On Grace

I’ve grown weary of recounting the harms of my past. I’m starting to feel they aren’t any of my business. Where’s the utility? A perverse comfort, to continue to hurt my own feelings by compulsively revisiting all the things that can’t be changed.
My teenage years were fraught. The power struggles with my father, in particular, caused deep injury. His pride, paired with my mother’s passivity, was an abusive force that directly contributed to a period of homelessness and vulnerability that I now, as a mother, look back on with dismay. I don’t know that I’ll ever know how to make sense of some of the choices my parents made back then. However, those experiences directly informed some of my most dearly held values and very much contributed to how I relate to my children. It turns out I’ve always been trustworthy, I’ve always cared. The opportunity to heal, to love and forgive myself and others despite the rocky past, is possibly a bigger gift to me than had it not happened at all. The pain has transmuted into something beautiful, something I’d never ever trade. I love my father and count him as a dear friend. It’s messy and it’s the truth.

My dad had a second stroke last week. He’s suicidal, despondent. It’s our worst fear for him, really, after over a year of work to heal from the first one. The first stroke paralyzed the entire right side of his body and affected his cognition and emotions. He was just starting to walk with a cane more confidently, and I believe he was starting to really accept this version of his life. This recent stroke affects his vision and balance. He’s experiencing near constant vertigo and is seeing double. This all has caused a depression that leaves him unable to access the spiritual perspective on suffering and struggle that he had so much access to in his younger years.

This has felt very tragic to those of us that know his heart. He spent his entire adult life studying the human condition, seeking out connection with those who were in pain, who couldn’t see a way out. He had an entire career dedicated to helping addicts and alcoholics access hope. He regularly wrote letters to people in prison, he visited friends in hospice. He sponsored countless addicts and went to countless funerals. He deeply valued the role of being a kind and steady witness to someone’s struggle. He wrote letters and sent birthday and anniversary cards. He and I developed a sweet friendship as our relationship healed. Often the most meaningful points of connection between us was around existential themes. The books I have on my shelves about “dying well” are all from him. And despite it all, he seems trapped inside himself, consistently musing about how unfair this all is and how he can’t find any purpose in it, how he’d just like to die. We try to take it all in stride- to empathize and witness and just concretely love him. But there’s also a part of me that is struggling in a similar way, but not about his physical condition. I don’t like it, but I accept that the body experiences events such as these. I struggle to accept that he can’t seem to find meaning in any of it, that he’s done all of this intentional work in his life and is stuck in the most short-sighted perspective of all. I now think of him in two versions, and I wish I could call up the old pre-stroke version to come and counsel him. I think the old version would be very sad and surprised to find him like this. Discomfort and fear and pain and doubt, sure. Hopelessness and despair? That’s where I start to struggle and feel that it’s cosmically unfair. I talked to both my mom and sister about these ideas. We all seem to feel similarly. My sister said that now is the time to just pray for grace.

Last night I dreamed that he was content in a room filled with our family. I tickled him a little. We both were laughing and peaceful. But then I watched as his face grew still and serious and then looked confused. He began to morph and his features seemed to move- something fluid and powerful was moving through him and making him lose his form. I watched him become afraid and he stood up in protest. I moved quickly and caught him, holding strong as he flopped around in my arms. The storm of the energy slowed and I began to rock him, praying and trying to shush and soothe him.
I woke up early, tired of dreaming. I made myself a cup of coffee and sat in the dark by myself, meditating on grace. It feels true what my sister said, that it’s all that’s left for us to do. Grace. It’s my namesake, but I don’t meditate on the meaning very often. The more we cling to our deserving the more elusive it is. Divine love, washing over us, pure undeserved gift. It occurs to me that it was grace that healed those rifts between me and my dad back in the day. Subtle waves of it, working on us both over the years. It’s grace that has helped me transform it all into active love in my life- now unwilling to trade the pain of the past for anything. The potential is really limitless. Perhaps I can lay down tonight and revisit those visions of my dad, but instead see the forces moving through his changing body being the warm and loving energies of his infinite belonging in the world. He may not be able to feel it right now, but I believe it’s there and it’s true. And it certainly can’t hurt for my heart to turn towards grace in a time like this, for surely I need it as well.
One of my very favorite poems comes to mind now.

The Peace of Wild Things
By Wendell Berry
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
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Grace I am so sorry to learn of the deep emotional pain that is affecting your father and also the rest of your family. Through all the mess it is important to acknowledge the need for a space to grieve. Loss of autonomy can cause such a range of emotions, but grief and bereavement are not often given the space or consideration it deserves.
I hope you will find this helpful as I have:
“The Grieving Brain” by Mary-Frances O’Connor touches on how our the synapses in our brain can go so deeply into such dysfunction when we lose a part of ourselves that we are physically wired to. Perhaps the perspective will be helpful.
I wish all of you wellness, peace and comfort.
With Metta,
Friend on FB and from eons ago at LJ
Grace, your compassionate and honest ability to express your experience is invaluable for others who need to think about being in yours or your father’s position. The vertigo and double vision are so difficultly impactful. Perhaps it’s temporary. I wish for clarity on everyone’s part: vision for a future.
“This all has caused a depression that leaves him unable to access the spiritual perspective on suffering and struggle that he had so much access to in his younger years.”
This line prompted me to seek the words of someone much more articulate than me. I was drawn this piece of practical wisdom from an old friend:
“”As the body begins to die, the Upanishads say, the vital energy that throbs in the senses is withdrawn. The eyes cannot see, the ears cannot hear, the skin cannot feel; vitality is withdrawn into the mind, so the body can no longer move or respond to external stimuli. Yet even though the eyes cannot see nor the ears hear, there is still the agony of deprivation and bereavement in the mind. All the fierce attachments that we have cultivated throughout life now tie us down in the mind, so completely that we cannot break free and death has to tear us away.
“”My grandmother, who was not intellectually oriented, had a vivid way of getting this point across. I remember asking her why death should involve so much suffering. She didn’t answer directly; she just told me to go sit in a big wooden chair there in our ancestral home. “You hold on to this chair as hard as you can,” she said. “I’m going to try to pull you out.” I held on to the chair with all my might, and she began to pull. She was a strong woman, and when she started to pull I thought my arms were going to come off, but I held on for all I was worth. Finally, despite all my resistance, she wrenched me out of the chair. “That hurt, Granny,” I said. “Let’s try it again,” she replied, “but this time don’t hold on.” I didn’t, and there was no struggle, no pain; she raised me effortlessly and gracefully into her arms.””
Sending mantrams…
https://www.bmcm.org/inspiration/easwaran/mantram-time-death/