When I awoke, I noticed Ulf was intently staring at the ceiling, deep in thought. I asked what he was thinking about? He said, “I don’t want to talk about it”. As I softly encouraged him he said, “the past and the future.” I asked what he was thinking about the past. He responded, “when I had things to do like help people in my business and had friends and family. Now I have no one and all I can do alone is walk around the outside of our house because if I go any further I’ll get lost. No one calls or cares anymore.” “I said most of us have a past we miss. What you are feeling is shared by a lot of people as we grow older. You were more independent then and you must really miss that.” We were silent for a while and then I asked, “what are you thinking about the future?” He said, “Dying. I feel like I’m dying. There is nothing left”. He said this in a quiet tone of resignation. I told him to just accept whatever he was feeling and let it be. It is true. We all have a past and we’re all going to die.
At my mother’s memorial service I remember saying that on our tombstone we have our date of birth, a dash, then our date of death. I said, “This celebration is about Evelyn’s dash. That blink of an eye we call life.” Birth symbolizes entering the body and death symbolizes leaving the body. What is it that does the ‘entering’ and ‘leaving’? One of my favorite parts in A Course in Miracles is called ‘The Little Garden’ which states, “The body is a tiny fence around a little part of a glorious and complete idea. It draws a circle, infinitely small, around a very little segment of Heaven, splintered from the whole, proclaiming that within it is your kingdom where God can enter not.” While we inhabit this form, the ego fights to protect this little speck of dust with self constructed identities to stay separate and inoculate us against the larger idea of who we are. It is a numbing and forgetting process.
In Ulf’s mind, forgetting his past and losing his independence is like death to him. We all experience death repeatedly throughout our lives with every little loss, every change from something we thought we were. When we struggle against those thought forms that are slowly evaporating all the time, we suffer. I see Ulf struggling between gracefully letting go and fighting to maintain some portion of what he thinks of as his life and who he thought he was. The Course continues, “The thought of God surrounds you. See how life springs up everywhere. The desert becomes a garden, green and deep and quiet, offering rest to those who lost their way and wander in the dust.”
I said to Ulf, “let’s get dressed and see what is in our life Now!” We ate some breakfast headed toward Spring Lake, our favorite walking place ten minutes away. Usually there are lots of animals and people for Ulf to share a friendly ‘hello, have a nice day’. This day, being in the middle of the week, was very quiet. We sat on a bench near a small inlet of water where ducks came to feed at the edge of the lake. We sat in silence and watched. The sky and clouds painted a lovely backdrop to the shimmering lake where several small sailboats meandered. Buds and little blossoms were beginning to bring the trees and bushes to life. After a while Ulf said, “God must be around. It’s so peaceful”.
This experience was such a contrast to his earlier thoughts about loss and dying. It is this difference in our contracted versus our expanded experience that seems to define our struggle to be free. Death could be defined as our lack of awareness of the presence of love and peace in our life.
In the ‘Little Garden’, we are asked to invite love to enter into our bleak and joyless kingdom and to transform it into a garden of peace and welcome. It seemed we had found that garden, at least for a little while.
Copyright 2010 Beverly Hamilton
Tags: A Course in Miracles, death, Dementia
February 28, 2010 at 2:30 pm |
Hi Ulf and Bev,
Love the ‘little garden’ image. The importance of this is really going to start to play on a world stage as the current world system unravels and more and more are ‘forced’ to look at the wider view. Seems to me it’s from this view level and as a species where we need to compare the ‘little garden’ image to the alternative ‘logic’ of brief specks of something in nothing. As I said before, you and Ulf are trailblazing and I thank you for that (not that it’s easy or asked for :-/)
Jas.
x
March 3, 2010 at 3:43 am |
Bev, I found this post truly poignant – yet when Ulf ‘grieves’ for ‘what was’ he is speaking for all of us at different stages in our lives – and he is so painfully honest – doesn’t feel the need to disguise his feelings of loss – of the ‘death’ of what he believed was his ‘real life’.
I believe we all feel a similar pain at different/every? stage in our lives, when what became comfortable and safe suddenly or gradually changes so we are cast adrift – and we frantically struggle, search and find ‘things’ to fill the gap and to create a sense of ‘normality’. Looking back over my life I can see so many situations where I frantically filled that gap with activities – studies/work/friends/family etc – however, at some level – deep and never quite identified – I just ‘knew’ that all this activity – however seemingly ‘meaningful’ – was just a ‘cover-job’ to avoid the abject fear of the abyss I believed it ‘protected’ me from – but again I was wrong – because it’s our Light that we’re afraid of, not our darkness.
So, when you say: “I see Ulf struggling between gracefully letting go and fighting to maintain some portion of what he thinks of as his life and who he thought he was.” I totally agree – and feel that we all have to do that eventually in some form or another, until we ‘invite love to enter our bleak and joyless garden’ – but again I don’t in any way wish to diminish the challenge you face, and I don’t even know how I’d personally cope with this, but I so appreciate you sharing this journey with us.
Love to you both.
March 3, 2010 at 12:53 pm |
Your words are like a Tibetan gong for me, powerful, meaningful and touching something beyond words that I want to open in me more. Say hello to Ulf for me.