A place to talk death and dying issues
Comments
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So, I've been thinking about my online connections made through the common ties of cancer, especially breast cancer. I've been reflecting too on how deaths affect the dying and their survivors differently.
For many years, I've been an active participant in an online group for others who've experienced the Commonweal Cancer Help Program. Many of our members, including some of my favorite correspondents, have died and I continue to have conversations with them in my mind and to shelter them in my heart.
When I think about dying, I think about encountering them again and feel happy.
Yet, most of them, I've held in my arms, shared a belly laugh and tears, been relaxed and passionate with.
xxx
I have very different online connections with others whose blogs I read. I sometimes leave comments, but seldom engage in ongoing conversations about mutual concerns. We've not hugged or held hands in person.
While many other cancer blogs chronicle the writers' recoveries, I'm especially drawn to blogs whose authors recognize the presence and inevitability of death - no matter how hard they're working to survive.
Here are a few of my favorite blogs my now deceased cancer bloggers:
https://www.caringbridge.org/visit/evasaulitis
http://gracefulwomanwarrior.com
http://juliadarling.co.uk/julias-diary/
www.earthandskylotus.wordpress.com
https://saraelhassani.wordpress.com/latest-posts/
https://mylifewithbreastcancer.wordpress.com
https://www.caringbridge.org/visit/mariagraysonmetaxas/journal
This week, I received word that Elizabeth of Sky Between Branches died. I didn't know her, yet her death hit me hard - maybe because she was so young, an incredible writer, a unique soul, someone who tried to hard to live, but needed to surrender into dying. Her honesty and forthrightness changed her readers, including me. She shone light on taboo topics like living with a stoma, mental illness, difficult medical choices and death. Little seemed to be hidden from her readers - or from her fierce insight.
My life is both enriched and released by who she is, how she lived and how she died. Grief and gratitude twine close together, just like wellness and illness, life and death.
I've been changed by these women who write, share, explore and journey on.
It's impossible to know if we'll meet in-person or online friends after my death. I hope so! They have been my guides into the beyond. I would like to thank them.
This morning's meander has no real destination, yet change is real. Gratitude is real. Love, joy and connection are real.
Thanks for meandering with me and maybe stopping by to visit some of these bloggers who live on online and in my memory.
warmest healing wishes and loving kindness, Stephanie
P.S. This post doesn't even mention the many loved ones and strangers I've been physically present with at and around the time of their deaths. What an honor!
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Stephanie, thank you for your insight, about everything. I like that you leave resources for others, and encouragement. I have a hard time following everyone's online names and matching it to your real names.
I'm on Round 2 of CMF, and despite seeing a 100 point drop in my tumor marker (CA 27/29), I feel more symptomatic. I feel like I'm ungrateful for the good news, because I feel like crap. I've been fighting 3 years and feel like I'm moving toward death. Is this what it feels like? I'm propped up with a host of medications that treat symptoms of the medications. What am I doing to myself? I feel like I can't stop treatment until I have tried everything available to me. Otherwise, my husband & kids will think I gave up. At this point, I think death maybe a reprieve that I am longing for.
Thank you for allowing me to have this safe place to say all that. I read all of your intimate thoughts and feel like it's ok for me to admit that I'm feeling defeat. Much love and peace, Shelle
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When my Dad was dying of lung cancer and I was talking to him, he said if he knew he was going to die anyway, then he would have skipped chemo. It made him sick for his last 2 years. He didn't live two more years, it took him two years to die!
But how do we know......
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Barbe, When my dad was dying of lung cancer, he willingly undertook chemotherapy for 7 months. It may have prolonged his life, but didn't medically improve his quality of life, cancer growth rate, time in the hospital. When the chemo was clearly making him too sick to function, he stopped and thought he'd have six months to live a wonderful life. He died a week later.
I believe that most human beings are willing to sacrifice "living better" for "living longer"...so they take their medicine with the hopes of more time.
This seems to be human nature and I do understand, even if I seek to live differently and better than my dad did. To die differently too.
btw, those last months were some of the best in my dad's life - he was visited by friends and family from near and far, cared for by those he'd served in AA, enjoyed his medical caregivers and even performed at his pre-memorial - a 35th AA birthday held less than 2 days before he died. Over 200 admirers attended and many more wrote in. He was well loved and died knowing it.
Loving well is my measure of the good life, not the length of time one is granted.
Each of us must make our own decisions that affect the balance of quantity and quality of our lifetimes.
xxx
Shelley, I don't have the pressure of husband and kids who'd like me to try everything possible to stay alive for them. I can't even imagine what that is like. Four years ago my situation was dire and I assembled a circle of caring friends and family to help me die with a good quality of life. We've had a great time and I haven't died yet. But what I have is a sense of the seamlessness of living and dying.
So many amazing, wonderful and exquistely touching things have happened since 2012. I was with my mother when she died (another story), deepened relationships with many, managed to write and touch people's lives, experienced wonder and awe of life and overcome any apprehensions about my own death...through my personal encounters with progressive cancer and being with loved ones through their dying process.
Surprisingly, my closest carers were originally pretty split between those hoping to keep me here indefinitely and those allowing my death to unfold in the proper time. Now, I don't feel that anyone is holding me here or holding me back. This has definitely improved the quality of our connections, because we're in harmony with the unfolding, rather than fighting it.
Some friends and family members are still in denial and believe we're all immortal and the right medicine can be found. Sometimes I feel sad when I realize they are procrastinating visits, because they are just too busy. Yet, I see that's their coping style, their life styles. I do my best to share that every visit is our last visit and that I accept and love them just as they are - too busy!
Surrender and acceptance are possible at the end-of-life - both for the dying and our loved ones. It's amazingly wonderful when it all happens together. And it doesn't always. Then death seems to be the thief, stealing away life.
Shelley, this doesn't answer your questioning, because there are no easy answers.
As Rilke wrote in Letters to a Young Poet:
"Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day."
Sending big hugs and warm love to everyone today, Stephanie
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It's a cool cloudy morning breezy and wonderful. I have a sweat shirt on and am just enjoying looking out at the garden and watching the birds. I agree with Stephanie's post that sometimes there are no answers and we live with the questions and accept that. This process of slowly dying of breast cancer over years is quite the mind game. Shelley I feel your pain. I have a teen still at home and it's the motivation for my continued treatment. Otherwise putting up with intestinal misery, N/V, diarrhea, bloatng gas and ascites and draining every other day a liter off... who would do this to themselves? I am tired and ALWAYS uncomfortable unless I am asleep and that takes oxy and ambien. Sleep is my release to bliss. Death will be my release from cancerland and the ravages of cancer.
I just got one of those ridiculous calls from my health insurance asking if I wanted care management. I said how much management do I need when I see the oncology department every week for treatment and labs and am endstage? She apologized and said she had no idea I was a cancer patient. Really?? I think their case management needs a manager when they call a patient and have no idea why they use their insurance in the first place. Insurance spent money putting me on a list and having a RN call for what purpose?? No health benefit that I can see. Spending money for nothing. We need a single payer system.
Lovingkindness to all especially those on hospice. (((hugs)))
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Rosevalley - Your call from the insurance company reminded me of a ridiculous call I received from an insurance company during the first enrollment period when the affordable care act went into effect. Different, but just as ridiculous. I had recently received my stage IV diagnosis and was relieved that I had already signed up for a plan with another company, no pre-existing clause and no lifetime maximum as required by the new law, and lower premiums that I previously had with the same company.
The company calling to solicit my business was very aggressive with their sales pitch so I decided to play along with them just for the heck of it. I didn't say anything about my current health status and asked what kind of policies they offered and what the costs would be. That was enough to get another person on the line with more sales pressure who began to ask some health questions. I answered honestly about high blood pressure, pre-existing back problems, and some degenerative arthritis. Then the big question, have you ever been diagnosed with cancer. My response was yes, I was diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer with liver and bone mets just a few weeks earlier. Well, probably hoping I was too ill informed to know that they were still required to cover me, they wished me good luck and the call was quickly ended. I was too tired at that point to call them on their blatant discrimination.
Anyway, I guess my point is - I really feel so much pain for the thousands of women who receive this diagnosis every year who still don't have access to adequate care and treatment or those who do not have sufficient information to confidently question fight the insurance companies we have to battle every day. I agree with you, slowing dying of breast cancer over the years is quite the mind game.
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Sarah it is so true what you have written. They don't want any chronic diseases on their policies and will do what ever it takes to keep cancer/chronic patients off their enrollment. It creates hardship for those patients scrambling to get adequate coverage or any coverage. We have excellent insurance but it is still very expensive over 5k a year. I wish we had a single payer system like the UK, Canada, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, China, France it would be soo much better then what we have now. Then folks could purchase riders for more expansive coverage and bells and whistles above basic care. They do that now for medicare. It would work. If we all put in it would be cheaper then the coverage we have now and cover everybody. No one would risk losing their lives savings or bankrupting a spouse and leave the remaining one with little left to live on. One cancer diagnosis and you sudden realize everything you have saved for can easily disappear.
Blessings to all on hospice you are in my prayers and thoughts everyday. Lovingkindness to all. rosevalley
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Thank you Stephanie for the poem by Rilke. I am always looking to expand my reading, which I tend to do more and more these days of "chair rest". I like to download Kindle. I will let your excerpts guide my reading and find out about authors new to me. Thanks!
I too get frusterated with people who procrastinate visiting. Whenever people ask what they can do for me I just say "Please, just come visit. I'm not able to get out every day, and while I'd like to meet you, I'm most comfortable visiting here at my house". (And my house is clean and welcoming). Sometimes they get it. Sometimes they feel like they have to bring food..which I try to let them off the hook but secretly I love all the comfort food they bring.
My kids and husband don't really verbally pressure me to continue the fight. It's an unspoken pressure I put on myself to be here for them. Regardless of what this body is doing. I'd be crazy to want to leave this good life, and them, early. But I have to learn to talk myself out of, or accept the down days, and remind myself I won't feel like crap every day. These are the days I come to the Boards, to seek a boost. Thank you.
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I have heard us referred to a "catastrophic longevity" by insurance companies Catastrophic to their bottom line!
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Thinking of you Stephanie and hoping you are comfortable and at peace. Lots of love. rosevalley
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rose. Sending youa boost
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Sending love and light to Stephanie, Rosevalley, Patty, and all the lovely ladies on this thread. Wishing you all peaceful days and restful nights, and gentle transitions. Madelyn
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At one of those tough decision points. I signed up for a clinical. I gave two separated round of blood and provided them with a tissue sample to compare against other known gene mutations on hopes I will be matched for targeted therapy.
Its been six weeks since I signed up and they accepted my sample. They just last Thurs informed me that they did not have enough tissue to complete their tests, so I need to go back for another biopsy (this is my 4th one).
Based on the timing of the biopsy, the amount of time it takes to be matched, the four weeks I will have to go off all other medication, it will be close to four months before I begin.
In the meantime my tumors continue to grow and I am becoming even more symptomatic. Next Monday I will be speaking to my MO about beginning another chemo combo in hopes that it will be better at shrinking than tamoxifen ever was. Tamoxifen only led to mild progression.
Six weeks ago when I spoke to my MO I told him I was not going to just keep trying random combos in hopes that something will be better than nothing.
I'm agreeing to the new chemo because I am desperate and I don't have faith that the clinical trial will amount to anything.
Feeling down today.
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For those of us who have beloved young children, grandkids or our own or nieces and newphews, this wonderful book offers a way of letting them feel,their way through this time. https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/03/08/cry-heart-but-never-break/ please let me know if this link is incorrect. I am going to order this book today.
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Hi Valz,
I want to welcome you to this very special bco topic/thread. It was half the reason I signed up for bco last year. I'd just begun hospice and thought I'd die soon, so wanted to document my journey and share resources with others...plus to support those in similar situations. Oh, and to feel the support.
This is a safe place to share anything.
Though death can be scary, I've found that dying people aren't.
Nor is death contagious.
Thinking about death and other dangers doesn't make them come true, but often makes us wiser and better carers for our loved ones and ourselves.
I hope you too find a refuge here and feel free to post whatever is happening in your life, mind and heart.
Yes, I saw that book on Brain Pickings and thought it brilliant and beautiful. The young 'uns in my life are largely ignoring death now and since I've been dying for their entire lifetimes, we're pretty used to discussing it when it comes up. For most, this isn't often, but a few need to process more than others. Mostly they're curious about medical my devices and practices.
My beloved niece asks about my implanted drain and port. Even told me yesterday that she's getting a port herself, so she doesn't have to have so many IVs poked into her little veins. Right.
Looking forward to hearing more from and about you, Valz.
all love all the time, Stephanie
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Oh, dear sweet Noni,
This clinical trial thing just sucks vital energy that you need to keep going.
While targeted therapies sound promising, you probably need more than promises now.
How about assurances that something will work?
I so wish I could send you the magic combination to put you into remission and improve your day-to-day quality of life.
All I can send is loving kindness, care and reassurance that many of us care for you and your well-being.
Please stay connected with us.
We feel connected with you, Noni, Stephanie
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Noni- it does seem a long time to wait to start treatment. Things progress very quickly with me and my gut shuts down fast when the treatment fails to work. Taking a break is not an option. I hope they come up with something in the mean time while you wait for the trial to begin. Lots of lovingkindess and fortitude your way.
Welcome Valz! Hop in and share. Special love and prayers to all our friends in hospice.
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A scathing article about palliative chemotherapy.
Not for the faint-of-heart or those pursuing this path!
RV, I know you're well-informed and have made the hard choice to pursue treatment. You are not alone in your choice!
Healing loving kindness, Stephanie
P.S. I think this website is a bit black-and-white about patient choice, because it's written by and for hospice and palliative care providers. Patients can and do have different perspectives and understandings. A recent article on aid-in-dying really pushed my buttons. Black-and-white, it's not!
P.S.#2 Rooster's a crowin' I'm a smilin'.
P.S.#3 I no sooner hit send than a 3.3 magnitude earthquake shook my home and rattled the walls and windows. Nothing fell. How ironic to think that a bigger quake could end life as we/I know it. So precious, so temporal.
Palliative Chemotherapy: An Oxymoron
By Rebecca Gagne Henderson
August 1, 2016
I was inspired to write this after reading the series of posts on Pallimed titled "Against Euphemisms" by Drew Rosielle. At its very best, the term "Palliative Chemotherapy" is an oxymoron. At its worst, it is a treatment that robs the patient and family of quality of life and valuable time may have been spent doing the things that are important to them.
As a palliative consultant on a campus which does not house a cancer center my referrals typically come from hospitalist attending physicians rather than oncologists. I cannot begin to tell you the number of conversations I have had through the years with patients who had incurable cancer who thought their chemotherapy was for curative purposes. Rather than calling the cancer incurable or terminal the oncologist had told them their cancer was "treatable." Ah, yet another euphemism.
Let me tell of a patient who resembles many of my patients. I once had a stage IV cancer patient with carcinomatosis and temporal wasting with severe symptoms of anxiety and pain who had made the decision to go to a hospice by the ocean to watch the ships go by during her last days to weeks. An oncologist came in to consult and explained to the patient and me that with "palliative chemotherapy" she may live as long as two years. This patient opted for chemotherapy and died three weeks later writhing in pain without ever leaving the hospital and without the benefit of specialty hospice care. When we left the room after the initial consultation, as the cheeky APRN that I am, I told the oncologist there was no such thing as "palliative chemotherapy." The oncologist harrumphed and assured me that there was such a thing. I asked about the side effects of the chemotherapy she was proposing. He told me the common side effects were nausea, fatigue and hair loss. I explained that we don't typically consider these palliative outcomes.
In the last few years I have witnessed an upsurge in the term "palliative chemotherapy." I have even heard an oncologist use the term "palliative mastectomy" to describe a mastectomy for a draining fungating breast tumor that could have been managed with good wound care. Just imagine the pain, expense, suffering and disfigurement this intervention caused this woman, especially when three weeks later a similar fungating wound would appear on her breast-less chest wall. This is not palliative care.
continued at: http://www.pallimed.org/2016/08/palliative-chemoth...
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I have been dealing with a Stage IV MBC diagnosis since last August. I had treatment, went through a devastating sickness, and was finally in remission by February of this year. In June I found I was no longer in remission and am now in treatment again. I have been dealing with a BC diagnosis since 2009 which started as Stage II. I have been strong and been able to show strength throughout it all. All of a sudden I find that I can't stop crying. Can someone please help me?
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Smdunham1248-
We want to welcome you to our community here at BCO. We're so sorry for the circumstances that have brought you here, but we're glad you found us. We understand this is a very difficult time, but we're all here for you, and the members in our stage 4 community are especially helpful when it comes to dealing with how to process this new development. Take a look at some of the other topics in our stage 4 forum, you're sure to find some information and support to help you get through this: https://community.breastcancer.org/forum/96/topics....
The Mods
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smdunham1248, I am so sorry you are in a valley with this right now. Many of us here have been learning to live with this disease for a long time, too. Sometimes it is just simply harder than others. When I hit a slump, I find it helps to be extra gentle with myself for a few days-- I linger in bed, cry if I feel like it, watch a movie, journal, pray, listen to some uplifting music, go for a walk, or do nothing if that's what feels right. Maybe eat little ice cream. Sleep some more. Mostly, I just let my body and mind rest.
I will not sell you the moon and tell you that this totally takes care of the slump every time... but it usually does help me restore my strength enough to snap out of the funk and start living again.
Try to be as kind and loving to yourself as you would be to a friend in your shoes. This stuff is hard. But as long as you are still alive, you need to LIVE.
Stay with us. You will find many beautiful souls here, and we all get it. We know how you feel.
Lovingkindness, grace, and peace to you.
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Smdunham1248- Welcome to BCO and I am sorry you are out of remission and joining us here. I am not surprised by your tears and fear. I think you would be less than human not to grieve and cry for this turn of events. If you look at some of the other topics you will find that most folks live many years with a stage 4 diagnosis. I was diagnosed in 07, stage 4 in 2012 and I am still in treatment. It is hard to realize you will always be in treatment but it is not the feared ending it was decades ago. There are folks who live for many years with a good quality of life, doing what they love and living fully. I hope you find someone to talk to here, at church/ temple or counseling to help you with this upsetting turn of events. I fully believe in taking help where I can get it and have a therapist and take antidepressants. They have both helped me. Life is wonderful even with cancer. Welcome again and please feel free to express yourself and your feelings. Lots of hugs your way.
rosevalley
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Welcome Smdunham1248, it's good to meet you through your first bco post.
I'm curious why you chose to post at the death and dying (D&D) topic, because most of us come here to contemplate or live through the end of our lives.
Do you feel that you're actively confronting death now? Have your medical practitioners told you that there are no more treatments? Are you too on hospice?
Or are your old ideas of being strong and getting through treatment dying as you realize you're in this for the long haul?
In the metastatic breast cancer forum, there are many topics you could choose - newly diagnosed, telling your story, treatment-based, those specific to different disease locations. You can even start your own topic, if nothing else fits any better.
Smdunham1248, I've a different perspective and experience than most here for many reasons. I prefer to embrace what Buddhists call, "don't know mind" and to surrender to the process of illness and dying. Many years ago, I stopped seeking physical cure, yet mind-soul-spirit healing has always drawn me. The same month I began hospice care, joined bco to participate in this topic, because complete honesty is welcome here - including sharing the hard stuff.
Smdunham1248, my experience has shown me that crying is a way of adjusting and accepting the unwanted.
And what could be more unwanted than realizing how physically vulnerable we are and that we will die - have to leave our lives and all we've loved. We won't always be here and no amount of treatment, strategies, meds or support changes this existential fact.
Life is 100% fatal - for everyone.
Realizing this, most of us mourn. Some recognize how precious and short life is and are renewed to live fully.
If you really are crying 24/7 for too long, please do seek professional help - counseling, appropriate meds, spiritual guidance.
And feel our loving kindness and support holding you as you undergo this trial by
firetears.Below is a video by my friend, Michael Lerner. It's helped me to let go of curing and enter into the wider, wilder life of healing.
Please take what you like and leave the rest of this heartfelt letter.
Sending much light and love for you, Stephanie
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GREAT video!! I now understand the word healing. To live in the moment with your health and just be. I love that he said that being positive goes against the healing process as well. You must acknowledge the disease, reinvent yourself and continue to live.
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Stephanie thank you for sharing that video. Healing can mean so many things. Peace
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Panhala's Poem of the Day
To subscribe to Panhala, send a blank email to Panhala-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
let it go - the
smashed word broken
open vow or
the oath cracked length
wise - let it go it
was sworn to
golet them go - the
truthful liars and
the false fair friends
and the boths and
neithers - you must let them go they
were born
to golet all go - the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things - let all go
dear
so comes love~ e. e. cummings ~
(Complete Poems 1904-1962)
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Oddly, I'm both letting go and doing what's possible with this body while she's assembled as me - holding hands, holding beloved objects tenderly, caressing memories, savoring seasonal produce, exploring new ideas (Krista Tippett's Becoming Wise, most recently), touching the keyboard to keep in touch.
So comes love flowing through the open spaces, so comes joining to part, so comes connection before departing.
Life seems good, death seems good.
Harder to reconcile is ending my story before others' stories have ended or moved on to the next episode. Will my loved one be healed or only suffer before death? Will the drought give way to rainy skies? And what direction will my country take come November?
I pray for peace, love and healing, old California hippie am I.
And all flows on and through.
This dying brings everything I need - even as I reach out to touch you through meager words. Even as my body is cared for so lovingly, so tenderly. I wish this healing for all.
May it be peace, love, healing and understanding for each of us.
warmest loving kindness, Stephanie
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- Smdunham1248, welcome! Know that you aren't alone in this diagnosis. Come to the Boards anytime you need your needs met. I am Stage IV, on CMF, and have been in treatment 3 years now after reoccurence from 2009. Learning how to live with Cancer is much harder than learning how to die of cancer. Circle the wagons and hunker down for a Fortitude Fight. Fortitude: Courage in the face of adversity. F
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I want to give a shout-out to our listeners and silent readers who do the hard work of keeping this topic alive. Seriously, I doubt I would write quite so much or quite so often, if I hadn't seen the numbers spike from 174k to over 260k during the months I've posted here. While many are mulling over their own mortality, many are also dealing with others who are dying - whether beloved MBC friends, family members or those they're caring for in professional roles.
Yes, there is a bco forum especially for "Family & Caregivers of Loved Ones With a STAGE IV Diagnosis" https://community.breastcancer.org/forum/144
Yet, this topic seems to be magnetic for many or for a few who visit regularly.
Carers have a special place in my heart, as my own are attracted through friendship, not familial obligation. And my hospice team (nurses visit daily now) have also become quiet close.
There are two resources I want to share for caregivers who may be facing burn-out or under appreciation.
The Unprepared Caregiver blog explores the other, often underside of caregiving - the parts we don't see or appreciate in a world where success is defined by competition and winning, not caring and devotion.
http://www.unpreparedcaregiver.com
The other is Frank Ostaseski's five precepts. He's a co-founder of San Francisco's Zen Hospice Project and the Metta Institute (metta = loving kindness, a guiding refrain in this topic).
As a patient, I find myself following the precepts. And as a carer for others, they've been life-saving and life-enhancing.
I hope you too benefit by the good work of others who've gone before us.
Sending much metta, loving kindness, for all, Stephanie
xxx
Five Precepts by Frank Ostaseski
Founder, Metta Institute
A while back, I developed five precepts as companions on the journey of accompanying the dying. Perhaps they have relevance in other dimensions of life and can offer some inspiration and guidance. I think of these as five bottomless practices that can be continually explored and deepened. They are not linear and have no value as theories or concepts. To be understood and realized, they have to be lived into and communicated through action.
The First Precept: Welcome Everything. Push Away Nothing
In welcoming everything, we don't have to like what's arising. It's actually not our job to approve or disapprove. It's our task to trust, to listen, and to pay careful attention to the changing experience. At the deepest level, we are being asked to cultivate a kind of fearless receptivity.This is a journey of continuous discovery in which we will always be entering new territory. We have no idea how it will turn out, and it takes courage and flexibility. We find a balance. The journey is a mystery we need to live into, opening, risking, and forgiving constantly.
The Second Precept: Bring Your Whole Self to the Experience.
In the process of healing others and ourselves we open to both our joy and fear. In the service of this healing we draw on our strength and helplessness, our wounds and passion to discover a meeting place with the other. Professional warmth doesn't heal. It is not our expertise but the exploration of our own suffering that enables us to be of real assistance. That's what allows us to touch another human being's pain with compassion instead of with fear and pity. We have to invite it all in. We can't travel with others in territory that we haven't explored ourselves. It is the exploration of our own inner life that enables us to form an empathetic bridge to the other person.The Third Precept: Don't Wait.
Patience is different than waiting. When we wait, we are full of expectations. When we're waiting, we miss what this moment has to offer. Worrying or strategizing about what the future holds for us, we miss the opportunities that are right in front of us. Waiting for the moment of death, we miss so many moments of living. Don't wait. If there's someone you love, tell him or her that you love them. Allow the precarious nature of this life to show you what's most important then enter fully.The Fourth Precept: Find a Place of Rest in the Middle of Things.
We often think of rest as something that will come when everything else is complete, like when we go on a holiday or when our work is done. We imagine that we can only find rest by changing the conditions of our life. But it is possible to discover rest right in the middle of chaos. It is experienced when we bring our full attention, without distraction, to this moment, to this activity. This place of rest is always available. We need only turn toward it. It's an aspect of us that's never sick, is not born, and does not die.The Fifth Precept: Cultivate Don't-Know Mind.
This describes a mind that's open and receptive. A mind that's not limited by agendas, roles and expectations. The great Zen teacher Suzuki Roshi, was fond of saying, "In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few."From this vantage point we realize that "not knowing is most intimate." Understanding this we stay very close to the experience allowing the situation itself to inform our actions. We listen carefully to our own inner voice, sensing our urges, trusting our intuition. We learn to look with fresh eyes.
For More Information Contact Frank Ostaseski
Metta Institute
PO Box 2710 Sausalito, CA. 94966 415.331-9600 http://www.mettainstitute.orgcopyright Frank Ostaseski
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And for all, carers and cared for, here's a TED talk by the current Zen Hospice Project Executive Director BJ Miller.
May you too be inspired to find what really matters to you at the end-of-life.
None of us ever really knows when our time will come.
much love and light, Stephanie
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