to do what I think I want to do? Can I do this? Can I get help with it? All these questions are treated as an open inquiry. Nothing is answered in a hard/fast, black/white way (at this point). It's a beginning in fleshing out the feeling aspect of the proposed journey. The decision-problem solving aspect of myself shouldn't jump in at this point, there will be plenty of time for that part to act. In intention setting, its about allowing breath to enter the feeling center to create some room.
In this place of relationship a trust in something else besides the external occurs. An adult child's anxiety and worry over the external details, the finances, the medical complications is background material. It is almost always there, but for the most part doesn't take over our lives because the relationship's intention has helped us make it primary. The connection, the vibration shared, the meeting and the healing is at the center.
Making the last laps rich, even under challenging and difficult circumstances is possible when this intention is in place. Intention runs my actions. I lose it, I return to it, I lose it again, but it is at the heart of what I want for my loved one and myself and steers me in the critical moments. Our time, our financial resources, our individual direction; taking this on complicates our lives a little (or a lot) more. Much like people making the lifelong decision to raise children.
In this journey we make, while there are hurdles, there is also a satisfying ride, a relaxing into the sublime elements of being connected to oneself and another more fully, an allowance of a natural unfolding. Witnessing the external decline of another, whether mental or physical, isn't what you were afraid it would be. The other's hallucinations, disorientation, good/bad pain days are experienced in a different way as this more subtle relationship is taken on. The distinct impression of seeing our loved one with one foot in one world and the other foot in another more opaque world is touching and awe-inspiring. We see more of each other, a broader spectrum beyond personality and that is gratitude personified. It is in this healing relationship one feels one's fortune; and it is reflected back from our loved one, having been shared.
I bring up intention in this first part, because it must precede the nuts/bolts and problem solving of the circumstantial details. Otherwise, the external drives our actions, not the intention.
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ReplyDeleteGreetings. For the sake of privacy, I deleted your comment and repost it here with edits of named persons.
DeleterlnycApril 23, 2014 at 12:44 PM
Hi Germaine, this is a wonderful post, and has so much rich material for pondering. As we live in the "outer world", it is a complete youth culture where the old thrown away. The young are not mature enough to understand that the human being, whoever he or she may be, is a repository of experience which like the contents of a safe deposit box are hidden beneath the surface of wrinkles and infirmity. In fact, the respect given to the older people in the work made an enormous impact on me.
Many decades ago I bought a very slim book by W H Vanstone entitled "The Stature of Waiting". It focused on the period of Christ Lord Jesus life, from the moment of his arrest through his crucifixion and spoke of this time which comes upon everyone where their own lives are no longer under their own control, but delivered into the care of doctors or nurses or hospice where eventually nothing can be left except the patience of waiting. At that time the personality may have been stripped away and as if through a miracle properties of the real person through their essence begin to be palpably visible. This can be an extraordinary moment of real human contact.
I had a meeting with X, and I arrived and was let in by one of her children told me that she was upstairs with her parents, and that she would be down shortly and that I could wait in the living room. So I did, and after about 15 minutes perhaps 20, she came inside and apologized for her lateness and explained that she was taking care of both of her parents, changing their positions to prevent bedsores, replacing her father's catheter and emptying the various waste products of human combustion, and she explained that in her family she was the only one capable of this.
Germaine, I know the odor of sanctity and the radiance of Being, which I have seen very rarely but that day I saw it in her and so I told her that the confluence of pressures she was under (a day job, four nights a week as well teaching movements etc., attending to her own personal needs after attending to the needs of her parents) and I said to her:
"X, I want to tell you something. When you came into the room I saw you as I have never seen you before, emanating and radiating true Being. Bless you for taking care of your parents; in doing so you have become more authentic and I can see this." She thanked me for saying that and I could only reply that I meant it, which I did. We shortened our meeting as it was clear now that the purpose of my coming had been accomplished, and any other concerns fell aside as irrelevant.
Finally, even words have no value, and all that is left is the quiet presence and soft breathing which must constrain the visitor by the sanctity of this event bearing its own laws. There is an exercise that I practice from time to time and I would like to share it with you, if you don't mind.
I imagine I am sitting next to a very good friend who is tottering between life and death at that moment when words have lost any purpose, so that all that one can do is to sit in complete silence both inside and out, simply being with that friend. The breath may soften until it seems to cease entirely, and the only connection one can make with one's friend is through one's own presence alongside theirs in a holy silence. Then, slowly one realizes that it is one's very self that one is visiting, and that you are visiting your own passing, quietly present and accepting. Only awareness remains, untethered to any person or thing. Everything else is evaporated except for the abiding awareness, eternal and immortal.
With brevity, all that can be said is, Exactly. In this miraculous endeavor, the universe and great nature pack cosmic truths we could not otherwise come to. Thank you for taking the time to comment. Warm wishes.
DeleteGermaine, thank you for providing the social etiquette that my lengthy comment failed to contain. Much love, Richard
DeleteHi Germaine
ReplyDeleteI don't know of anyone who appreciated the essence of this question as did Simone Weil. She approached her intention. I see how far I am from it. Yet I believe that if the majority ever experienced the value of her need and her intentions that flowed from it, everything would be different. She learned how to "see" and through conscious attention, came to realize the reality of the human condition. As one man wrote who was moved by Simone: "This is an example of the power Simone Weil has over me. How does she know all this? It has taken me years to figure half of it out and yet she speaks with a wisdom I haven’t attained at twice her age when she died. And all of this is derived from a simple power of observation."
She wrote:
"Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. It is given to very few minds to notice that things and beings exist. Since my childhood I have not wanted anything else but to receive the complete revelation of this before dying." ~ Simone Weil
I notice that the chair and the table exist. But is this what she means? "simple power of observation"? As we are, is it really so simple? Perhaps if we were capable of consciously noticing that things and beings exist, the connection between generations and its significance would become obvious.
Thank you Nick for your thoughtful comment. Indeed, the simplest things are the most difficult, are they not? Paying attention.... listening.... observing (without agenda). When these 'simple' acts are done, they are everything, as you point out. One of the wonderful things the challenges like considering our aging elders brings to us, is the opportunity to more finely tune these simple arts. Paying Attention... Listening...Observing... We start to get a whole new perspective on receiving impressions instead of the unconscious way I usually fend them off.
DeleteThank you again for taking the time to comment and the thought you obviously brought to it. Warm wishes, Germaine
Hello Germaine
DeleteYou seem like a very genuine person without the need for artificiality. I'd like to get your impressions of Simone's remark. When my mother was near death I was acting the part. I was trying to be present, to listen, and to offer understanding. I didn't know I was offering a mask. Something in me hated this effort and the mask made it tolerable. Simone has now made me at least admit to my mask. I wasn't really learning anything. If the best one can have is a mask is it better than nothing at all? My experience has made me sensitive to artificial compassion so much so that the last thing I would want to visit me in a hospital would be these masks of compassion playing their parts. Anyhow Simone wrote:
"There is something in our soul that loathes true attention much more violently than flesh loathes fatigue. That something is much closer to evil than flesh is. That is why, every time we truly give our attention, we destroy some evil in ourselves. If one pays attention with this intention, fifteen minutes of attention is worth a lot of good works." Simone Weil
It never dawned on me that my intentions were completely empty of the awareness that I could be destroying something evil in myself. I underestimated the power of this something within me that hates real attention. it means its death and it doesn't want to die.
Have you felt this struggle in you as a healing nurse?
Hi Nick, This struggle you speak of is universal. We struggle with it as humans, nurses, sons and neighbors. In these incredibly poignant moments like you shared with your mother, we do the best we can. And we suffer our lack when we awaken to the truth that we are not enough in the moment. This is our opportunity to forgive ourselves. Fortunately, the dying can see and sense beyond the masks, as children also can. Your mother, I am sure, felt your strong intention and love and got past the mask.
DeleteWeil speaks of our human duality, the play of essence, ego and possible consciousness. She uses strong words like "evil", "loathe" and "destroy". It's my sense that first seeing, understanding (and accepting) this condition makes us finally able to work with these sometimes not useful aspects of my humanity; a more realistic and constructive approach. These ego-based parts aren't going anywhere; there is no obliterating them. Of course they are threatened by any other parts that step up. Control is their job. But in seeing, understanding and accepting them, room is created to be more fully present. In surrendering to my lack, what is more essential is allowed, our higher parts breathe and I have the experience of Being in the moment.
This acceptance and forgiveness (especially of self) is a good practice to have. It impacts by softening the hatred and violence we feel toward ourselves and others and allows the sadness and grief that is being masked by the hatred, shame and reaction-- to flow. And that's a healing.
Wishing you well on your way. Thank you for your contribution.
Hi Germaine. In all fairness I don't think you are appreciating Simone rightly. She uses words like "evil" and destruction in the esoteric sense as something we create which becomes a part of us.. Her philosophy of decreation is based upon consciously distinguishing between the uncreated and nothingness as vertical paths of being. She wrote:
ReplyDelete"decreation is making pass from the created to the uncreated,
but that destruction is making pass from the created to nothingness."
Can a person pass from acceptance of the human condition into elimination of the unreal? If it can, wouldn't that be the highest form of healing? Is the following account possible or is it just some French BS? Who knows, but it does raise the question of how to respect those rare ones capable as they are moving from one reality to the next?
"I had the impression of being in the presence of an absolutely transparent soul which was ready to be reabsorbed into original light. I can still hear Simone Weil’s voice in the deserted streets of Marseilles as she took me back to my hotel in the early hours of the morning; she was speaking of the Gospel; her mouth uttered thoughts as a tree gives its fruit, her words did not express reality, they poured it into me in its naked totality; I felt myself to be transported beyond space and time and literally fed with light."
Gustav Thibon