Let Your Heart Break #2: Death is Part of Life

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERADad was an organized man who kept meticulous books recording every penny earned and every penny spent. For as long as I could remember, he had exercised right on schedule, played golf on schedule and focused on his bowel regularity. Until he began his walk toward death, letting go wasn’t Dad’s cup of tea.

Somewhere in his bones, this man who had never been overtly interested in matters of the spirit knew that these final weeks of his life were a sacred invitation of transformation through release. He let go gracefully, if methodically.

When we met his attorney, Dad released his legal responsibilities. He made sure I understood his bookkeeping, then handed over all financial tasks. He walked independently for another week before he surrendered to a rolling walker.

One afternoon, Dad made yet another trek down the long hallway to the bathroom with his rolling walker. He stopped at his bed to take off his Pendleton wool shirt because its length got in the way. I offered to shorten the hem. He refused, insisting that there was no need for me to do that, and continued on his own.

Thursday, Connie came to clean his house, as she had done weekly for the fifteen years since Mom had died. When he told her about his cancer, Connie replied that maybe he would get better.

“No, I am dying,” he corrected Connie. “I’ve had a good, long life and I am ready to die.”

On Friday, Dad stopped walking altogether. We sat together in his bed, as his thoughts vacillated between this world and the next. “I can’t think of any brilliant thoughts to say, though it seems like I should,” he said. “I am quotable.”

All week I’d also felt that I should have been grabbing every opportunity to share profound thoughts about my love of Dad. Instead, we both were learning the richness of shared silence filled with love.

“No one prepares you for dying. Is this the way you thought it would be?” Dad asked me.

He wasn’t expecting an answer, but I was fascinated by his question.

Dad interrupted my pondering, saying, “I want to live a natural death.” He mumbled something else then chuckled, “I didn’t understand that one myself.”

I smiled. So many of our conversations over the years had been practical. Here, with death lurking at the door, we felt free to let our thoughts bounce from the absurd to the profound. All thoughts felt welcome that afternoon as we sat propped up on the bed, side-by-side.

“What if butterflies are the good guys?” he wondered.

I leaned over and kissed his cheek.

Dad was letting go of his life on this Earth. We will all face death one day but today we are facing a different sort of dying: releasing old, outdated ways of living on this planet.

Surrender may not have been my cup of tea so far, but now is a good time for me to practice. Dad’s actions illuminated several skills that help in times of profound change.

Start with an honest assessment of the situation. As Dad responded to unfounded reassurance with, “No, I am dying,” I, too, need to be clear that now is the time to relinquish my tight hold on the status quo. Many of the ways of being that have felt “normal” and “right” must be acknowledged as polluting our world and spirits for us today and for generations to come.

For Dad, death wasn’t an escape; instead, he let go of his “good, long life” with gratitude. Likewise, much of the old has brought me delight and needs to be honored as nurturing my life. However, my culture’s short-sighted, unsustainable and inequitable framework needs to die and be rebuilt.

We speak of violent crime and build more prisons even though violent crime is at a 50 year low. We embrace more and more standard medical tests and treatment (if we can afford it), but overlook the toxic chemicals, radiation and stress that erode human and environmental health. We overlook the implications of privitatization of our water, manipulation of our food supply and destruction of our natural resources while racing through our days at an exhausting speed.

When I am willing to stop walking in the old ways, I can pick up my training wheels for walking into the new.

Dad, pushing his rolling walker, showed another way. He let go of fear in the face of death, and hope was born. He had no idea of what was next, how the process should be or even if butterflies were the good guys. None of that mattered anymore.

After Dad returned to his chair from the bathroom trip where I’d offered to hem his shirt, he reflected, “You know, something interesting just happened. You wanted to do something to make things easier for me, and I wanted to do something to make things easier for you.”

Death is part of life. Transitions aren’t easy, but fighting the inevitable is exhausting. Dad taught me that when I surrender my fear of the unknown, reach out in partnership with others and make daily choices that nurture my global family, I’ll find joy even in the dying parts of my life’s journey.

This is the second in a series about Living while Dying on our way to something new. I offer this in honor of my father, Edward Victor Mathys (1921-2001) and the dying that all of us alive on this planet need to experience now.

Much of this blog was excerpted from my book Big Topics at Midnight: A Texas Girl Wakes Up to Race, Class, Gender and Herself, pages 140-145.

Photograph by Brenda Wills.

A Circle of Wisdom #2: Rocks Speak

Brenda Wills, photographer
Brenda Wills, photographer

Rocks spoke to me. Standing on my family’s ancestral land in North Carolina in 2006 and deep in my imagination, I felt the gathering of rocks and plants, moon and water, people and animals. Each had come from ages past to share their wisdom with me.

A rock near the fire begins to vibrate and a dull glow shines from within. This rock, a mixture of quartz, sulphur, and basalt, begins to speak, “We remember. Some of us remember the molten lava that spewed liquid rocks from the center of the newborn earth. Others of us hold the memory of the ages pressed into our layers. We have experienced the power of creation and fire at the heart of the world. 

We have seen much and have been deep within this land for billions of years. Some of us are strong, some soft and pliable. Each of us offering what is needed, in function, beauty and healing.

Animals, without knowing it, come to the place where we are resting to receive our healing power. Plants grow in different ways in different places due to our energy from deep within the earth. Humans over the thousands of years have made use of us and been grateful for our varied gifts.”

A strong voice interrupts,  “Gold here. Humans singled me out and have been particularly grateful for me. But this honor too often led to greed rather than respect … with earth breaking results.

 Near here, in Dahlonega, GA, white settlers found me. That was the final impetus to remove the Cherokee from this valuable land.”

Mining by white men’s companies started immediately. In time, mining technology sped up our extraction so money could flow quicker. High-pressure water was turned on the land washing away tons of earth and snapping trees like twigs. The earth was gashed and ripped away as my veins were laid bare. A few men become rich and the rest of us died a little more.

Lust for us declined when oil and gas became valued above all else, including life. Whenever minerals, rocks or crystals are quickly extracted from this earth, the land is slashed and the tailings discarded. The gashes are horrifying.”  The earth beneath my feet shutters with the memory. Gold is silent again.

The rock in our midst continues,  “But the tragedy is that the full gift of us minerals, rocks and crystals is usually overlooked today. We are treated as irrelevant hunks of earth.

It is too often forgotten that we who touch the Earth’s core, streak through the mountains, and lie in wait under the prairies have so much to offer. 

We have been taken and used. We helped a few get rich or build things. Meanwhile the earth lies with her wounds ignored and our healing energy is considered primitive nonsense.

You know and use my quartz in your instruments, but her energetic ability to help support harmony between you humans and the universe is ignored. Many have figured out how to use us for building things but few humans around the world remember how to listen to rocks, crystals and minerals anymore. This forgetting comes just at a point where our memory and our power are most needed by you. 

 Listen.  You are sitting on a firm foundation.  We hold the memory of creation. We can help guide the way and heal you. Listen and receive. It is time to come home to us, the rocks of the earth.”

In a few months, Howard and I are traveling to the Grand Canyon the wild, red rocks of Utah. Something happens to me when I stand on ancient rocks. I can more easily slip out of my mind, and into the now. I hear the wisdom of the rocks that spoke at the Council of Wisdom that gathered in my imagination, the rocks that adorn my writing space and the rocks that hide or loom hight all around the world around me.

This writing is excerpted from “A Circle of Wisdom” that flowed from an experience near my family’s ancestral land in North Carolina and the depths of my imagination. I’ll share parts of the wisdom I “heard”—from water, rocks, plants and animals—in this blog series.

Little Topics in Wild Times

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERALife seems wooly and wild these days. Friends in crisis—financial and otherwise. Political polarity. It feels like the earth is shaking under our feet and the waves are crashing at the shores of our lives.

I believe we are in a transition toward a new paradigm that is better than the old, but my question today is how to stand in a time when the old is crumbling but I can’t yet see the future. As summer fades into autumn, I feel drawn to the small details of life.

The bright red leaves on a few trees.

The scurrying squirrels gathering nuts.

My sit-bones as I sit in the chair.

The sounds of birds or scraping as the neighbors clean their grill in preparation for a barbeque dinner.

Noticing these little details of life helps keep me grounded as I learn how to ride the wild shifts and participate in Big Topics Conversations. As we leave the blue moon and August behind, I want to feast on the abundance of delights that are all around me when I stop long enough to notice.

Rummaging through my computer, I came across this short piece (slightly updated) that I wrote for Jen Violi’s September 12, 2012 newsletter. Jen is a writer and book coach extraordinaire.

 When I wrote those words I was just beginning my journey walking out into the world with Big Topics at Midnight. Much has happened since then, but the wild and wooly times continue. Before I dive back into preparation for my role at November’s Be Present, Inc.‘s upcoming event “Moving Forward in Action: Collective Leadership and Social Justice,” exploring “The Role of Collective Leadership in Community Organizing and Public Policy”–a rather big topic conversation–I stop to appreciate the flickering of the candle beside my computer and the brilliant orange and yellow leaves outside my window.

Photograph by Brenda Wills.

 

A Legacy of Art

Brenda drawing lighterMothers Day this year falls on the day my mother, Sue Mathys, gave birth to me fifty-nine years ago. Though Mom died when she was a year older than I am now, her presence surrounds me.

Her wooden and fiber ostriches reside in the living room. Huge cloth books lean against boxes of Big Topics at Midnight.  “Houston is Green” in fabric and embroidery hangs above my couch, reminding me that Portland is also green. Her genealogy work enabled me to dive deeply into my ancestors in my writing.

I am my mother’s daughter.

I grew up not only with art hanging on the walls but also silk-screened Christmas cards drying on the dining room floor, sketches on bits of paper around the house and half-finished stitcheries folded up beside Mom’s living room chair. Now my collages, line drawings and the art of friends surround me in my writing studio. Friends like Khara Scott-Bey, whose art fills my book, and friends like Brenda Wills.

Last week in Newport, Oregon as I read an excerpt from the chapter “Forgiveness by Grace,”* Brenda listened and sketched.  Her painting included the ocean at my back, the cathedral of the pines from my reading and me in the room.

How fitting that the artist was Brenda. She is an old friend from my early twenties, and she is one of the few people in my life today who knew my mother. Both of our mothers were artists.

Brenda and I honor our mothers and grandmothers and their art, in whatever form it flowed, on this day honoring all mothers.

*Big Topics at Midnight: A Texas Girl Wakes Up to Race, Class, Gender and Herself page 274