Thank You for all the Birthday Wishes

Tonight's sunset

Some say that the soul leaves the body at the moment of death. That it rises up to heaven. Or that it descends to receive its eternal punishment. Others say that the soul wanders around for a while or that the spirit of the dead person can return for an earthly visit, or that death is simply the end. Having held a person in my arms at the moment of his death, I still cannot say for certain.

It was my birthday today, and how can one help but ponder death on the anniversary of one's birth? Birth and death are life's bookends. So, yes, Happy Birthday to me and someday my soul will go somewhere even if that somewhere turns out to be nowhere. Meanwhile, I'm full of joy and gratitude for this life. For love, friends, family, food, drink, music, theatre, art, my good health, beauty in all of its incarnations--clouds, birds, rocks, a finely crafted sentence, a pretty scarf, and for birthday wishes.

Yesterday I read about Einstein in the New York times. THIS INFO GRAPHIC blew my 63-year-old mind. And there was this quote: "In 1907, Albert Einstein had his “happiest thought” — people in free fall do not feel their own weight. This simple idea laid the foundation for his general theory of relativity, which Einstein presented 100 years ago this month." 

If I woke up in a box, completely weightless, I wouldn't know if I were falling or floating. Maybe that's how the soul feels.

And before the sunset's color drained from the sky, the full moon appeared from behind the clouds.

Report from Pillville: The Balance of Opposites

Photo from this morning's walk along the beach in Ventura--a local artist stacks these stones.

My mom is more frail than ever but feels well.

I'm happier and stronger than I've been in a long long time but feel spent.

Those statements balance one another in a way I can't quite explain. And maybe there's balance too in the fact that my mom is sleeping more and more these days while I am sleeping less and less. And even when I do sleep, I awake feeling hung over. There's no gin involved in this, I swear--at least not for me. She is, of course, still having her martini. The balance of opposites right here in Pillville.

I almost had to sit during my T'ai Chi Chih practice yesterday. Today I opted out of yoga and took a walk. I need the sky over my head to feel the vastness of possibility. I need to be quiet.

I'm in the process of transitioning my mom into a nursing home after more than 3 years of caring for her in my house. I'm filling out the forms for Medi-Cal and Iowa Medicaid. I'm gathering documentation. I'm making travel plans and not making travel plans. I'm formulating a Plan A and a Plan B and wondering if they are mutually exclusive while wondering if both of them will fall away.

I'm sitting on the couch in my living room as I write this, wholly aware of the sound of her breathing in her room, while feeling that I'm barely breathing at all.

My heart is in Indiana with the man that I love and my heart is here, heavy as a stone, and so light it is a tower reaching for the sky.

This morning's walk took me past the estuary. Here it is looking inland--and looking out to the sea, just like me.

The path I was on took me under the freeway, framing a perfect view of the hills,
and it took me across the railroad tracks. Travel plans, vistas, hopes, dreams,manifested through a camera lens-- and if you look closely at the photo below you'll see a white cross in the lower left. I didn't see it when I took the photo.

This Morning

It's morning. I come downstairs and do what I always do. Coffee. Pull up the window shades. And this particular morning I talk with my friend L who is flying back to Hawaii. How long have you two known each other, the nurse asks. L and I laugh. Three days, she says. But she's known Dan for 50 years, I say.

I tell Dan I'm taking L down the street to catch a shuttle that will take her to LAX. Tell him I'll be right back. Kiss his head. There's activity under his eyelids, and he tries to say something.

When I return I sweep the floor, stopping by his bed, which is in my living room, to kiss him or lay my hand on his head. I tell him I'm back. That his daughter is upstairs. That his family will be here soon. Friends too, maybe, I say.  I unload the dishwasher as quietly as I can. Drink coffee. Take out the trash. Throw in a load of laundry. These are the things that need doing even when there's someone you love lying in your living room actively dying. A hospice phrase. Actively dying. Right now, it seems like Dan and I are dividing that phrase in two.

I talk to him. Read him some of Jack Gilbert's poems. Then I turn my attention to the piles of things on my kitchen island. I take cookies out of their bags and arrange them onto plates. The candy that L brought from Hawaii into bowls. The strawberries that K brought into a bigger bowl. Bright red into green. Beautiful opposites. I peel all the stickers off the bananas so they look prettier. Are these the things a person should do when someone you love is actively dying just across the room? The nurse suggests a basket so all of the morphines and other medicines can be tucked inside instead of strewn across the counter. I pull one out. Perfect, she says. Thank you, I tell her.

Then I settle onto the couch. Open my laptop. I am actively living.