Dealing With Death

Dealing With Death

“How do I deal with this?  a friend asked the other day, as we talked about the death of his friend, at a very young age.

And, I don’t know.  I’ve lost friends, relatives, people I work with, neighbors, people I’ve admired, so many people in my life.  After all that loss, you think I would have figured it out, and knew the answer to his question.

But, I don’t.  I explore my relationship with God, I contemplate the Universe, I search for my place in the world, who I am, where I am going, my own death.  I sometimes I think I have answers, but I also still have questions, big questions.

The questions nag me in the middle of the night, or when I have a thought reminding me of a loved one who has died.  The other day, when my friend asked me this question, his eyes tearing up with his pain and his loss, and his quest for the answer to his question. My usual full bag of advice and counsel didn’t produce a ready answer.  

Great poets, great writers, great artists, great theologians, and me and my friend keep coming back to the pain, the questions, the wondering.   

Some say there is a plan.  Yet, the work of the angel of Death seems chaotic, haphazard, completely random.  

I can have a rich, yet fleeting, conversation with someone close to me, and then next thing I know, I’m sobbing because they are suddenly gone from my life.  Or, I know they are dying, but I am still not ready for that phone call, telling me their time has come now, and not when we had thought.  What I want to be rational and reasonable is never that, not when I’m trying to understand Death.  

Death always screws up my plans.

I’m never ready for it, never ready for the news, the loss, the stumbling around that I do when someone close to me departs this world.  I’d like to think I can manage death, but I can’t.  Oh, I’m practiced in helping to plan funerals, and even saying comforting words, and helping others out.  I’ve mastered the legalities, and sometimes, I think I know the spiritual “final answer”, but not really.  

I’m really not very good at all this, and the dark void in the pit of my soul still aches, and I still cry out my laments.  

Sure, I move on.  I go forward.  That is, after all, what we have to do in this life.  And, I like to think that part of that person’s goodness and spirit lives on as a spark in my own self, and that their love and their goodness is part of the tapestry that is my life and my work in this world.  And, yes, all that is comforting.

Yet, I still don’t really know what to do, how to “handle this”, and to move on.  

I can sit with my friend, who mourns and weeps, and let him know there is love and kindness and compassion left in this world.  I can offer that and let him take what he needs now, to ease the bleeding of his own heart, and the void of his own emptiness.  

Perhaps that is enough, that empathy and compassion.  Perhaps that is the humanity I can offer, and how we can all try to deal with Death and loss, and our own sense of righteous abandonment and anger.  

I can live my own life well, with few regrets, and with passion and zeal.  Then, when it is my time to leave here, those who are left behind will have seen all that in me, and find some strange form of comfort in that, knowing I lived well and full, and that love remained strong in my heart, for all to see.

---Neal Lemery 10/26/2012

Cherokee prayer

O Great Spirit

Help me always

to speak the truth quietly.

To listen with an open mind

when others speak

and to remember the peace

that may be found in silence.

-Cherokee Prayer-

A Letter to My Young Friend in Prison

A Letter to My Young Friend in Prison

Dear ____________:

It was good to go deep with you today.  

As always, I found you working on several difficult issues, and moving forward with all of them.  You have healthy goals, and you have worthy dreams.  You always do.  

Young men worry about who they are, and what they want to accomplish, and what is their destiny.  And, actually, we all worry about that.  At least, I do.  

I don’t always count my blessings, and I can worry about things that I have no control over, or things that turn out to be pretty insignificant.  I struggle with feelings and emotions, and I get myself tied up in knots about things.  Another young man I know calls that “catastrophizing”.  A good term for that “tie my stomach in knots” feeling.  

So, when you struggle, and doubt, and worry, you are not alone.  And, when you see some people and situations in your life that need some fixing, and things aren’t getting fixed, that is normal.  

Each of us can only fix ourselves.  We aren’t the mechanics for other people.  We don’t lead their lives.  And, we aren’t the boss.  Well, we are the boss of ourselves.  We do have the ability to direct our own lives, and to manage our own affairs.  And, what other people do and what other people might think of us --- well, not much we can do about that.  

You are a normal guy.  You have normal worries, and normal doubts and normal insecurities.  You get frustrated when relationships and other things don’t get “fixed”.  That’s normal.  

I see you accomplishing a whole lot.  Certainly more than most 21 year old men I have known.  OK, you are in prison and you don’t have a lot of “freedom”.  Yet, you have done a great deal of hard work in getting your own house in order, and healing yourself.  You have educated yourself a great deal about who you are, where you come from, and who you want to be.  

Most young men haven’t done that.  Most young men haven’t laid out the high moral standards and ethics you have set for yourself.  The work you have done has been very valuable, and very important.  I think you see that, sometimes.  In a few years, you will see this time as a very rich, and a very valuable experience.  

As you do your heart work, know that I support you, and I believe in you.  I am grateful you have this opportunity, to know yourself better, and to gain information which will lead to even more self discovery, and to more healing of whatever wounds you discover. 

Part of that healing work involves forgiveness.  

I hope that you are doing some forgiveness of yourself in all this.  Forgiveness is a very good gift to give to yourself.  It is part of that struggle you have with accepting a gift.  

You want to “pay off your restitution”.  “Restitution” means “to restore, to put back”.  Part of restitution is forgiving yourself.  That will be harder to do than sending money off to the State.  But, more rewarding, and more freeing.  

You are doing all of this work for the right reasons: self understanding.  

Most every time I leave prison after a visit with you, I say to myself “Wow.  I don’t know if I could deal with that.”  

A lot of the stuff you talk about that you have experienced, well, I think I might just want to find a dark corner and pull a blanket over my head, and slip away into a bit of self imposed craziness.  

But, you don’t take that cheap route.  You dig in and work through the crap that you have to deal with sometimes, and you get it on.  You sort through it, and you do what is needed to be healthy, and sane, and whole.  

You may think you don’t get much support from other folks on what you are going through and what you are doing.  But, you do.  Your Team is out there, cheering you on.  

I try to be a good cheerleader, a good support person for you.  I don’t always do a great job, and I often don’t have the tools and the pompoms and the special cheerleader cheers that work for you.  But, I still show up and I still cheer you on.  

I believe in you and I believe in your journey.  

And, you teach me more about courage and decency and character than anything else in my life.  

I thank you for that, from deep in my heart.

Sincerely,

Neal C. Lemery

Petite Syrah, 2006, and Tierra Del Mar

“With celebration, comes friends.

With inspiration, comes creation.

With sophistication, comes elegance,

and with wine, comes life.”

      --Christine Andrew

On the beach, we walk

Midsummer calm, warmth of the sun,

the wind taking a much needed vacation.

The log calls us to sit, and open the wine

given by our son, in celebration of Father’s Day,

the real gift being the son in the life of his parents.

The sun dances in clearing skies, 

sparkling on the calm of the sea,

and the wide open silence of the beach.

We take the time to enjoy the moment,

the wine, the still of the air,

the slow murmur of the waves

far away, almost

low tide.

The Rock of Resentment

The Rock of Resentment

He spoke of his anger, raging inside, and his feelings about his family, his childhood, the place where he was at now, and what he struggles with.  His eyes flashed, his voice strong, energized as he shared what was deep in his heart, the pain, and the success.

“And, I’ve found a place to put all that, all my resentment,” he said, tears welling up, his voice quavering.  

It was his Resentment Rock.  

“I give it all to the rock, every day, so I can sleep at night, so I have a place for all this,” he said.

“And, this morning, it broke.  It’s in two pieces now.”

Silence filled the room, everyone feeling the tension as the rock broke, imagining that moment in his life.

Someone in the group asked him how he felt now, now that the rock of resentment has broken.

“Oh, I’m free. The pressure is off, the tension is gone.”

“Relief, I guess.  Yeah, relief.  All that resentment that was inside of me, and now, inside the rock, is gone.  It went away.  I just feel lighter now,” he said, one tear making its way down his young face.  

“I can move on, now.”

Later, when we had finished our conversations as a group, he talked to a woman.  She had spoken in our group about a place she was making in her garden, a place to grieve, and an offering vessel she had made.  It was a place where people could come to pray, and leave an object, a symbol of their loss, their grieving.  It was a place of honoring one’s grief, and the memories of good times, and hard times. It was a place to honor what goes on, deep in our hearts.

“Could you put this there?” he asked.  “I want you to take the rock, and put it there, so I can let it be.  I need a place to leave the rock, a place for all my resentment to be.”

He took the two pieces of the rock out of his pocket, showing us how the two pieces fit, jagged edge to jagged edge.   He let me hold them.  The rocks felt heavy, my fingers sensing the burdens they contained.  

His hands trembled, as he put the two pieces in her hand. A large whoosh of air escaped from his chest.

“It’s time to let all that go, and move on with my life,” he whispered, tears soaking into my shirt. 

6/30/12

Planting The Future

“One generation plants the trees, the next gets the shade.”

Chinese proverb 

Sequoia sempervirens, the coastal Redwood tree, can live up to 1800 years and grow as tall as 380 feet (200 feet in Oregon).  Their natural range goes north as far as the southern Oregon coast. They like the warm coastal fog of California and lots of rain.  And, one of the most spiritual experiences in the world is to hike through the groves of giant redwoods in the Redwoods National Park on a warm, foggy day, in the midst of ancient trees.  

I’ve got a few of them growing here, but I wanted some more.  Part of my soul lives in the giant coastal redwoods of California and I’ve nearly always had a redwood tree growing on my land.  I like the promise of starting a forest of giant trees that will live for hundreds, maybe several thousand years.

Today, I planted three more.  They won’t get to “giant size” by the time I leave this Earth, but I’ll know they are growing, taking root here, and heading skyward with their lacy leaves and thick red bark.    

I’ve always planted trees.  When I was a little kid, my folks had a cabin on 30 acres in what we then called the Tillamook Burn.  Several forest fires had raged through the area in the 1930s to the 1950s, turning the forest into a collection of burned snags and ferns.  So, in the late 1950s, my dad and I would go out with bundles of little Douglas fir seedlings, and our Pulaski (a combination axe and tree planting blade) and plant them on the hills and ridge above the cabin.  The deer ate a lot of them, but enough survived, so that when I drive by the place, I can see a nice forest there.  I like the idea that I had something to do with that.

When I was seven, my dad and I planted a few redwoods on the place we moved to.  Those trees are still there today, about sixty to eighty feet high, doing well, and getting pretty big.  And, the little guys I planted today, well, they are on their way, and will soon be spurting new growth towards the sky.  The fog will collect on their leaves, and big beads of wet will drop down to the earth at their roots.  And, someday, they might be the giant redwoods of the neighborhood.  They will be happy, making their home here, century after century, providing some shade, and peace and serenity to the generations that will come after me.

A few years ago, a friend gave me some little Monterey Cypress trees.  I wasn’t sure they would make it here, too cold and wet, I thought.  But, I babied them along, repotting them, keeping them watered in the summer, and they’ve done well.  They have nice healthy buds for this year’s growth, and big, thick root systems.  Today, I planted them, too.  They’ll be a good addition to the groves of trees I’ve been tending.

The other cypress trees I’ve planted here, Leyland, are doing well, too.  I read up on them today, learning that they are a cross between Nootka (or Alaskan) Cypress and Monterey Cypress.  In their native habitats, they didn’t get to crossbreed, but an English botanist experimented with them in the late 1800s, and they do well in moderate coastal climates.  We’re a bit of Alaska and a bit of California here, which explains why the cypress like it here.  

The rains are moving back in now. The little bit of sunshine I had between storms, which was just enough to grab my shovel and do my planting, is gone now. But, my trees are there, in the rich dark soil, the southwesterly breeze of the coming storm dancing in their needles.  They are ready to put down roots and make this place their home.

3/10/2012

Fire

Sometimes, the fire inside

seems to go away

until I give life a little space,

and find a place to dream, to 

reconnect

with who I really am

who I was, and who I want to be.

Then, the sparks find the fuel

and the reason to be.

When the fire returns

it burns brighter, and higher

and warms me to the core,

lighting up my

world.

Neal Lemery 1/2012