A GOG

Monday, 28 January 2013

Where to begin.... I guess back with dear old dad. Where else. Then mum. And that might get me in the flow. Even though there are sixty three years to discover, all the significant action is in the last few chapters. So to make it tolerable I will have to try to weave the view from the present into the tangled web of the past.

Mum always preserved and demanded respect for dad from us, his three sons, even though I suspect there were times when she doubted it was entirely warranted. That sounds harsh but in the times I think it was fairly common. I rarely felt close to him, but somehow I did know I was protected and valued. There weren't many opportunities for any expression of anything other than acknowledging his principal role as breadwinner and keeper of the family tradition of a kind of intellectual superiority handed down from his father. 'Grandfather', Frederick Athal, was, apparently, a gifted teacher and as such his vocation possibly isolated him from warm family relations. I know how that can happen.
and so on
I didn't get very far with that. I think it has taken the last couple of weeks for me to get to the point: where did the love come from?

[edit - is that the title of this whole blog?]

For me it has been through compassion. I first felt what I now realise was an 'awakening' when Mum had fallen and broken her wrist. When I visited a little while after that, there was Dad making breakfast. He was quite proud of his barely adequate efforts and had actually made specific effort to take control. Mum was applauding somewhat genuinely. There were pawpaws from the back yard so the meal did have some real content as well as the usual fare.

In the next few days I took over somewhat. Dad was happy to let that happen - once he'd shown that he had the capacity he rather lost the impetus - I know how that can happen. And I got some energy from 'the source' . There was a gentle glow that we kind of recognised but didn't acknowledge specifically. I only see it clearly now in retrospect - in light of subsequent things. But I may be just re-writing the script to suit my current agenda - although that is really just to try to put 'things' in a context.

There were a few echoes of that glow in the next while as little hints of 'the decline' seeped through to me via the 'news updates' which emanated from sources which were not really aware of the reality. But nothing actually ignited.

[edit insert here - just as I suspected, I'm already starting to re-write history]

Missed a whole year or more in the first effort. Next thing of course was when Mum was in hospital for I forget quite what and 'the ACAT team' wouldn't let her out without a 'carer' and 'aged care' paraphenalia in the house. I remember taking a deep breath and declaring that I was going to be it. That was a conscious action on my part but in the exhalation there was an acknowledgement of something bigger and, importantly, unconditional.

*** Echoes here from the time in Durban when I made a 'fork in the road' decision to return 'home' with Lyn & Lela. I immediately went into a few days of 'malaria fever'. There was something unconditional about that even though the conditions were very much in my face and were mine to be faced ***

The house stuff was a biggish task so we needed an interim comfort zone. That was my job, it seemed. And there was no lack of energy for it. Dad was easily brought to acquiescence - if he could blog I reckon he would acknowledge a fork in his road at that point - possibly our first 'him & me' moment. And possibly quite huge for him but he accepted readily and showed a lot of enthusiasm and proper grownup behaviour for a while. And he began to look at me differently - eye to eye. My wonky eye to his rheumy.

Quite a bit more to this insert still to come - before the Gulag days which I had jumped right to on first draft... I'm tempted to start cutting and pasting and trying to make this more ordered. That may have to happen, but not yet.

So it was on. With boundless energy and joy I leapt into creating the sanctuary. A veritable whirlwind. Every detail fell effortlessly into place. ACAT were at bay, a veneer of a new optimistic normality was applied and comfort and security prevailed in the new environment.

Over the next couple of months the cracks began to show but the objective had been achieved and there was fortitude available to ponder the way forward. There was a silent acknowledgement of the destination, glimpsed but still unknown.

Came the day of the crucial decision: to stay in the new but rather shaky sanctuary, seek an alternative, or return to the known (which needed serious upgrading). That day was as close as we (dad, mum and me) ever got to overtly sharing what was actually going on. We resolved on the latter - fix what was broken and return to the known. But as that moment of resolve was in the making mum asked a simple question of me - "why?" - and the three of us each knew the answer (which was 'love' - unconditional) but having never before seen a moment like this we had no way to do anything other than choke up a little and move to the business of the day.

So the whirlwind whipped up into a veritable maelstrom. The calm veneer was maintained in the sanctuary while work was planned and carried out for the return 'home'. The date was set (to fit the plumber's programme). And again, everything basically worked. There were plenty of peripheral 'issues' but progress towards the goal remained utterly focussed and to me it worked that way because of this extra-mural (off the wall?) force from a source that was increasingly evident.

The day of return home arrived and there was such relief and quite a bit of joy. The months that followed were almost idyllic. There were so many good things about it that the obvious shortcoming was overlooked: change. That happened in the form of dad's decrease in energy - the cause of which was only revealed much later.

I had thought that my work was done for the time being, and that maintenance and monitoring wasn't up to me. I was wrong. And distracted by my own agenda - I used the energy I had acquired to further my efforts in what I thought was my proper profession. And while my eye was off the main game there was a gentle decline in the effectiveness of the 'support systems' in place to which I wasn't paying sufficient attention. (Guilt and blame don't serve any purpose here but became another element in the subsequent events.)

I may need to return here and keep inserting but I've caught up with where I deviated before. All that was about 18 months I reckon. Which started so positively but contained the seeds of degradation.

[End edit insert - back to the distorted first flow... this next paragraph is quite wrong: it wasn't the first time that I was aware of being directed by an energy that was somehow intrinsic. And the 'capacity for diplomacy' was a continuation of what I had already discovered and implemented.]

The next spark was quite bright. Dad had moved to 'the Gulag'. My appearance was anticipated. I arrived to find that I had a capacity for diplomacy but a solid inner resolve had taken hold. I was energised to preserve the appearance of everything being ok when I knew it wasn't. That energy came from outside of me and was exhilarating. It was the first time that I began to know how to do what I knew needed to be done and that it was me that had to do it. That knowledge also came from outside of my 'me' but it was so for me that it began to change my 'me'.

What I did was working and the glow returned but in a guarded way because it was now evident that things were going to be different in an unknowable way. Perhaps it would have been nice to have been able to settle in to that situation as the new 'norm' but of course that wasn't going to happen.

Break pause here - it's getting too much to scroll back over.
The gulag days
So. Dad's in the gulag. He was glad of the attention, and the oxygen. Made a brave attempt to assimilate - his wit and memory kept a few acolytes well entertained. But he was waiting either for mum to join him (she was horrified at that idea) or to be asked to move back home (mum similarly horrified).

Meanwhile mum was acquiring a very gentile calm with comfort and visiting carers.

Dad turned 88 in April of that year. One of the nurses gave him a fine pewter mug. On one of my visits we walked down the road to have lunch with mum. A fine sunny morning. He opened his eyes to his surroundings and was surprised at the brightness of the world 'outside'. The atmosphere of the visit was bleak! Mum was quite cold. On returning, dad fell on the grass - it ought to have been a drama but he was distracted by being so close up to earth - the grass outside - and we both felt that. It felt good! And we shared that for a moment before 'recovering'.

I had been staying in dad's room at home. I'd nip up the road and see him whenever mum was fed, watered and resting. One day I had a few errands to run so I was late to the gulag. Dad was wide-eyed and a bit panicked - "I needed you" came out of his mouth. We were both momentarily stunned, but again 'recovered'. Re-covered! All this covering was making us all miss out on the importance - the meaning - the significance - the love - in what we were doing - had always been doing - or not doing.

A period of accelerating intensity followed: mum was ill - an infection. She was quite delirious. Hospitalized and stabilised - doc wanted to prescribe anti-psychotics - the standard fix in this kind of case. But we managed to avoid that. There was more talk of rehab.

But suddenly dad was admitted into the next ward with some scary symptoms. I missed the subtlety of what followed - what he was feeling. He stuck to his line of rejecting invasive treatment and I backed that with the medico people. So the regime became palliative care - we were given some brochures. I spent a few days oscillating between the wards, somewhat high on the intensity of focus. I think mum was discharged first. Yes. Comfortably returned home.

Dad was discharged back to the gulag (mum hated it when he called it that). He wasn't quite sure where he was. The next few days were his last. On one visit I saw a nurse - very friendly and bright - squirting meds playfully into his open gob. I asked him what it was: "morphia". This had been his regime for a while it seems. A few days later it was changed to sub-cutaneous.

On the thursday I wheeled mum up the road with 3 cold stubbies. We had a beer. The last. On monday, early, the call came. I had woken before dawn that day - woken I think, by the grey heron alighting from the roof opposite and crawking as it flew overhead - about the time of the last dose. He didn't wake up after that 5 mg. Palliative.

It was all too simple for me to carry on as batman, deal with the practical things, keep calm. Under pressure too - months before mum had filled in the papers for a place at Legacy. As I wheeled dad's things back home, as I was passing Legacy, they rang! Mum was offered a place - had a week to take it or go to the bottom of the list.

Ouch. This is getting hurty. I'll be back.
Legacy
I didn't see whatever light was about in the days after dad's death. I didn't know what I was supposed to be feeling so I think whatever clarity was around - I'm sure there was much - was merged into the general mishmash of everyone's complicated consolations.

The only thing that brought me to attention was mum's favourite carer - she concealed a tear when I told her that mum had a place in legacy. But things rolled on anyway.

This is getting quite maudlin. I am supposed to be tracking the awareness of love but I am getting lost in the details.

I'll post this and edit later when the way is less cluttered.

....

I felt a sense of achievement in migrating mum into her cot at the end of the corridor. It was an achievement, but utterly wrong. She stared out at us and said "So, is this it?" And it was. Downhill all the way. Absurd! There was cruelty! 8 months later none of it mattered. That last morning in july her pulse gently slowed and stopped gracefully.

There was a flurry of appearances but really, that was an end of things. Just the tidying up to do.
Inner working
At some time during all that I had been attracted to a 'learn meditation' event. I experienced soft warm bliss. I pursued it a bit and it felt pretty good. But to get up and walk around in that elevated state eluded me. And the 'trappings' of creed began to obtrude.

So I tackled 'mindfulness' and made a stab at being aware of and able to manage moods. I had acquired anger - just the feelings - the consequent thoughts trying to attach it to the world were absurd. So it was really just a matter of becoming aware of the feelings and allowing them to disperse in acts of conscious release.

With that working, I went for another dip in the cult dogma and was fortunate to encounter an acolyte with a gift. I was warmed. But didn't know the significance until later.

A few years later I picked up his (the acolyte's) book in which he had expounded precisely the nature of the gift. That was serendipitous.

Those times were relatively constructive. Having had some moments of real knowing - knowing what was needed, knowing that it was me who was going to provide, knowing what to do without knowing that I knew it - feeling guided, directed - I felt the strength to actually choose and act under my own judgement. And was fortunately situated so that I didn't have to deal with legacy burdens of real world distraction.

I got quite prideful - I felt very strong and able to give. I made some pretty wacky choices with great confidence and conviction.

One avenue of giving that became amplified around this time was through the choir and the quartet. Ian's last weeks were subtly empowering.

: this needs a bit of description...

Ian Cooper was a teacher of music. He was blind from birth. He played great jazz. His working life was spent teaching music including, and especially, to blind kids. He also ran an adult choir to which I was privileged to belong for many years. His funeral that year was a climactic recognition of his contribution to many lives, including mine. The sounds of that day were transcendental. Through music we were able to share joy.

Out of the blue - (well, not entirely - Gaby said at one time "we all knew he was a time bomb"!) Bruce suffered a severe blow which left him aphasic. I saw him a couple of times and it was easy to be there. His situation progressed according to diagnosis.

"That morning" - the first of quite a few subsequent momentous occasions - Nina and I had watched our vocal magic manifest in the wedding tableau. (O magnum mysterium!). That afternoon Stuart called - Bruce was in the hospice. Say goodbye.

I had monday to kill (trapped monday night) before going up tuesday. I realised, somehow, on monday, that I needed to re-read bits of Roger's book (the Brahma Kumaris acolyte) so I went in search and found it - "Mission of Love". Read most of it on the train on the way up on tuesday.

 I arrived to find Bruce in pain and fear with no effective means of communicating his need. We spent the day with music which seemed to bathe him in release from the horror of his state. I was getting some utterly subtle feedback. At the end of the day I was able to deploy some of Roger's words - basically that even though I didn't know precisely what Bruce's thoughts were, some of them must be quite distressing. And that perhaps we could, together, find ways to relieve some of that distress. Having got that out without either of us dissolving into emotional oblivion, he gave me a strong indication that we ought to have a go.

So I went off resolved to carry out this mission with my usual attention to detail. And the requisite energy kicked in. And ramped up over the next days into an astonishing climax. Or series of climaxes.

Which cannoned on, and on. And on.

Just how finely I ought to dissect all this here (I've already mashed it up in several contexts, both internal and external, in the last months) I don't really know.

But that wednesday night and thursday morning I was engaged in a profound experience which still resonates.

Love is all. There is only love. All that exists emanates from and is destined for that divine love.

I got it. I get it. I'm immersed in it. And it is utterly disarming.

*** almost a year later I am back. What's missing is the nittygritty of that day. Well, it was only my subjective experience of about 2 minutes. The morning had dawned and we were both pretty exhausted - he more than I, eyes barely open with just a tiny glimmer deep inside. Then the staff appeared to do a tidy up and left us with he swabbed down, propped up, wide eyed, headphones on - rainforest I think.

- interrupted in this again - jus not the time...
***

I am now engaged in a struggle with humility and faith. Jihad. Tao. Etcetera.
Cannot bear viewing in this cronoloco format any more.

I'm going local, on my pc with wp etc....

Perhaps I'll keep this updated in some way - maybe just a link to the full text in a time sequence that starts at the beginning.

So, bye for now

***
I went local for some months - wrote up all my love experience from the year dot - then lost the lot in an operating system reload. So this has been reconstructed as a single post in chrono order.
***

Easter /end blog/
Is that all I need?

Is it just odd that I got to here on the day between good friday and easter sunday? If the search was for an answer to 'where does the love come from' then... what was that about? - I think I remember that day - but not precisely what I was going to say about it.

I guess maybe that I had come to the days in the hospice and that strong blast that has left me agog.

A gog.

 2 years on:

Back up to the Tuesday. I had spent the day with Bruce and thought that I had made a basic connection along the lines of what Roger Cole describes. I went home thinking I could find someone who could help us to develop that into some kind of meditative state which may facilitate (make easy) the inevitable end. The someone I found turned out to be me. This was for me to do. All I needed was to stay open to being there. So I went back the next day to be there.

I'm still a gog.


I posted this on facebook vep.org

My friend had been pretty crook for over a year. He’d been given about that long to live after his brain began to morph, leaving him aphasic. I’d seen him a few times and his good cheer was gently eroding. Then he entered the hospice. I wasn’t sure he knew who I was. It seemed to me that he was experiencing pain, fear and anger. He would frown, clench his jaw and turn away from banal attempts to engage his attention. Music provided some relief and provoked some positive feedback in the way of eye contact and gesture. He gave definite feedback when I hauled in the attending nurse and asked her to observe his discomfort. His eyes bored into us both. She took his distress as being due to “difficulty breathing, normal at this stage”. She wasn’t able to alter the rate of administration of morphia without a doctor’s authority. A doctor was to do his rounds in the morning.

It was a long night. In the morning he was very tired, having had very little rest. I stepped out for a few minutes while the staff attended to his comfort - bathing, changing linen. When I returned he looked much more alert. We played a little music and watched the morning light. Then his demeanour began to change. His eyes widened and his features firmed. A few minutes later he stopped breathing. Shortly after a nurse entered and confirmed that his life was at its end. She left to call his wife.

That’s my attempt at an objective description of the events of a two day period that I have yet to fully fathom. I’m not able to be objective about my own responses, both during and after, to those fairly commonplace events.

My difficulty is that I know that what I have encountered is ineffable. In those few minutes in the early morning light I was infused with an immense awakening of my consciousness that has opened my mind to such awareness as I have never before experienced. What I saw and felt I accept as subjective and several attempts to describe the impact have been banal.

I have changed my living circumstances to try to accommodate this new knowing and made some decisions about moderating my reactions which, because the nature of this awakening is ineffable, include not noisily going about revealing what I have accepted as grace, a gift of love. I have made a few attempts to describe it but have always become ensnared by pride or such all too human character flaws.

I only persevere now because I have encountered others who grapple with similar experiences and are engaged in the politics of voluntary euthanasia. The case is obvious to me - to voluntarily opt for good death - who would demur? To be denied that by others and forced to endure bad death is torture. I offer this anecdote in support of those who strive to prevent torturing dying people.

My friend was in palliative care, the purpose of which was to provide relief from symptoms with the aim of improving quality of life. The attempt to relieve symptoms was by the administration of morphia and keeping him hydrated and as comfortable as possible.

In those last couple of days it was increasingly ineffective and the deterioration and eventual progression to end of life was accepted as inevitable and normal. This was a hospice. I suspected that a boost in the morphia drip rate might have eased the symptoms in the last twelve hours but the staff weren’t permitted to do that. We were at the tipping point where providing relief from symptoms was not going to improve quality of life - in fact attempts to relieve the symptoms by administering morphia would be likely to bring about the end of life, an outcome that was inevitable regardless.

Those last few minutes of my friend’s life was time beyond the tipping point. Would it have been the same had the doctor popped in and cranked up the drip? - moot point. 

I can’t resist a stab at effing the ineffable. The best Hamlet could do was:

“If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come — the readiness is all. Since no man, of aught he leaves, knows what is't to leave betimes, let be.”

I can do no better. It doesn’t matter what we do. Death transcends life. Birth transcends not-life. Both, and all important states of being, are the outcome of love, all that is.


I do believe it is an act of love to attempt what we can to relieve suffering.