In Loving and Grateful Remembrance

Today is my Mother's Birthday. She departed this earth twenty six years ago. My epitaph for her is from the great poet, Pablo Neruda: "It was beautiful to live when you lived." This morning I came across this quotation from Ralph Waldo Emerson: "When it is dark enough, you can see the stars." What a deceptively simple phrase, so pregnant with meaning.   And, what a superb metaphor for why we suffer.  The answer is not to "rage, rage against the dying of the light," although I love Dylan Thomas' poem. One's dark night of the soul is like a refining fire if we can find the faith and fortitude to come through it.  We find ourselves "enlarged by love."   I found this to be so when I came through the other end of mine.   On this, the anniversary of my Mother's birth, beside her quiet joy I remember her pain and many sorrows.  I remember how she bore them with grace and unshakeable faith.   She is one now with those incandescent stars. Namaste.

My Three Lanterns (in loving memory of my Mother's Birthday, 4/28/12)

There is a lovely poignant poem quoted in the novel, A Lantern in Her Hand:

Pain has been, and grief enough, and bitterness and crying,

Sharp ways and stony ways I think it was she trod;

But all there is to see now is a white bird flying,

Whose bloodstained wings go circling high - circling up to God

by Margaret Widdener

Beth Streeter Aldrich wrote the novel, A Lantern in Her Hand, in 1928.  It is a classic story of a pioneer woman.  She modeled the protagonist, Abbie Deal, on her own mother, who in 1854 had traveled by covered wagon to the Midwest.  In A Lantern in Her Hand, Abbie accompanies her family to the soon-to-be-state of Nebraska. There, in 1865, she marries and settles into her own sod house. The novel describes Abbie’s years of child-raising, of making a frontier home able to withstand every adversity. Aldrich was a disciplined writer who knew many true stories of pioneer days in Nebraska.   She captures the strength in everyday things, the surprise of familiar faces, and the aura of the unspoiled landscape during the different seasons of the year.  Refusing to be broken by hard experience, Abbie set a joyful example for her family.

My mother and grandmother both loved this book.  I remember Granny telling us riveting stories of how her parents struggled to survive during similar pioneering days in Canada.  The story I remember most vividly was about a time in the depths of winter when the young mother and her small child were alone in their rude forest cabin while her husband took their only gun to hunt for the wolves who were getting bolder and bolder in their attacks.  A pack besieged the cabin one night.  She had brought their cow and calf inside and carried child and calf up to the loft.  The wolves broke down the door and killed the defenseless cow, but the mother, her little one, and the calf were spared.  Mother gave me the book to read when I was eleven or so.  I found the story exciting but, at that green age, I fear that many of the nuances of the mother's myriad struggles eluded me.  I was deeply touched by the poem however, because at some level it struck a resonant chord in my heart.  I remember copying it out and keeping it carefully in a small jewelry box for years.  That's gone now like so many other small treasures, but I have never forgotten that verse after some fifty-five years.

April 28 marks the twenty-sixth year of my Mother's passing.  I've written previously on this blog about her greatness of heart.  Her mother was her teacher as she was mine.  What I remember most about Granny was her kind blue eyes that saw everything, her soft voice, and her stautuesque height.  She had the knack of making her grandchildren feel that each was the most important child in the whole world.  My grandmother passed on not long after I finished the Lantern book.

Mother nursed Granny in our home for the last two years of her life, struggling with the aftermath of a devastating stroke.   She was paralyzed and could not speak, but her cognition wasn't affected and her smile, that always lighted up a room, was still there.  I remember telling her all about my ups and downs at school and life in general; I never doubted she understood every word.  She and Mother were always particularly close so the loss of language was never a barrier.   It was uncanny how my mother developed a similar disease, suffering a series of debilitating strokes that resulted in her becoming an invalid for two years before her passing.  My brother, Jim, never left her side during this time and I along with my father was always nearby.  Unfortunately, some whom she had treated with kindness, distanced themselves, particularly toward the end.  I know how much this wounded her, more than the intensified painful physical decline.  All she ever said to me was "I guess I must have done something very wrong, but I don't know what it was.  Can you tell me?"  Of course I couldn't.  The reason didn't reside within her, rather in the distorted lenses of those others.  It was a difficult thing for me to fathom and it was many years before I was able to let it go, certainly not as readily as she had.  Looking for the fault in herself first was another huge lesson that I find sustains me now as my own health continues to deteriorate and some folks I've known for years have drifted away. 

I never had the privilege of knowing my great grandmother, of course, but she was a tower of inner strength and wisdom which she instilled in Granny who relayed it to my Mother.  Along with the good times, they all led challenging lives strewn with disappointments, pain, and heartaches.  Granny and my Mother both suffered through long debilitating illnesses.  There were never complaints, rather acceptance, adaptability, and an unwavering concern for others.  What they transmitted to me took quite a while to take root, but now that it has I am reminded of that poem by Margaret Widdener and this verse from an old hymn by Fanny Crosby:

Thy word is a lamp unto my feet

And a light unto my path.

You're the light unto my path.

Job's Question

And Job asked, why must I suffer so long and alone?
With my own failing health, I fear forbearance will not hold
Walk with Job upon this glass splintered world

God's voice replied from a roaring whirlwind
Where were you when I brought forth myriad worlds?
And Job asked, why must I suffer so long and alone?

Job's  abiding faith sustained him o'er perilous declines
God rewarded him; blessing is forged in trials of the world
Walk with Job upon this glass splintered world

I have fought, not embraced my trials in kind 
Like a silted rill, they dwell in an ever constricting world 
And Job asked, why must I suffer so long and alone?

Subliminal attachment to illness is the vise that blinds
I have failed to see transcendent lessons in the pain of the world
Walk with Job upon this glass splintered world

Learn that you are not your body in this earthly clime
Know that you are eternal, traversing many lives, many worlds
And Job asked, why must I suffer so long and alone?
Walk with Job upon this glass splintered world

The Gift That Keeps on Giving, in loving memory of my Mother

At a recent Hare Krishna gathering, I heard an incandescent phrase, so eloquent in its simplicity.  "Every act is either an act of love or an act of pain."  Unfortunately, I don't know the source.   When I heard it, my breath caught for a moment, a grand epiphany.  My mind kept affirming yes, yes, yes!   I remember, of course, the great Christian teaching, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."  But, that first phrase provides for me the foundation for the second.  I've been reading Marcus Aurelius' "Meditations" off and on for years and this phrase prompted me to go back to them.

What I found was truly compelling.  For instance, "We are the other of the other" and:
"When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. They are like this because they can't tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own - not of the same blood and birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone to turn your back on him: these are unnatural.” 

I used to consider myself one of the good folks, making charitable donations to worthy causes, trying not to pass a homeless person without giving some money, helping friends and neighbors when asked.  These kinds of things are very good as far as they go, but I finally realized that I was unconsciously making value judgments about myself and these others.  I would often say "There but for the grace of God go I."  But, I came to see that this was a 'cop out' in a way. For, I didn't offer money to every homeless person I encountered. Some appeared drunk or too well dressed to be 'worthy,' a huge value judgment there.

Now, I have been blessed with a new way of looking at myself and others. It's so simple, yet so profound. There is no such thing as 'other.' I've paid lip service to this concept for a long time, but it's transforming truth has finally penetrated the many walls built up over my lifetime - walls of resentment, anger, regret, despair, unfairness, envy, self-righteousness. The list goes on and on. These are 'the acts of pain' that were inflicted. Of course, there were 'acts of love,' but like many people, I didn't focus on those nearly as much. So, when I look at others from the perspective of only two types of possible acts, I see myself. As Marcus, the Stoic, so succinctly put it "we are the other of the other."

With this new way of seeing came a number of transformations in my life, both large and small. My brother, Jim, and I have a much younger friend, Paul. Jim knew him first through AA. They both have been in sobriety for several years now. I met Paul for the first time about two years ago when he did some much needed repair work on our house. He impressed me immediately. I was drawn by his thoughtfulness and quiet grace. I knew he had been a supportive presence for Jim. We became fast friends. When he asked me for a loan to expand his business, I didn't hesitate. He paid back seventy five percent of it in a little over a year. Then, some major setbacks overwhelmed Paul. The AA men he tried to help by giving them jobs did substandard work, some relapsed and others stole clients from him. An unusually rainy winter brought work for most small home improvement contractors to a standstill. This went on for weeks. Paul had to stop taking a salary and could no longer afford rent for a single room. I could see that he wasn't eating enough. I asked Jim what he thought about inviting Paul to live with us rent-free. He agreed and Paul moved in.

It's been a blessing on both sides. With our various infirmities, Jim and I barely make up a functional person these days. Paul is always watching out for us, making repairs around the house, mowing the lawn, doing laundry, etc. We have become a real family, eating meals together and sharing our ups and downs. I'm convinced that this is sacred abundance at work. The more you give, the more you receive. It is literally the gift that keeps on giving.

Living through this experience has made me aware that once you commit to abundance, you find that it is all around you. Despite the loan losses and costs associated with adding a new family member, I find that there's always enough money. Not a windfall, but there is no insufficiency.

Abundance attracts abundance. Back in May, I had to have the remainder of my upper teeth extracted and was fitted for a full denture, not an inexpensive undertaking. It worked well until March and then suddenly lost suction; it kept falling down. My dentist was very puzzled and decided it needed to be relined. I knew this would cost around four hundred dollars. Instead, he charged me nothing for the hour he spent taking impressions and paid half the dental lab fee. I was so touched by his generosity that I tried to thank him. He gave me a hug and said you deserve it.

There have been a few negative experiences in my living a life of abundance. They involved fairly substantial monetary loses as well as psychically painful losses in the betrayal of trust that took place. Two of Paul's former workmen, both of whom he warned me about, seemed to be in immediate need of help for rent and living expenses. It turned out that one had relapsed back into his old drug habit and the other was a scam artist. The interesting thing was that I didn't harbor any deep feelings of anger or revenge, just sorrow that other fellow human beings could fall in such a way. This was hugely transformative for me, no judging, rather something that bordered on compassion. Others' pain, no matter what form it takes, should lead to acts of love. This, of course, is the ultimate goal and gateway to the Divine.

I am at the stage of life now where reviewing its' trajectory seems like a sensible thing to do; time is certainly getting shorter. My first and greatest teacher of the power of sacred abundance was my mother. Sadly, I didn't realize it at the time. She was the kindest person I have ever known. Not that she didn't have faults, she had her share. She had been trained as a nurse in Canada during the Great Depression. As a new graduate, there were virtually no jobs in Ontario for nurses. She came upon an ad in a nursing journal seeking a new graduate for a position in Long Island, New York. She promptly came and found herself in a surgeon's private hospital in his house, of all places. He turned out to be a well trained practitioner, but performed a number of major operations that the small facility and staff were ill equipped to handle. There was a well to do rather forbidding looking woman, a judge's wife, who came in for a radical mastectomy. This was a very dangerous procedure in 1932. Another patient required urgent attention causing a major delay in admitting Mrs. McGuiness. My mother could imagine how angry and upset she would be and approached her with trepidation asking if she could make the lady a cup of tea. Mrs. McGuiness replied "Yes, if you'll have one with me."

This gave my mother an opportunity to explain everything that was involved and what she could expect post-operatively. They went on to chat about their families and other non-threatening subjects. The next morning, after Mrs. McGuiness recovered from the anesthetic, she told my mother that she had never been so terrified and their tea and conversation gave her the strength to face it. One simple act of kindness and they were life long friends. I was only about five or six, but I still remember visits from Aunt Patricia and the tea chats they always had. Mother's nursing career was full of similar incidents. I didn't find out about many of them until after her death when I went through letters she had saved from other patients she had touched with her kindness.

As I look back now over my formative years, there were so many finespun instances of Mother's compassion that eluded my frenetic adolescent mind. In fact, my adolescence extended well into my twenties. I think that grace showers those of advancing age with transcendental memories such as these if we strive for open caring hearts. Just the other evening, I noticed a young woman attending our Hare Krishna group for the first time. Since she seemed very quiet and overwhelmed by the size of our group, I sat with her and we chatted about our backgrounds and what she could expect at the session. Shortly after, a very old memory popped into my mind. Every month my mother used to attend a monthly woman's guild group that supported a local hospital. She noticed a very young woman sitting alone and looking at the older members with quiet trepidation. Mother sat with her and invited her to come over to our house for a visit any time. Jean showed up the next day with her one year old boy, Ronnie. She knew no one else in town at this point. The visits became a weekly ritual until Jean's children were teenagers. When Mother became an invalid during the last two years of her life, Jean resumed the weekly ritual.

Of course, there were many charitable contributions. I remember one very special case. She sent monthly money orders to an Indian priest for years and they corresponded about his mission to the untouchables. The money came out of her modest household allowance. She never asked my father for more money and made sure that we children never lacked for anything. I remember that she rarely bought anything for herself, except the essentials. She lived in sacred abundance all of her life. Her rewards weren't monetary, but her currency was far more durable. The many lives she touched with goodness, mine in particular, were her legacy. Even my difficult father began sending monthly stipends to the Indian priest's successor.

Pantoum for an Apple Tree

 A sophic sentinel, our aged apple tree, witnessed much 
 We three sibs played under her winglike boughs 
Mother gathered apples underneath her then
Her flowering crown dropped blankets of rose tinged snow

 We three sibs played under her winglike boughs
 Mother made pies from her flawed but savory fruit 
 Her flowering crown dropped blankets of rose tinged snow
 The tree's limbs grew weaker; she succumbed in a storm

 Mother made pies from her flawed but savory fruit
 She makes pies no longer 
 The tree's limbs grew weaker; she succumbed in a storm
 Mother sat with only one sib, pondering what once had been


 She makes pies no longer 
 The days are long and empty now
 Mother sat with only one sib, pondering what once had been
I miss my shining days, phantoms now, she said 

The days are long and empty now
Mother gathered apples then
I miss my shining days, phantoms now, she said 
A sophic sentinel, our aged apple tree, witnessed much