Category: Uncategorized

Friends

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She said it without tears.

“I’ve just been diagnosed with dementia. It’s been an awful week.”

We are five women friends who have met for over three years in this friendship circle. We have trusted each other with our life stories, have spoken traumas into a our shared space knowing they will not be carried beyond the circle, and we have treasured and affirmed the small graces we have learned to look for in our own and each others’ lives.

“It is early stage dementia,” she said.

I felt her words like a 25-pound weight in my belly. “I’m so sorry,” I said. The silence that encompassed the circle of friends was not awkward but felt like hands holding her with love.

She eventually told us what had led her to seek an opinion, the tests that were part of the diagnosis, and what she wanted to do over the next weeks to be ready — as ready as one can be — for what was to come.

I have not been able to let go of the image of her on C’s back patio last Friday. Clear eyed, her voice strong, but a slight tremor of fear as she talked about paperwork and downsizing possessions. I am praying for her to find strength and hope in each day as she journeys on this path. And I am praying for me to be brave enough to seek testing also — whether it is for a baseline level of functioning or a full-blown diagnosis of that which I most deeply dread.

Dementia runs in both sides of my family tree. I am terrified of losing my cognitive ability and feel dread every time I struggle to find a name or when I get distracted and miss a meeting or date I’ve scheduled with someone. I have come to accept that I can no longer multi task and that everything I do seems to take more time than before. But the thought of not being able to plan, follow a thought, or remember myself or others brings a panicky fear that is hard to dismiss.

I am grateful that my friendship circle can offer care and comfort to each of us. Each of us have busy lives and limited time. But the investment of time and trust and love is worth it. I am reminded of that each time I risk to share my vulnerability in this group. At times like my friend’s diagnosis it is friends who know you most deeply who are likely not to run away but to offer their presence, a pot of soup, or sit with you while you cry.

I am fortunate to have three friendship circles formed over various years of my life. I’ve known one circle for forty years and each of us have lived and changed and grown through what seem like many different lifetimes. A second circle meets virtually now because we are scattered throughout the States — but our bond is treasured and our monthly check-ins are prioritized on our calendars.

As a young woman I did not prize friendships and when I would move from one place to another friendships often fizzled due to distance. I cherish friendships now and have renewed several from long ago through the “magic” of the internet and Zoom and Facetime. Knowing someone deeply, trusting each other, remembering things said, laughing together, remembering shared experiences and seeing them with different eyes are too precious in this world to forego.

We need each other — especially in this divisive time when some around us choose to magnify and demonize differences. I believe it is our nature as human beings to long for connection. Friendships have taught me to value connections and to set aside expectations of agreement in favor of being patient and curious about another’s life experience. And when I need help to ask for it and to offer it when a friend is in need.

What will our friend need as the future unfolds for us all? We cannot be certain. But we will journey with her and she with us. God willing and inshallah.

Change and Transformation

While the word change normally refers to new beginnings, real transformation happens more often when something falls apart. 

Richard Rohr

Transformation

Change is inevitable. It is a necessary part of living — as necessary as shedding its too-tight skin is for the caterpillar.

The remarkable process of transformation begins with change but over time moves inevitably through three stages. Change is at the start and begins with losing something or someone essential (or at least very important) to us. With the loss we leave the familiar and enter an unknown territory — lost without a map to discern where we have landed or to guide us to back to the familiar. We want to “go home” but we have not yet realized that we cannot go home again. We don’t trust that we can find our way — either back to the familiar or forward to something new and survivable. When we are about to give up hope, there comes a faint glimmer of possibility — and if we move however cautiously towards it we find ourselves coming into a new space that beckons us to a more expansive life than we could have imagined possible before.

Yet transformation begins with pain — with the death of what served us well in the past but has constricted life in the present. Like the caterpillar that feels an irresistable drive to slip off its caterpillar identity and reveal the chrysalis beneath, transformation is not something we initially welcome but an involuntary entry into unknown territory. It often arrives with that heart-stopping “sound” of something precious cracking open, breaking. It commands our attention — we cannot ignore it. It might come as a life threatening diagnosis, a loss of a job we thought was secure, a sinkhole appearing under our home’s foundation, a pandemic shut down that isolates us from loved ones. When we realize what is being broken, our human response is to rush toward what is breaking open and fix it or repair it as we would a wound or hold onto it so it won’t go away. And that may work for awhile, but such “fixes” cannot hold the life force that is expanding beyond what contained it and will eventually open to new ways of seeing and being in our world. Transformation, in my experience, begins there, with that cracking open of something we have relied upon and thought was unchangeable but may no longer serve us — whether we realize it or not.

While we are in the middle of the transformation process, we cannot see those possibilities or new visions anymore than a 5 year old girl can imagine the pleasure and pain of a body that experiences pregnancy and birth.

What has given me hope in the midst of the many transformation processes I’ve experienced is knowing these three stages have always been part of whatever has at first felt like loss. From a long life filled with repeated experiences of the transformation process, I have learned I can trust that there will always — however long it takes — be a richer part of life after I have let go of what has been.

Letting go is always bittersweet and sometimes downright awful and wrenching. And I can truthfully tell you that there is nothing that makes that part easier — or that ends the longing to “go back” in some fashion to revisit what I had or who I was. But knowing that the process of transformation will inevitably open to something life giving helps me to slowly let go of what was and turn away from looking back. I can dwell in what is not yet clear when I trust that in the cosmic cycle of loss, chaos, and renewal there will yet be new life that I cannot even imagine. Even in death.

Hurricane Ida (don’t forget Fred)

Two hurricanes in two weeks. . .in eastern Pennsylvania??

OK. I know we didn’t get what one would typically call a hurricane with destructive winds over 100 mph, an an eye in the center, and torrential rain. But where I live in eastern Pennsylvania Hurricane IDA was enough of a hurricane to fill our rain gauge to overflowing (officially 8+ inches of rain) and damaging winds that left branches strewn about our yard.

But we were lucky. My nephew two counties away had hip deep flooding in his basement that swamped the efforts of three pumps and destroyed wiring, drywall, furniture and carpeting. Near his house — within 40 miles in different directions — three different tornadoes touched down and destroyed houses and life dreams of many families.

IDA delivered her deluge in our town on top of ground soaked to the limit by Hurricane/Tropical Storm Fred the week prior. A sponge that is full cannot take on additional water and only sheds the new torrent. And so it did.

If only we could persuade such superabundance of rain to go west and drench Lake Powell, put out the fires so delirious at the prospect of devouring dead pines and lived-in houses whose owners, like the ones not far from my nephew’s, had dreams for their futures that are now ash.

Today’s blue cloudless skies deny the whirlwind that filled yesterday with untamed winds and water that refused to comply with streams or drainage ponds. All summer here in eastern PA we longed for, prayed for, watched anxiously for rain that would soften and penetrate the baked clay soil that was my vegetable garden. Strawberries and raspberries fruited in profusion until mid-June when clouds no longer yielded more than thunder. Watering seeds and tiny plantlets with a hose was a futile gesture of spiritless hope without supplemental raindrops every week or two.

I suspect it is one more changing cycle born of climate change and an abundance of CO2. Spring showers . . . then drought for two summer months then . . . (dare I name it?) hurricane season in the northeast. Still, I know my family is lucky to have blue sky above, a dry house, electric power, an abundance of tiny yellow sugary tomatoes, and a cat that sleeps soundly once the torrent ceases.

Mr. B sleeping after a sleepless night

Windblown . . .

The wind last night, I am told, was sustained at 30 mph with gusts to over 50 mph. It seemed much stronger. It frightened me and I could not fall asleep until there were long pauses of calm. Then I would awaken again at the sound as the wind arose again like a locomotive bearing down on our small house.

The house is sturdy and it held firmly against the night’s fury — unlike a car in the wind. My sister and I sat in her car earlier during daylight, eating lunch together as we shared time and space . . . a luxury after the year of isolation with Covid restrictions and her immunocompromised status. But as we sat in the car we watched the sky become inky black and knew rain was to come. What surprised us, though, was the wind. It seemed to explode on us with a strength I had never seen. It blew the rain horizontal — I’ve seen that before — but blew so strongly that an older couple we saw crossing the parking lot in front of us could not take a step toward their car. Against the oncoming wind they could barely keep their footing except by grasping each other and leaning full weight into the blast.

The sound of such wind is what scares me. It is unearthly. Not quite a yell. Definitely not a moan. It is a steady fierce pushing energy that seems like it will never let up until it flattens whatever is in its way. As I listen to it in our bed in the darkeness, I am aware that I am holding my breath — or is the wind making it hard to breathe by literally stealing my breath away? The steady sound growls and grows. . .then changes to a slight whistle, then stillness until the next gust.

Wind is cleansing, blowing away the detritis of dead blossoms and winter’s dried, curled leaves covering the base of shrubs as protection from the cold. It is friend and housekeeper — but also an energy that will grow and blow and refuse to bend to the command to stop. When will it be still again?

I finally fall asleep. And when I awake to sun and light breeze, I breathe deeply of the earthy smell of spring . . . wondering why I fear a sound in the night . . .

Everything??

If God said, ‘Rumi, pay homage to everything that has helped you enter my arms,’ there would not be one experience of my life, not one thought, not one feeling, nor any act, I would not bow to. ― Rumi

Everything? Is it true that I have to consider everything as leading to you, God? Even tragic events? Yes, I can see how once I get over my shock or anger and begin to let awareness of sadness and grief seep in I begin to turn to you and either cry out for justice or just cry in your arms.

Even illness? Yes, I can see how when I feel alone in dealing with my own or another dear one’s diagnosis there is no where else to turn but to your listening ear. Even losses?

Earlier this week I was reading through the pages of a journal I had poured my heart into some 15 years ago. I had just moved from Reading to Memphis Tennessee to take a job as a chaplain and therapist at St. Mary’s Episcopal School. The new priest at the church where I had been a part-time associate for several years and which paid my benefits asked me to resign so he could choose new staff. With both my husband and I having preexisting conditions, we had no way to private pay the steep insurance fees that group insurance coverage had made more affordable. My private counseling practice was booming but ironically insurance reimbursements were decreasing for all mental health providers. I had less money to pay for escalating insurance costs. So I looked for salaried work with benefits — first in Reading where I lived, then looking wider in all of Pennsylvania, then anywhere in the states and Canada where there was work for which I could qualify.

I had forgotten until I read my journal how exactly work in Memphis had come about. All I remembered was the pain of my applications at age 58 being ignored, and the panic that was my constant companion. Then a journal entry jumped off the page. It retold what I had forgotten — how moving to Memphis, Tennessee, from Reading, Pennsylvania had happened. It was a convoluted tale of resumes and application letters lost in the mail and a reference not responding when they promised me. I had almost given up finding something, my energy flagging and fear waking me in the middle of the night with bad dreams. A person sitting next to me in a continuing education counseling workshop — someone I had never met before — heard I was looking for priest or counseling positions and asked if I had applied at St. Mary’s Episcopal School in Memphis. It was a progressive school she said and they needed a full time chaplain.

I had, indeed, seen the ad somewhere but it wasn’t of interest — too far away from family and my only daughter whom I felt needed me closer than Memphis, TN. But I took the comment as a sign and applied — they were almost done with their search but were intrigued by my application and the rest is history. We moved to Memphis in July 2010 just before the term began. Bill and I enjoyed Memphis and I enjoyed everything there and at SMES.

Everything?? Yes, in my life I have learned from repeated lessons that what is tragic, painful, and initially causes grief and loss may hold within it a hidden gift. Never, no never, would I ever have chosen the pain, trauma or grief in any of the multiple events of my life that wounded me. But now I know to trust that if I let the pain and sadness and struggle into my awareness I will be changed but there is something more. I will not shrink from feeling my feelings. I trust that somewhere on the other side of it there will be new growth — an opening to the Light . . . some small gift in the pain that will lead me toward new life even as my wound forms its scab of protection. If I wait with expectation and look for it, the Light comes — eventually — and comes with a gift every time.

Sisters

My sister is the one I turn to when I want to share something. She always helps me feel better if I’m feeling scared or sad. I know she is there and loves me. If something wonderful has happened, she knows just how to celebrate.

It hasn’t always been easy between us. I am the Elsa, the oldest sister. She is the Anna, the younger of us by 6 years. When I graduated from college, I went home until I began work on another academic degree. Karen was almost 16 and as a middle child was a peacemaker and very sensitive and compassionate. My parents and I were having a tough time — conflict arose between me and my Dad. He was a military chaplain and I was an activist whose antiwar stance was rooted in the values of the faith my parents had instilled in me.

Karen was then in her late teens and admired me as her big sister. She was caught between our parents and me. I saw her as siding with our Dad. Although she tried her darndest to strike up conversations with me and even mimicked how I dressed. I avoided her. I resented her company when she asked to ride into town with me whenever I left the house.

Why did I feel that way? I didn’t like who I had become — I was lonely and lost without my campus comrades. I was struggling to work out what believed, what I loved and what I wanted to do rather than simply what I opposed. I had more questions than answers at that time, and I didn’t feel like any kind of healthy model for anyone else.

Karen’s admiration made me painfully aware of how lost I felt. One evening she followed me to my car and asked if she could come along. Something in me snapped. I don’t remember what I said but I know it was hurtful because I wanted her to leave me alone. I chose to verbally attack her where it would hurt most. It took many difficult years for her to let me near her heart again. She built a wall to protect herself from my hurt. Eventually my apologies and attempts at rebuilding trust met her brave risk at opening herself to me. Now we share hearts and even souls. Her life has blessed me in many ways. I am grateful.

Justice

Flickering flame. . . Come and blaze brightly in this world, Illuminate the malevolent prejudices we hide from ourselves or dare only speak in whispers to fellow travelers. Come, spark of justice, now bent and blown but not extinguished . . .shrunken,    choked, contained in lanterns and candlesticks and words on crumbling paper. Leap, Flame! Leap free and burn away the fragile cages we have built around you. Leap, Flame! Burn away the darkness and cowardice in us. Leap, Flame! Light the inhumanity of the past and present so we cannot excuse our sin. And then enlighten us. Kindle the dead wood of our hearts into wild bonfires of action that cannot be contained by counterfeit militias or white-robed pretenders. Set the desire for Justice ablaze in every heart.. Blaze, flame, leap heavenward! Dance flame, dance until all the world is full of Light . . .  and darkness and death        shall be no more.

Spring 2020

Mini Iris that are beginning to bloom just now.

What a magician this late spring weather is this year. I have been lured outside and much of my sadness banished with this strong dose of warmth and sunlight.

The winds are still raging as they have been all spring. Changes in our climate have brought a new experience of strong and consistent high winds that can gust at times up to 60 mph or more. And it has been a bitterly cold until this week. We had 5 nights during the last two weeks of April that covered the grass with a frosty white blanket and left primroses and bleeding hearts with limp, brown-edged leaves. Friday, May 1, was hopefully the last frost of the year.

In my closet I didn’t bother to switch out my winter wools, long sleeves, and heavy weight jeans. It was too cold to wear short sleeves or lighter capris . . . until this past Saturday. That morning found me scrambling to dig out a t-shirt and my Duluth Trading roll-up pants. I had only half-heartedly ventured outside before Saturday — briefly checking to see what was poking up in the garden, what was blooming, and picking the occasional weed before dashing back into the house to warm myself with hot coffee.

This weekend was the “switch”. It often seems that the weather gets stuck in a cold cycle in the spring and then like a flipped switch it gentles out into a soothing warmth. Plants that have been holding their green energy tightly burst from the ground and within days are budding and blooming. They surge upward, their leaves transforming ephemeral light into new leaves and blossoms.

Within me must remain a remnant of photosynthesis and a legacy from the plant world. Sunlight always works a transformation in my body. Energy that has been held tightly and unavailable through the cold and dark winter is released in me as I step into the sunlight. What in the cold of early spring seemed overwhelming and not worth an effort, suddenly beckons my interest and piques my energy. Weeding? Check. Fixing the tangled and damaged netting on the garden? Sure. Deadheading and tying up the daffodils? Can’t wait. Turning over the garden beds with a spade and hoe? I can do that this morning.

I work slowly (my aging body doesn’t move as fast as a younger me), but with energy that lasts through the whole day and into the next.

As late spring’s gentle warmth moves into summer’s sweaty heat and humidity, my energy will flag again. But until that time is here, I will marvel at the wonderful transformation created by sunlight in a body that remembers the legacy of green plants.

When?

I have not written for a long time. I have had little energy for writing. My heart has been ripped in two by multiple losses and griefs. I imagine probably yours has, too. When will this end? When will I figure out what this means? When will I stop crying?

I know there are no firm answers. As Rilke advises, “We must live the questions.” An RN who works in an ICU wrote to me about the hypervigilance that she had worked so hard to let of as a trauma/abuse survivor, but that has returned with tears as both bane and protection in her work with Covid 19 patients. The following is a reflection that I wrote back to her:

Tears are good things (as you know). They are cleansing, exhausting (pushing us toward sleep), and actually help rid our bodies of some toxic chemicals. Don’t stop them when they come.

You are experiencing what is normal and adaptive in an abnormal situation.  You are not crazy, bad, abnormal.  And I wish I could predict for you and others what the recovery will be from this PTSD . . . but I can’t.  Life and our experience of recovery is in the future and we are headed toward a future that (at this time) we can no longer envision.  It isn’t clear.  We can only live in the present with trust (also called faith) that we are not alone, that there is a Loving and Healing Presence that walks with us through life and death.  

We are part of a larger reality that is rebalancing itself in a shocking way (to us) in order to survive.  We as humans have been consuming and using up what we needed instead of caring for and protecting it for the future.  The earth has reached a tipping point where the balance has shifted drastically and what we are experiencing in this rebalancing is different and completely unfamiliar.  It won’t go back to what was.  What will come we don’t yet know.  But those who survive this (probably not those of us over 70) will adjust to and settle into that new reality.  Who will be left it is not ours to know.

What I think is important now is to be present with as much compassion as we can muster — compassion for others and also in large measure for ourselves.  It is compassion/empathy/service in these times that differentiates genuine humanity from the monstrous evildoers.   You are one of the compassionate ones.

I offer you a prayer from our prayerbook that I just read: This is another day, O Lord. I know not what it will bring forth, but make me ready, Lord, for whatever shall be. If I am to stand up, help me to stand bravely. If I am to sit still, help me to sit quietly. If I am to lie low, help me to do it patiently. If I am to do nothing, let me do it gallantly. Make these words more than words and give me the spirit of Jesus.

I will be repeating this prayer today . . . for you, for my sister in hospital, and for me.  

Choices

It is March 21, two days after the Spring Equinox in 2020. We are experiencing the ‘shelter in place’ response to the Covid-19 virus pandemic. And in the midst of dire predictions and the constant tally of numbers of infected and dead, I am grateful for signs of life in the world around me. Crocuses and daffodils and strawberry plants greening up . . . and the sun which is out today for the first time in several days.

Much of my ‘sheltering time’ has allowed me to sew placemats using strips I have sewn together from scraps. I delight in the colors that blend and contrast. These simple table top pieces help me to feel that I have done something productive and they will be appreciated by others. I have also been cooking and cleaning as is necessary with so much staying at home time.

This period of time has also fed my reflective nature and I have been thinking of what is an important consideration in this time of Covid-19 (but that you might consider macabre). Medical care may be in short supply if this virus overwhelms hospitals as it is expected to do (and is doing in some places). There are choices we need to make for ourselves concerning what kind of care we want if we contract the virus.

I am over 65 and have several conditions that put me at risk of getting Covid-19. It is not crazy to think about what would happen if I become seriously ill. Many elders with Covid-19 have needed a ventilator to breathe for them. I could well be one of many persons whose bodies would need the aid of ventilators, the care of trained nurses and doctors, and a bed in an ICU.

Now, believe me, I love life and enjoy so-o-o many things: family, gardening, creativity, volunteering. I hope to lead a long and relatively active life into my 80’s or longer. I work hard at staying healthy and keeping my body and mind resilient and strong through exercise and healthy diet. Nonetheless, I have not been invincible health-wise and although I will follow precautions against falling prey to this virus, I cannot control what may happen.

Long ago I had “the talk” with my daughter and my husband and my extended family about what I want them to know about my end of life wishes. I initiated “the talk” because I did not want them to have to guess what I would want or to take on guilt about having to make hard decisions if I was not consciously aware and unable to make them myself.

When the choice to be made is about who can receive life-saving care or have use of a ventilator — a person in their 70’s or 80’s or a younger person with a family or career ahead of them — there is only one choice of whom should receive that care. I want to live many more years — but not at the expense of a younger healthier person. This is not an idle daydream. Reports from Italy, the Middle East, and even Washington state and California talk of the wave of patients with the virus that has overwhelmed hospitals, staff, and available ventilators. Doctors are right now having to make choices of which patient to put on limited life-saving ventilators. And the wisest choice is to try to save those who have the possibility of a longer life. Palliative (pain-lessening) care should be offered to others — those who are elders or who may have conditions that are already limiting them.

While I hope it doesn’t come to that, my choice is made and I’m ok with that. I long ago made my peace with knowing I will not get out of this life alive.

Please think about the choices you want to make about the care you desire whenever you are facing death. And share your choices with your loved ones. If you want a gentle yet powerful resource to help you with this, check out Five Wishes https://fivewishes.org/shop/order/product/five-wishes.

Blessings,

Jane