December 18. Christmas, again.
Thanksgiving over, Hanukah too. The winter solstice just days away (thank heaven). Christmas Eve and Christmas Day a week away. Typically, so much joy and fun, despite the extra work!
This year, though, was different. This was the first year in decades that I celebrated the holidays without my husband.
As you might know, the last five years have been stunningly hard on me and my family. I lost my brilliant younger brother five years ago last spring to suicide. My husband developed Alzheimer’s Disease and is now so advanced in the disease that I can no longer care for him at home. He now lives in a memory care facility. My beloved older brother died last June with another dementia–Lewy Body. Meanwhile, I lost my dear mother in law, several close cousins, my beautiful and aged tabby cat died in my arms, and my fiction and poetry writing have been severely disrupted.
Ouch.
A number of practices have helped me not just survive this challenging time, but learn and grow within daily pain. I’ve written about some of them. They have been lifesavers.
Someone told me, upon hearing about what I call “my practices”, that I was becoming Buddhist. I don’t know about that, but they seem completely compatible with Buddhism.
No one advised me to develop these practices; they appeared within me in the midst of numbing pain and fear (fear that I would become incapacitated by pain if I didn’t find ways by which to tame it). They made perfect and immediate sense, were calming, freeing (and free), and always available. So I grabbed ahold of them, clung tight, and have used them for several years to help me keep my head above water.
These then are my top six (I have a few more) practices:
Be here now
One day at a time
Focus on what is working and present (not on what is missing or wrong)
Breathe
Self-Compassion
Detachment
None of this should sound new; these are ancient practices, tried and true ways of taming our panicky (or sad or angry or depressed) minds, and of fostering calm, love, and vitality.
They sound deceptively easy to do, close to touchy-feely, almost sophomoric. They are anything but.
Applying oneself to developing just one or two of them will keep you busy for months or, more likely, years.
Detachment, for example, is not so much a practice as the end point of a complex process. Whole books, articles, and essays have been written about each, and for countless generations. And in surprising and intriguing ways, focusing on anyone of them leads one to the others; they are encircling and entwined with one another.
What did this have to do with Christmas, this Christmas, the odd, sad, and nearly surreal imitation of what I, and my family, have done for years at holiday time?
In the days leading up to Christmas, I noticed that none of my six practices were working. Meaning that I had been feeling so blue, bereft, out of step and lost during the season that none were helping my energy. On the plus side, I hadn’t panicked. Having gone through five years and more of loss, I have become used to feeling disoriented, and have learned to relax in the face of it. It’s the “new normal” for me.
But on one particularly difficult night I went to bed concerned. About myself, for a change. When will this change? And how? Will this grief never end?
Part of the problem is that I am out of step with much of the rest of the world which, now, seems to me to be busier, louder, and more active than ever. And all I really want to do is sit and stare. At a fire, the lake, a tree, a bird. All I really want to do is rest and heal. This is not easy to do given that little if anything stops for grief. Especially for caregivers.
So I fell into an uneasy sleep, not sure when or how I would find my vitality again. I was able to remain asleep for seven to eight hours (itself a sorely needed change), and pushed myself to waken when my dreams became bothersome.
Then this appeared in my mind, without warning, as clear and arresting as fresh ice forming on the lake: focus on what is.
Even if not positive, ideal, or what I want, even if scary or painful, shift your focus to all that you are, to what is present, to what is, what you are surrounded by, enjoy, and benefit from.
And give thanks.
I did, and immediately felt surrounded, and supported, by so much. I felt a rise in my energy and a willingness to get up and about. Life suddenly seemed, while not free of pain or daunting challenges, rich and beautiful again.
My life beautiful? Rich?
That seemed a stretch. And yet it is. For then, at that moment and for much of that day, it was. I had found the lotus amid the mud. And was beginning to experience firsthand the absolute interdependence of the two.
And then–yes, there’s more–I felt the old and familiar, but not recently felt, push within to write. And I sat, keyboard beneath my hand, and composed this.
Hallelujah! What a precious gift!
WellCraftedToo 