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.

As most of you know, my mother is somewhere in the process of dying.   When I first accepted medical power of attorney for her, we talked about how she would want me to make decisions for her. She wanted me to first consider her comfort and quality of life.  For her, quality of life was mostly about getting to spend time with her loved ones.  Also, she didn’t want her life artificially prolonged.  As her caregiver, I’ve tried to think as she would have, if she could think for herself.

A few weeks ago she stopped talking.  She also began to look miserable, but without words she couldn’t tell me what was wrong.

Bit by bit I’ve been teasing out what the miserableness is, and what might help her to be more comfortable.  In this teasing out, I’ve been paying attention to what my body knows in this situation.  I hope that if I write a bit about how I’ve been doing that, it may help someone else in a similar situation.

First there was just the agonized feeling of helplessness, not knowing what was wrong and not knowing what to do.  After some basic self-care, I had to find a good relationship to that agonized helplessness.  It was important to neither shut it out, nor be swallowed up by it.

I didn’t want to shut it out because it’s the activity of my heart.  What is real in my heart right now, is the core of heartfelt action.  But if I’m swallowed up by what’s happening in my heart there’s no room for freedom of movement.  So it’s important to be in a good relationship to the activity of my heart.

To form this good relationship in the intensities of this particular time, I drew on a skill I’ve developed over time in other painful situations: the skill of being with myself as if the hurting place were a little child who had fallen down.  I keep the hurting one reassuring company while I go about my day.  (There’s more I could say about how I do this–but I’ll have to save that for another day so I don’t run out of room for the point of this post.

Next came a willingness not to assume anything.  She had stopped eating and had been prescribed an appetite stimulant: was this the right way?  Was eating now traumatic for her?  Was it time to stop eating, or was it just that her mind didn’t quite know how, anymore?  I kept thinking about how she didn’t want her life to be artificially prolonged… were we now doing that?

The next morning I woke with the feeling, ‘just go and observe.’ Usually when I visit I talk to her about what is happening with her loved ones, and tell her things that might help her orient a bit.  I was always so engaged in trying to communicate and offer her comfort, that there had been no room just to sit and watch and take in what I saw.

But now, I could see that I needed to discover things I didn’t know. For instance, I wanted to know how she looked at mealtimes.  Did she look like she was being forced to do something that was no longer right for her?  Should she maybe be allowed to just stop eating and drinking, and go through the next steps of dying?

Getting beyond these questions, though, I realized that I just wanted to watch with as few preconceptions as possible, and see what happened.

So I went, and sat quietly, nearly as though I were meditating and the happenings in the room were each just the next thing arising. When the nurse came in, I told her I was ‘just observing’.  I named the problem: “she’s not communicating, and she looks miserable.”  Then I moved to a chair across the room to be out of the way while the nurse did whatever she’d come to do.

She asked my mother a question: “are you feeling okay?”  She asked it routinely, almost rhetorically, as she kept on with what she was doing.  My mother didn’t respond.

The nurse looked over at me, stopped what she was doing and tried asking again.  Then I saw it start to register that my mother wasn’t able to talk.  At that point the nurse started to ask other questions,to investigate that dawning awareness.   (I’d mentioned my concern to her before, but not while she was in the room with my mother.  So before, she’d responded to me from her idea of how my mother was, instead of her own direct observation in the moment.)

Now the nurse began to be present in the room.  She told me that she’d been meaning to tell me that my mother hadn’t been able to swallow her supplements since she got back from the hospital six weeks ago.  She wondered whether the doctor might just stop prescribing them since she couldn’t take them.  Here was another bit of information.

(All this may sound like the nurse didn’t really care–but this isn’t true.  I know her to care about my mother; I’ve heard it in her voice in the past.  It’s just that she’s really really busy and some kinds of knowing need time to slow down before they become available: time she doesn’t have.)

When the nurse left, I moved back to my close position and just sat and watched.  I told my mother that I knew she couldn’t tell me what was wrong, and I was trying to figure it out by observing.

(In theory this is too difficult a thought for someone with advanced Alzheimer’s to follow. But I’ve found that some complex ideas do get through, and if she was able to take in that message maybe she would feel some comfort from it.  This is one place where keeping an open place for my heart’s activity encouraged me do something that I might not have thought to do, had I pushed the feelings away.)

It started to dawn on me that her skin looked kind of crepey.  She had just been given a liter of fluid by IV a day before, so that dry crepey-ness seemed out of place.  Her skin has always looked beautiful, and I realized that the way her skin looks is one way she can still communicate.  Her skin looked dry. Even after that liter of fluid, it still looked dry.

At lunch, I paid attention to how she was drinking.  She drank readily when offered something. (She also looked peaceful as they fed her–which answered my first question.)

Later, thinking back on everything I’d seen, I realized the cup in her room was sitting upside down next to the water pitcher.  And that the nurse hadn’t offered her water when she was in.  Nor had the aides.

Now it was the weekend–different nurse.  I talked to her about dehydration.  She said, “the staff is supposed to be offering her water whenever they change her.”  Light dawned: if you tell the aides to offer fluid when they’ve just had the job of changing the patient, and they’re already overworked, how easy it is to quite genuinely forget to offer the patient fluids which will just add to the workload!

So the weekend nurse and I talked about what to do.  She said she could focus on it on the weekend when she was there in charge, but not during the week.  But she was wise to the ways of the institution, and she had a brainstorm: if my mother were on a catheter, they would be monitoring fluid intake and output.  Even without a catheter, the doctor could still order them to track it.  That record keeping would remind them to give her fluid.

So I called her doctor and arranged it, and after several days her skin began to look more plump again.

There were other strands of my observations which I’ve not mentioned here, and which I worked with similarly–but this post is getting long so I won’t go into more detail.  I hope that the way the process unfolded is now clear enough to maybe be helpful to someone else.

If you’re in a similar situation and this post has given rise to questions I might be able to answer, please feel free to ask them in the comments below.  I’ll do my best!

This morning it’s raining.  It’s a gentle day: the rain is gentle, as is the slight cool of the air.

A walk in the rain might have been nice, but I was drawn towards sitting meditation instead.  I’ve been moving at a steady clip all week. My body in its wisdom knew that a deliberate pause for a few minutes now, would give my movement a more generous space.

So I sit.

And I notice.

First I notice that I am nearly in here with my experience, but not quite.  I just notice it, I don’t force anything… I let it be just as it was before, except noticed.

Then I notice that my shoulders are pulled forward a bit.  As soon as I notice, they want to move up, and back, and drop.  The space in my chest becomes more generous.

And I sit.  And notice.

Ah, what’s this going on on my left side?  It’s pulled down more on that side. What would it like there?  …to relax up, rib by rib. and then open below the ribs.  I feel like an accordian pulling open on the left.  Now things feel more even and upright.

But not quite!  I’m slanted back just a tiny bit from straight-up-and-down.  It’s my chest that’s back behind my waist.  As I watch, it comes forward just a tiiiiiny bit.  Mmmm, that feels solid and good.  My breathing slows now that there’s more room for it.  I slow, as my breathing slows.

I sit a few minutes more, savoring my alignment, and my breath, and my pace.

And at last I rise, bringing this new pace into the movement of the day.

“We do not meditate to create altered states of consciousness.  In fact, most of modern life is spent in altered states of consciousness and meditation is the practice of returning to an unaltered state.”

–William Martin, from A Path and a Practice

This past week, I was dealing with a difficult, time-consuming situation.  By the time I could step back a little I was drained of energy.  My body was tense and tight.  I needed a restorative walk.

I just got back from that walk feeling balanced, relaxed, and at peace.  I’d like to share with you part of what I did that made it so effective.

First, I took my walk in the morning.

A tough week takes its toll on body rhythms.  Fortunately, these rhythms are easy to re-set if you know how.  Our bodies are programmed to respond to morning light to keep our rhythms in sync with the natural world.  This re-rhythming is augmented by the rhythmic movement of walking.

I began my walk this morning by paying attention to my breathing and posture.  For the first five or ten minutes I breathed in for four steps, then out for eight steps.  I loosened my shoulders, and let them circle back and drop into their natural, relaxed back-and-down position.

These breathing and posture changes ‘re-set’ my autonomic nervous system, helping the sympathetic system let down and supporting the calm quiet of the parasympathetic system.  I felt myself settling back into the feeling of being in ordinary time with a regular routine.

Next I began to rest in sensory experience.  I focused first on just that most basic of senses, the sense of touch.  I gave all my attention to the sensation of each foot connecting with the earth just-so.  Then I noticed other physical sensations of walking, like the feeling of my hips in motion.  I felt the breeze, and the temperature of the air.

Once I was grounded in my own movement, I added other senses. I started with smell, which is nearly as primal as touch.  This led naturally to the sense of sight, as the scent of late-season flowers invited me to find where they were blooming.

When I turned for home, I deepened my relaxation a little further.  I softened the muscles around my eyes, especially at my temples.  And I let my shoulders and arms go very loose and light, playing ‘empty coat sleeves’.  I let them swing freely, however they were moved by the movement of walking.

As I reached home, I noticed how easy it was to climb the stairs.  Time it took? —about 20 minutes.

My simple recipe, summarized:

• walk in the morning light
• use breathing and posture to ‘talk’ to the autonomic nervous system
• move deep into sensory exploration
• soften the eyes
• empty the shoulders

If you try my recipe, don’t feel like you need to add all the ingredients at first.  Just pick two or three that sound especially good to start with.  Over time you can add the others.

It would be a pleasure to read about your experiences with this way of walking, if you’d like to share them below:

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.