The feelings of those who are caregivers to the dying can be challenging.  It’s important to have ways of working with these feelings and moving beyond them, rather than ignoring them.  When the feelings are dealt with, it liberates energy for coping with the situation, and evens out the ups and downs of daily life.

Here is an example of how it can look when I’m working, myself, with the feelings brought up in caring for my mother:

The last few weeks, sometimes I’ve been waking up breathing oddly.

I had thought maybe it had to do with limits that have been strained.  I cut back some, and the last several days my breathing had been fine when I woke.

Then this morning, there it was again.  So, I lay quietly in bed and began to explore it, curious.

It began to feel like some kind of fear.  I stayed inside the precise outlines of this funny-breath fear  …not swallowed up by it, but instead, experiencing it while also knowing that I am more than this sensation and this emotion.

It was what was here right now.  I also noticed more:  a sunny day with bright light pouring through the window; the sounds of traffic and birds; the feeling of lying in bed.  All this (and more) was my experience at that moment.

I began to notice that the exact way my breath was not releasing was not only an afraidness but was also a holding back of tears… the tears I had held back each time I went to see my mother, so that I wouldn’t distress her.   My body was faithfully holding those tears for me.

I let them flow as they wanted to.  My caring began to wake up and circle itself instinctively around my own back, comforting the teary one.  And now the curiosity became a tender ‘what’s wrong?’

In the presence of that tender attention my tearful funny-breathing fearful one could begin to open up about the fear.

…Oh!  It’s about my mother’s breathing!  She is having a tiny bit more trouble with her breathing now, and when she coughs her face looks pained.  I hadn’t realized how horrified I’ve been, watching her slowly losing her lung capacity.

I notice how afraid I am of suffocation, drowning, strangulation.  This fear is something I’ve carried with me going all the way back to birth and a cord-wrapped neck.   I’ve been laying this old primal fear on top of what’s happening with her.

My tenderness for the one who’s been carrying this, grows.

And now I remember what I actually saw yesterday.   She was asleep almost the whole time I was with her.  Except for when she coughed, her face looked very much at ease.

She never looked distressed.  I was still carrying the distress of a few weeks ago, mixed with my own primal fear.  But she was peaceful.  This teary one who was afraid for her, who had been on watch through the night with her… this one could rest from that particular labor.

My lungs opened, and I took a deep breath.

Right now I am breathing, I can breathe… and so can she.  What a shame it would have been to miss experiencing these precious breaths.

some thoughts about chapter 1 of the Tao Te Ching

So what is tao anyway?

Well… we both can and can’t say what it is.  Because among other things, tao is where we are, who we are, and where we’re going.

It’s about our path. And at the same time as we know that path…
we also don’t know it.

As soon as we think we’ve got it down,
we haven’t.

When we think we’ve got it down, it’s a sign that it’s time to step away from that story about our lives which our desires have laid out 123, and feel the whole big unknowable unnamable vastness that refuses to be contained in any story.

Because if we get attached to ‘the’ story of our path, we’ll end up losing our way. That story isn’t the path, and life will show us that fact very soon.

But on the other hand, if all we do is just contemplate the vast wondrous unknowability of life, then we aren’t going anywhere.  And that doesn’t work so well, either.

But if the story doesn’t work, and not having a story doesn’t work either, how do we know where to go?

By paying attention to our desire before the story.
Not the ‘hooked’ kind of desire, not the ‘I want a piece of chocolate’ kind…
but the deep deep quiet yearning towards…

…something that is more than the words we can say about it.

…something that’s right here, if we make the turn towards it, slow down, listen… feel…

…and then move. –A little, questing, experimental-but-certain move that fits this moment, and this creature which we are…

…a creature that is just what it is, in a world that is also just what it is, at this and no other moment.

I’m a creature before any names for me, capable of experiencing the world before any names for it.  In that before-ness, I’m free.

But also, I’m: kye-who-lives-at-the-corner-of-broadway-and-edgewood.  Because without a name and address, how will I get my mail?

Charley Forness and I have decided to take a journey together along a very interesting path: the path of Tao.

Charley decided last Sunday to start reading the Tao Te Ching one chapter a week, and to post his reflections on his blog.  I read his first post and promptly said ‘can I come too?’  –Because I’d long thought that I’d write something about the Tao Te Ching ‘someday’, and suddenly it seemed like someday might be now.

In the next moment I thought to myself, ‘and maybe other people might like to come with us too!’ –and a plan hatched, about which I’ll say more later…

But for today, I’m just going to say something about chapter 1 before the week is up.   Which I’ll do in the very next post, right now.

Nearly six months ago I descended into one of life’s winter seasons.  My mother and sister had already been very fragile for several years.  Then last autumn, my sister’s husband had a heart attack and became mostly disabled too.

My mother lives in the same city I do, but my sister lives a thousand miles away.  Trying to support my loved ones in both places, I’ve felt extremely inadequate to the task.  Guilt has been my daily companion as I’ve tried my best to balance regular daily life, the extraordinary needs of my family which I couldn’t begin to meet, and also enough self-care to keep myself in decent running order.

My creative life dropped into the far background.  I’ve not been to my studio in months; and this blog has received little attention.  This seemed necessary for a while, but a point comes when the inner well needs a more profound kind of replenishment than that offered by time at the farmer’s market on Saturday, or reading a few pages at bedtime, or appreciating the small blessings of the present moment.

At the peak of this season of challenges, my hard drive crashed and had to be replaced, at the same time as all three of my ailing ones landed in the hospital.  I felt incredibly overstretched and responded by dropping an exciting new project that felt ‘optional’.  But after that I began to get sick–first the flu, then, a week and a half ago, scarlet fever.

That, finally, stopped me in my tracks.  I couldn’t do anything for anyone.  I ate takeout sushi instead of cooking.  The dishes piled up.  After the first couple of days in bed I began to pick up tiny tasks related to my dropped project. A missing energy began to glimmer.

Yesterday, I emerged into the springtime.  My son and I went on a ‘playing hooky’ kind of errand.  The redbud and mountain laurel were in full bloom and the new green everywhere was so beautiful that it still brings a mist to my eyes to think of it.  We stopped by my studio and I brought several panels back home to live with.  I became ravenous for vegetables and made a big pot of vegetarian chili for supper.  My vitality soared.

And today, I’m writing.  My heart is full.

What gives meaning is not optional.  It’s where we gain our strength.

On my walk just now, I was stopped in my tracks by a bush densely covered with creamy blossoms, barely tinted rosy-gold.  They were shaped something like trumpet flowers but more blunt.  The leaves were a very light sage green.

I wondered, ‘is this a member of the sage family?’  I rubbed a leaf, smelled my fingers: no smell at all.  And the leaves didn’t really seem very sage-like other than the color.

Where did I first learn to rub a leaf like that?  Maybe from my mother?  I don’t know; the beginnings are lost—but it’s an act I’ve repeated many many times.

Deeper, is this bent towards the names of things.  I remember how intense the drive towards naming was in my sons, just learning to talk: “Da?!!” they would demand, as they pointed to the unknown.

This need to know the names of things and all about them has echoes among the chimpanzees.  The older ones know which trees are fruiting when, and take the others straight there.  There must be a drive among the young ones to register the repeating patterns of things, because they will be back to these trees, down the generations.

And we will register that there is such a thing as ‘going back to those trees’ among chimpanzees; and we will watch them do it, gathering our own chimpanzee-knowing ‘fruit’ down our generations.

When the world is in upheaval, it’s not enough to ‘embrace change’.  We need patterns, continuity, fruit we can count on.  Then we are free to savor the uniqueness of this moment, without any falseness of attitude.  We need both change and also the regular beat, before life feels like music.

And the awareness of distinctions, ‘like trumpet flowers but more blunt’ makes it possible to see more: this moment becomes richer as an individual note within the beat.

I turned fifty a couple of months ago.

I feel younger than I have since I was a teenager, if by ‘feeling younger’ one means the feeling of one’s own vitality running high. But I don’t feel young. I’ve done too much; learned too much; lost too much. My father’s dead, my mother’s dying and her recognition of me unsure. There’s now a landfill next to the farm where I grew up. The water of the creek where I played is brackish and stinks of refuse. There’s no going back.

Maybe you know that famous story about a man who slips while walking along a cliff. Plunging towards his death he is able to grab a vine and starts to haul himself back up, when a tiger appears on the cliff above. Looking down, he sees another tiger below.

But the worst is yet to come: a rat begins to gnaw away at the vine. This rat has a nearly mythological interest in cutting through that vine. We might name him Mortality, and the tiger below, Death.

The tiger above? Perhaps it should have an angelic name, as it represents the force which prevents the man’s return to Eden.

If you put yourself in his position, you’ll find that it’s a tremendous moment–both terrible and marvellous in its enormity. Now, stay with the experience for a minute more as he spots a luscious strawberry growing right in front of him. He lets go of the vine with one hand… reaches out… plucks the strawberry… eats it…

What a strawberry!

That is vey nearly the experience of fifty. But not quite. Because in the story the man is alone, and there’s nothing to do but eat the strawberry by himself.

But we’re not alone. And it’s much much sweeter to pluck that strawberry and share it. So, I’ve started a blog.

And you’re reading it. I’m very grateful.