How to Prepare for Your Death...and Deathday Celebrations

Just recently two older people I knew and admired passed away. One of the deaths was very sudden, as the result of a traffic accident, and the other as a result of failing health. Both of these people lived thoughtful lives according to the call of their hearts which is why I admired them so. 

The woman who died in the accident was a much valued member of a discussion group which my husband and I belong to. Although her conservative, meticulous physical appearance would lend her the allusion of being rather formal, she had a very open mind and heart and would always leave her highly articulate, thoughtful contributions open ended. She had a wonderful questioning way about her and a smile that radiated warmth.

At the first meeting following her passing we spent some time reflecting on her beautiful ways, and followed up with a discussion of how we each are preparing for our own deaths. How do we prepare for our own eventual deaths? It's not a question that typically arises in everyday conversation and not something many of us discuss unless faced with death's stark reality. There were many wonderful ideas shared by people for whom the thought had evidently arisen before and the responses were as varied as the group itself. Some focused on the details of the final celebration of their lives such as having a traditional burial vs cremation,  while another laughed about the type of visitation they would want (lots of music and laughter). Someone mentioned not wanting people to be commenting on whether the undertaker did a good job on their makeup. A lot of the usual comments came up, which was to be expected. Yet it didn't take long to cut to the heart of the matter, it never does with this group.  

"It's our ego that is afraid of ceasing to exist. Any real fear of death is deeply rooted in our ego as our ego comes from our drive for survival." was a much echoed response. 
   
Another group member told of witnessing the way that love can transform even the most desperate of circumstances  surrounding a death  when the deep sadness and profound sense of loss that often goes hand in hand with losing a loved one serve as a means of  greater connectedness. Being present to that sense of connection helps us truly realize that in the end, the sum total of our lives comes down to how we have loved in the world. And we all know it is easier to love when we feel connected to another.

 A mystical understanding of death recognizes that what has come from dust returns to dust. Beyond our ego's neediness there lies a peace like no other, a peace that is always available to us when we relinquish notions of a limited self, letting go into a larger sense of awareness and connectedness. 


We all left the meeting that evening feeling a little lighter, having openly shared the weight of sadness over our friend's passing by celebrating her living. "We come and we go." was the thoughtful response that I left with that night.

So after considering our recent discussion group following our friend’s death, I realized that the one comment I most held onto  "We come and we go..." comes from the Buddhist idea of recognizing the impermanence of all things.

From the site Urban Dharma:
Thus early Buddhism declares that in this world there is nothing that is fixed and permanent. Everything is subject to change and alteration. "Decay is inherent in all component things," declared the Buddha and his followers accepted that existence was a flux, and a continuous becoming.


 In preparation for my own death whenever that may be, I try to recognize the impermanence of all things, the ten thousand little deaths which occur every day in my own life. Whether it is allowing my hair to go grey rather than trying to mask it with hair coloring which is so hard on the environment, or being willing to smile as I sit in the doctor’s office while he diagnoses what I thought was a worrisome mole as an age spot, the longer I am on this Earth, the more I recognize that there truly are ten thousand ways that I can prepare for my own death. Yet all of them require me to acknowledge my life as it is presently unfolding and asking for my participation in it. 

When our kids were very small I had a difficult time with this notion, but tried my best to acknowledge that as each little stage of development passed something was gained and something lost. I still try to apply this to each stage that we go through now as a little growing up family. Gain and loss are not concepts which occur independently, nor are living and dying, although in the western world our culture tries to deny this at every turn. Our unwillingness to acknowledge the aging process, the glorification of youth and the way we try to sanitize natural processes, shutting the aged  and infirm off in nursing homes, our never ending desperate attempts at keeping up with the Jones' all represent a lack of willingness to take pause and watch as the processes of decay and new growth constantly reveal themselves to us. There is great beauty in embracing life as it unfolds but it demands of us courage and a willingness to accept our own mortality. The Japanese with their concepts of  Wabi Sabi demonstrate a deep understanding of the value of seeing beauty in imperfection, and decay.


The less rigidly we hold onto things, the more easily we can let them pass, as come to pass they inevitably will. We will be better able to navigate life’s ups and downs and constant changes. By less often grasping onto things, we open our hearts and minds to the beauty that the present holds for us all. A life lived in full acknowledgment of the impermanence of all things, guided by a heart capable of holding all things lightly, grants us a power that death cannot quell. Even death, although a permanent change to life in this bodily form, continues  to represent new beginnings for the one who has passed as well as for those who are left behind.

 A friend of a friend of mine recently decided to have a deathday celebration for his birthday calling on all his artistic friends to write a tale of his deathday. I must admit that at first I thought it was a rather morbid idea, unjustly questioning the guy’s motives. But the more I thought about it, and after seeing some of the amazing, thoughtful and hilarious contributions, I've come to think of it as a highly creative and unusual way to go about acknowledging that each birthday does represent our moving towards that inevitable moment we each will have to face.  In fact, each moment of our living takes us closer to our dying, and we live many little deaths along the way. For those involved in the deathday writing, they turned our cultural aversion to death on its ear…made death into a cake and blew the candles out in its face. 

There are many ways to go about thinking on death, as many ways as there are people. To say that thinking about death is an easy task would be unfair. I personally know of people considering this with much more grace and humour than I, yet I do believe that it is a consideration worthy of our attention, as part of a thoughtful, examined life.

 

Prince Edward Island- The Organic Island?!?! Raymond Loo, a remarkable person who has given so much to PE Islanders...

I was very saddened to recently learn that Raymond Loo, a leader in the organic farming movement on PEI, has been diagnosed with cancer and is undergoing chemotherapy. Here is a link to the notice for a benefit to be held on May 4th for outstanding Island farmer Raymond Loo.
benefit for Raymond Loo

I met Raymond at the farmer's market almost ten years ago when I first bought beef and vegetables from his family. Their farm is called Springwillow Farms and theirs is a very inspiring story of how we can learn new and gentler ways of being in our world. 

Raymond himself is an industry leader in the movement away from large scale conventional agriculture to organic farming.

He has been recognized both locally and internationally for the great strides he has made in this regard and has a seemingly endless enthusiasm about how to care for the land (and therefore waters) that nourish our bodies and souls. This enthusiasm was present in spades every single time I ever spoke with Raymond. His smile is as wide as the great big dream he has for seeing PEI become a leader in North America's movement towards wholly organic farming.

Honestly, the way that Mr. Loo has led the local movement towards a more sustainable, non-toxic method of growing food and raising animals is as good and example of living the proverb "seek and ye shall find." He personally sought out how to shift his entire way of farming (and thereby way of living) through reaching out to others and self teaching.
Here is a link to an article written about Mr. Loo:
 Raymond Loo PEI Organic Farmer
Just imagine if we all opened our hearts and minds in support of people who give their lives to make the world a better place to live. 

Raymond is truly a remarkable guy and I  wish him  much courage and wellness!

Love Jill

Dear World, It's Time We Make Some Real Changes

Dear World,  
                                                                                                       

I want to let you in on part of a conversation that happened in my own living room earlier today. My father in law, a man of few words, was over for a short visit. Through the course of the conversation yesterdays 2012 Symons Lecture with David Suzuki came up.  My father- in-law, summarizing the gist of a newspaper article on the lecture says, "so in the paper today it says that by 2100 things might be over". Two of our three children were sitting in the same room as us. He didn't actually say the word "over", rather he just hand jived it. We all went on to the next conversation as though he said nothing. And why not? A big part of the reason we have got ourselves into this mess is because we can't truly understand the world we are living in or the consequences our daily purchasing choices exact on all systems: social, environmental, economic.  In all actuality, we are living lives alien to our life support, engaged in "Lifestyles "that are highly unsustainable and extremely toxic.  

I personally have had a mighty hard time living in this strange and wonderful world. Since my teens over twenty years ago I have suffered a great deal of pain trying to understand the reasons behind the toxic way we are choosing to live. I've become depressed and anxious many times considering my own role as a modern consumer who buys into a toxic lifestyle. Sure I buy organic and local as much as I can, but I still buy imported fruit, eat things wrapped in plastic, throw away whatever can't be recycled (with the painful knowledge that it will either be burned or buried) and buy into the notion of gift giving seasons of excessive consumption and so called "celebrations".  As a mom of three I've ranted and raved over ways we "should be living" and frustrated my family greatly because of my negativity and griping.  In time I came to practice the  gentler way of "quietly making change and letting others go on with their choices" but have found I still tire of the snail's pace at which our society changes. I frustrate easily over the choices our governments continually make "on our behalf" which allow the continuation of our destructive path. At other times my own choices  contradict my strong beliefs and I become confused and disappointed with myself. 

While in my mid teens I wrote a lot about the collision course I thought our civilization was headed on. My parents said I was depressed. I wrote about my confusion over our civilization being considered technologically so advanced, yet somehow in our never ending search for bigger, better, and more refined, we missed  the fact that our advancements do not come without a cost, a cost that inadvertently has set up our own demise. In my parents defense I was depressed. How could I not be? I was diagnosed by a psychiatrist at age seven as being able to intellectually understand much more about the world than I was able to emotionally deal with. Thirty years later I feel like the same train wreck I was then. But now I can better ask "Does anyone have the emotional wherewithal to handle all the bad news about the very grave direction we are headed in, in fact already experiencing?" Wait a minute, some of our elected officials seem to. Maybe I should have been wired a little more like they are. Without question many of us are choosing the distractions of mind numbing reality TV and technology, mindless consumption of goods and services, and extreme busyness over a  clearer view of our current trajectory and the true toll our course is taking. 
What kind of change do we really need to make to make a difference? Are you happy and healthy living the way you are currently living or are you, like me, feeling more and more exhausted just trying to make ends meet when the ends just keep seeming to get more frayed and further and further apart? Would it really matter if we just decided to buck the systems that are no longer serving us well? If we said "no" to some of the current models of living such as the way we school our young people would it actually hurt anyone? It  would seem to me that we are using our public education system as a public warehouse for insemination of ideas perpetuating the current outdated model of living. In so doing we are wasting precious resources to inefficiently teach our kids to read, only to have them learn so that they can open today's newspaper and read that some believe that within this century we will see a partial collapse of the human species. See today's actual headline from The Guardian, our local newspaper: "Suzuki delivers dire warning, cautious hope over future of humankind". View here
Perhaps it's time to make some real changes that represent viable hope in tomorrow and just as importantly, in those tomorrows that we ourselves will never see. Doing what we know in our hearts is the right thing can't be as wrong as popular culture would lead us to believe, can it?
What if we each bought less stuff, went far places less often, Loved the world more, fought less, learned to make do, ate less processed food, bought local, Forgave ourselves and others, Shared more and Smiled often? Just imagine! Or better yet, Let's give it a try? What do we have to lose in trying?
The last two summers I had the fantastic opportunity to manage a collaborative project I created to engage the public in thinking about how we are living. I called it The Creativity Project. Probably, no definitely, it was a gentler means to the same end as this blog post. You might have enjoyed it more. I did. Here's a link to it online: thistownissmall.wordpress.com/2011/05/25/the-creativity-project/ . You can also look it up on thistownissmall under Art in the Open P.E.I. 2011 and 2012. Our project link is under the Victoria Row location. 
The willingness of the general public to take part in our fully interactive exhibit both years was awe inspiring. It proved to me that not only do we still have the capacity to think creatively about problems we are facing, we also have the heart required to make creative solutions a reality!
Yah. What else can I say?  At times it seems as though we are human animals living like alien robots. Continuing to buy into a disposable lifestyle and preserving every moment of it in photographs and scrapbooks will only ensure that our species becomes disposable with much of our demise preserved in plastic memory books and hard drives. It's high time to make some changes in our world! What say YOU?
Love Jill
Postscript
January 2nd, 2013
I've just read Gwynne Dyer's  2012 year end article The key moments of 2012 and although I do generally take his words with a grain of salt due to their endlessly "dire" nature and the negative focus he writes with, I concur that his highlights largely are grim due to their factual nature.
 The following paragraph caught my eye:
The world's drift towards global catastrophe due to climate change is becoming impossible to deny. This northern summer saw droughts and heat waves ravage crops from the U.S. Midwest to the plains of Russia, and soaring food prices as the markets responded to shortages in food supply.
He certainly uses dramatic language to get his points across, yet clearly his points are difficult to deny.
Happy New Year 2013... This year I remain hopeful because I know that the possibility of change, although difficult, is ever present so long as we have hopeful hearts!

Opportunity Taken...

 How quickly things can change in life... what is an instant anyhow? A heartbeat, a frozen breath, a gripping thought, missed opportunity...or an opportunity taken...

After a late evening visit to my parents’ place, our seven year old daughter Clara opted, as she oft does, to walk alone the short distance home to our place. And desperate as she had earlier been to wear her new spring jacket there, I let her go only half dressed for the cold.

I drove the car home with Maria who was under the weather...and Clara made her own way. When she came in the side door to our house she stood rather breathless in our entry,  looking totally awestruck. Sensing her quiet wonder I asked her what had happened.

”Sparkling” was all she could first say. “The snow, it all is sparkling mommy....please come for a walk.”

I'm glad I hadn't over- parented her when we left my mom and dad’s- told her it was getting too dark to walk, the roads too slippery and her not properly dressed for the cold- as I am too oft inclined to do.  Had I, she wouldn't have experienced the late winter wonder of a fresh blanket of crystalline snowflakes over the brown and thatchy grass and mud of March. Nor would she have shivered excitedly in our entry at the prospect of having me join her for a little walk, late eve around the neighborhood.

“It makes me feel like I just want to twirl around with my arms out like this mom- then go back out into it with you!”

And despite my tiredness, it was a great idea; always is at times like that. She decided of her own accord that she'd best put on an extra sweater and some gloves, grabbed a flourless oatmeal chocolate chip cookie and my hand and out we went. She showed me how the streetlight cast a shimmer on the soft blanket of snow all over the yard and lane, and indeed it sparkled...not unlike her big blue eyes just then.

We set out down our little street to the main road and hand in hand walked down the Kinlock hill. She nibbling at her cookie dipped in snow, me pulling her hood up over her hat to guard against the icy snow and wind that caught us on the more open main road. It was hard to see ahead so we looked down. Clara quickly noticed that our footsteps were the only ones to break the smoothness of the evening’s snowfall- that despite the multitudes who live around us we were the only walkers out.  We walked and talked downhill and at the bottom turned towards my parent’s house. Clara was on the outside of the sidewalk and instinctively I pulled her in, trading places with me. She noticed the silent move and commented that she knew why I did it.

“Because grownups know more safety things and if a car was to come and squoosh the grown up, well they've already lived so much longer than the kid. It's just makes sense.”

She said it all quite unaffectedly- strange for emotive Clara. Perhaps the cold had settled in deeper than I'd guessed. No sooner had I thought this than she qualified her sentiment:

”…not that I'd ever want that to happen to you mommy- I’d be so sad!”

“Well Clara, obviously we wouldn’t want anything like that to happen, but if something ever were to happen to me you know you would be sad, but you would still have a good life.” I faintly replied.

“A hard life mommy is what I'd have. It would be so hard without you!” Clara exuded.

Before we could continue in this morbid, thoughtful vein, a car approached us from behind, as the corner neared.  We paused let them go ahead of us, crossed over by my parents house and headed up the hill towards home. Back in our little yard, my heart fairly bursting with an awareness of the weight of the unknown and the wonder of the quiet beauty we were a party to, we foot-stomped a great big heart, adjoining in the middle. A little crooked and sure to be covered by morning, but altogether perfect.

Ps...I included the link for the cookie recipe because they are amazingly delicious...we all love them and you can so easily change it up...make them nut free...reduce the sugar...and they bake up very reliably!! Thanks Jan for the gluten free oats from Trader Joe's...

Living to your potential...Creating a New Story

"...it's all retch and no vomit..." Alan Watts
 
What if your life was all retch and no vomit as philosopher Alan Watts so startlingly put it? An entire life lived without a sense of fulfillment, endlessly doing that which produces the same miserable outcome. How much of the misery in the modern world could be attributed to us living our lives in this way?

Goethe's Faust was a famous example of giving one's life over to the eternal quest without recognizing that the beauty does not lie in the end result, rather it is contained within the journey itself. Striving without acknowledgment of the journey as the path only leads us to sell our souls to a culture that demands that we sacrifice to the system the very heart of our being...our ability to choose our way of life according to our own discretion.

Ceaseless striving is undoubtedly inherent to our human nature. We all do it....strive for more and better without training ourselves to settle with our restlessness, to be present to life as it is. We know too well the discomfort of feeling dissatisfied, and often it can be attributed to our ability to purchase goods and services compared to our neighbour or relative's ability to do so. Is this the truest way to measure our existence; is it the best way to live our lives? 

But what if you aren't living the sort of life you are supposed to be living? What if your restlessness is actually your inner voice trying to reach the surface after years of being quieted and quelled? Have you ever tried sitting quietly in a darkened room without distractions of modern living? Most of us become uncomfortable with the thought of doing this. What if we hear something in our own heads that we don't want to acknowledge? What if the discomfort in our chests or guts is due to not living as we know we should be living? Take a few minutes to try this. What did you hear...feel? Your untapped potential as a human being just might be trying to tap you on the shoulder. 

Right now I do feel as though I am retching repeatedly with no vomit...I love much of my life but feel a great distress over  changes I know I need to make but am having difficulty making.  Perhaps there is something within me lingering yet to be fulfilled. Maybe fear of change is limiting me; a fear of the unknown which lies untapped. Or it might be that I have yet to fully acknowledge my own potential...my personal unknown waiting to be tapped into?



Do not be afraid to go deeper...

I do know I need to cut a little deeper as a writer friend once said to me...and not be afraid to let myself bleed a little...that's where the undercurrent of life is ...the driving force we often fail to recognize within ourselves and within each other. Probably it's time for me to step outside my comfort zone so that I too can tap into that life force that is trying to live through me as an individual, and through us all as a collective of humanity. 

 “Forget safety.
Live where you fear to live.
Destroy your reputation.
Be notorious.”
― Rumi

Besides if I want to be part of creating a more sustainable world, my lifestyle needs to reflect that ideal through the choices I make for myself, my family and the greater world. Otherwise as Watts more fully explains below:

What we are doing is we are bringing up children and educating them to live the same sort of lives we are living… in order that they may justify themselves and find satisfaction in life by bringing up their children to bring up their children to do the same things so it’s all retch and no vomit — it never gets there. Alan Watts

There is no one sure answer to how we should go about living our lives...truly the possibilities are endless. I do know that there is little point in making choices which inevitably continue to make us miserable.  Perhaps it's time to listen to the restlessness within and make a change? Think of what could be achieved, what  healing could happen!

By creating a new story for ourselves we inevitably become part of the new story our world so desperately needs. 

Don't limit yourself...let the big scream out!!!

 “Don't be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.”
― Rumi, Essential Rumi