Death of Fear and the Beauty of Death
Tears
over fears
of what’s to come
Husband such a
precious soul…
Stay in the present
Enjoy every moment
of together
It is fleeting…
Bipolar mind
medications
fight living
in the present
So unZen
Why can’t I
just be
like before
breakdown and
before medications
Why can’t I
be jolly with he
whom I worship
Why the constant
chatter of
loud thoughts
Would that I could
go with him
when it comes time
And if not
hope that I can
help with his
last breath
Secretly
I want to
be the first
to go
quite selfishly
He who cared
for so many
deserves that I
care from me
for him
and more
Would that
each moment
were not filled
with looking
at Illness
Old age
and Death
and the fragility
Of having a body.
Illusion Crumbles
Age has crept up on us
like a thief in the night
I think
as I watch the clock hands
remain stuck on 1:30
as I wait
in the third doctor’s office
in six days
with my newly retired husband
ill again
with the illness
that drove him
from his beloved work
with the poorest of the poor
mentally ill
and I wonder
as I worry
about him
how did he do it
and why
and why
did he marry me
taking my major mental illness
as a dowry
and I wonder
how did it happen
that we got so old
we look at people
30 years our junior
on the TV
in the waiting room
and think ourselves
like them
but we are not
old age has crept in
like a thief in the night
were we always broken
cast under a veil
of delusion
which now becomes
seen at times
as bodies
fall ill
and age creeps in
are we finally seeing
the unreality of the “reality”?
The Cycle of Life
Youth unfolding
in the bright sunlight
blossoming in shade
‘tainted’ by age
becoming fragile
the delicacy of death
From an old Dahlia series, attempting to show the robust beauty of new life as it grows older, finally reaching the unsung beauty of death.
September Mind
September sunlight dances on drying leaves, sparkling like diamonds against a flowing stream, an azure sky. The plants of summer are dying. Flowers that have given such joy all summer long are now spurned by us as they shrivel into the paradoxical beauty of old age. The sun burns lightly on summer-drenched skin as clouds intrude intermittently into the almost- Autumn interlude– a gentle foretaste of the cold to come. The last butterflies of summer flit among the blossoming Goldenrod and browning Joe Pie Weed.
The beauty of Fall is the beauty of a dying season. It is the season of death– an alternative to the dew-like bloom of youth in Spring.
When I was very young, I felt death in nature. I could feel what it must feel like to be a tree or a flower—to just “be”—the Buddhist dictum which I cannot now master. In my late twenties, my mind broke into smithereens like shattered glass, and I had a choice to make between going on psych meds or going to hospital. I chose the former and have lived some 40 years more with that choice. I will not say it was a happy choice, at the risk of sounding ungrateful, because I have become driven into a fury of manic activity and self-seeking in stark contrast to the just “being” of my early youth. The psych meds have dispelled my “egolessness” which, in turn, makes me more able to “function”– at a price. For I no longer feel the waves of peace lapping at the shores of my mind and my religious feelings have, comparatively speaking, shriveled up like the summer flowers in the Fall. “It’s always a trade-off” I am told over and over again. My doc told me once that I am one of the lucky ones because for some people the meds don’t work at all. That shut me up and those words periodically pump gratitude into my system. I have remained med-compliant mainly because the meds have kept me out of hospital, DO allow me to function, and, most importantly, I have discovered that being able to function means allowing me to love.
And although more self-seeking, paradoxically this med-induced functionality allows me to give back to the world. My gift is to describe the “just- being” in nature that was imprinted indelibly on my mind when I was young. Death seemed beautiful to me then, a state of simply being at one with the soul of nature. Now I confess to a fear of dying, rather than a fear of death, but most of all, a fear of loss of the love of my life. For we are in the September of our lives and all is intensified now that we are more aware of our finiteness. Truth be told this was always potentially the case, but we lived, like most youth, in the inevitable delusion of immortality.
So I function now at the cost of loss of my revered altered states of consciousness. Perhaps I am in September mind, channeling words and images of the beauty of nature that flooded me long ago are a mere trickle now, as my time to “just be,” once more for this time round, approaches.
“Let’s Just Hold Hands”
They have been married for 52 years.
Now she is in rehab
on a feeding tube,
a phantom of her former self,
so frail.
And he is hail
for her.
He says to her:
“Let’s not talk about the past.
Let’s not talk about the future.
Let’s just sit here and hold hands.”
And so they sat for three hours
until the darkness fell.
Old Barn with Window View
Could not resist the lovely curve of the roof of this little red barn– some might call old age sag.
