WIKIPEDIA SAYS:
Gel bracelets, or jelly bracelets are an inexpensive type of wristband often
made from Silicone. They come in a variety of colors, and several can
be worn on each arm. They have been popular in waves throughout the Western
world and
elsewhere since the P1980s. One style of these wristbands, known as
"awareness bracelets", carry debossed messages demonstrating the
wearer's support of a cause or charitable
organization.
Maybe I went to see my neighbor. Maybe an elderly neighbor. Maybe my
classmate from grade school. Whatever. Obviously I don't really want to
reveal the reason but no maybe's about it, visiting the
local nursing home is never anything but an occasion to participate
in Buddhist/Hindu practices of Impermanence-R-Us. And revealing that my
friend, my age is there with dementia is not an easy reveal. Not
Maybe!! She is.
But always the
spiritual seeker, I factored in and thought: isn't it true that
Gurus/Rishis/Rimpoches/Lamas and aware spiritual teachers would send
their chelas to graveyards to accelerate the student's
focus/concentration/practice
and dissuade clinging, desire and attachment to this mortal coiled
body? Some charnel grounds were more Hollywoodesque than others, that
is, in Tibet, nuns and monks would sit with the dead's severed body
parts cut into smaller bites so the vultures would
have an easier feeding frenzy. This nursing home was none of that, not a
charnel ground but it was not the site of a girl scout sing along. It
was a nursing home.
WIKIPEDIA SAYS:
The majority of Tibetan people and
many Mongols adhere
to Vajrayana Buddhism, which teaches the transmigration of spirits.
There is no need to preserve the body, as it is now an empty vessel.
Birds may eat it or nature may cause it to decompose. The function of
the sky burial is simply to dispose of the remains in as generous a way
as possible (the source of the practice's Tibetan
name). In much of Tibet and Qinghai, the ground is too hard and rocky
to dig a grave,
and, due to the scarcity of fuel and timber, sky burials were typically more practical than the traditional Buddhist
practice of cremation.
Although I pride myself on my ability to wear death on my left shoulder as Don Juan suggested in his Yakui Way, it is never
really
easy for me to witness, pass by, observe or try not to see toothless
mouths open for air or a liquid meal; it is never easy to see anorexied
elders cemented to wheel chairs or oversized lazy-boys; it is never easy
to see elders silenced by off the chart medications
or a big lunch; it is never easy to see the forgotten rehearsing death
while maintained by harried, phone answering/poorly paid CNA's running
down the hall to bring life back to one of their "residents" who might
need to be toileted, fed, picked up from the
floor, medicated, hoyer-lifted or turned.
Although I am always
burning these scenes into my memory to be re-dreamed at night, prayed
about at prayer, re-alchemized by video, re-told as written memoir or
simply forgotten, I can never really disregard the
images. One of my most burned into memory pictures is of the "tribe" of
residents 3 feet from the circle-nursing-station, vying for added
attention and never really watching the old movies projected from a
neck-hurting high video screen...movies from the 30's
and 40's when 40 women swam in swimming pool unison and men smoked
Camels; movies that would bring the comfort of having
ecstatically lived. At that scenario, always there would be an elder who
wasn't drowsing, drooling or watching but calling Ma, Ma, Ma or
Nurse, Nurse sonically and loudly, touretting it over and over before
their voice of impotence was transformed into tearless, whimpering
coughs in the pillow at night. For some that Final Silence would not
come for dozens of years; years without hugs, cards,
Domino's Pizza, beer or an ocean swim.
WIKIPEDIA SAYS:
Nursing facilities
offer (by county planning process) the most extensive care a person can
get outside a hospital, if one discounts regional medical centers,
alternative programs in the community (sometimes
now, medical homes, and 24 hour care programs), and the newer assisted
living facilities. Nursing homes offer help with custodial care—like
bathing, getting dressed, and eating—as well as skilled care given by a
registered nurse and includes medical monitoring
and treatments. Skilled care also includes services provided by
specially trained professionals, such as physical, occupational, and
respiratory therapists.
The services nursing homes offer vary from facility to facility. Services can include:
- Room and board
- Monitoring of medication
- Personal care (including dressing, bathing, and toilet assistance)
- 24-hour emergency care
- Social and recreational activities (posted schedules)
Always swayed by seeing, I
remember that I am mid 70's and am noticing people there younger than
that! People who maybe did not injest glycophytes or antibioticed milk
as I do; people who bought Organic chicken
and swam in private salt water pools as I don't; people there who
watched the fecal count at local lakes and were well versed in the
consequences of swallowing dirty water into their lungs. I do/don't.
People there who knew about dry drowning. That is, people
who once ate well, exercised, were professionally competent and now
were the players in the dastardly days before the Endgame.
But I wasn't there to
think about death but to see my classmate, now swept into delta waves
way too early and silenced by her own mind-memories/drugs ordered by the
medics in charge; silenced by her inactivity
but most of all by an inner/secret desire to leave her unmendable
nightmare?
I previously said I
didn't want to see but I did see too much: the walk from the entrance
door to my grade-school classmate's "pod" went past a 100 square foot
dining room that encapsulate all of the best site
specific qualities of a Bergman film, a scene richer in theological
teachings than a $550 a week Tibetan teaching on Phowa and Chud.
WIKIPEDIA SAYS:
Phowa has many different meanings; in Tibetan it means
"transferring consciousness." The highest form is known as the phowa of
thedharmakaya which
is meditation on the great perfection. When you do Dzogchen meditation,
there's no need to transfer anything, because there's nothing to
transfer, no place to transfer it, nor anyone to do it. That's the
highest, and greatest phowa practice.
When my inner and outer time stands still it's usually an
indication that I am getting my money's worth. It indicates an Ahaa
moment. And that day was a money's worth day because I got to look but
not look because staring would be a sin and allowed only
in zoos but not nursing homes. But I wasn't staring as I would in a
zoo, I was caught in a zone of no return, a Satyajit Ray film
approximation that included not only visuals but a sensorium of nursing
home non-meat soft food aromas and equally scented faux
gravy elixirs swimming next to blanched greyish once frozen/boiled to
death green peas.
And there in that one room, all of them sat, eating. How many? I
can't even estimate. I just know it was enough white hair to create a
memory singed into my dream scape forever. They looked up in unison,
tremoring spoons dancing in arthriticed fingers;
all of them dressed seemingly in the same dress/same sweater/wearing
the same nursing home costume and coif. All of them eating in silence.
All of them eating the same meal: meal number two. Probably their "Big
Meal" with Wonder white Bread, ham and cheese
coming later at 4:30 or 5pm. Meal three.
And there they sat, feeding mouths most likely sore from once
meticulously secured but now poorly fitting dentures. There they ALL sat
with mouths opening at odd angels. There they all sat like good
newborns approximating "aren't I a good baby" breast
memories of their first milk. There they sat, content and either being
fed by an aide or feeding themselves. There they sat not retired
from eating but retired from law practices, retired from scientific
research, retired from housewifery, retired from relationships,
retired from accounting firms, retired from pastoral duties, retired
from political activism, retired from life. Now they embraced, not by
choice but because of advanced medical necessity, the only jobs left to
them: eating, sleeping, going to the bathroom,
eating, sitting, sleeping and eating.
I wasn't there to cry or judge. I wasn't there to shudder with the
realization that this "might" be my fate one day. Simply put, I was
there to visit a friend and by default and because of this view of the
residents' syncopated and contented sameness,
I was moved into a sincere sacredness, a silence, a concentration that
was breathtaking. This was holy art at it's best and they were
performing a slow-mo, high-level conscious awareness and syncopated
magic that only Merce Cunningham dancers might approximate at
a good gig. This was Holy Communion, the Eucharist secularized by
genericed time/space and everyday context.
WIKIPEDIA SAYS:
The Eucharist (also
called Holy Communion or the Lord's
Supper, among other names) is a Christian rite that
is considered a sacrament in
most churches and an ordinance in
others. According to the New Testament, the rite was instituted by Jesus
Christ during his Last
Supper; giving his disciples bread and wine during the Passover meal,
Jesus commanded his followers to "do this in memory of me" while
referring to the bread as "my body" and the wine as "my blood". Through
the Eucharistic celebration Christians remember Christ's
sacrifice of himself on the cross.
The elements of the Eucharist, bread (leavened
or unleavened) and wine (or grape
juice), are consecrated on
an altar (or table)
and consumed thereafter. Communicants (that is, those who consume the
elements) may speak of "receiving the Eucharist", as well as
"celebrating the Eucharist". Christians generally recognize a special
presence of Christ in this rite, though they differ about
exactly how, where, and when Christ is present.
And it was sacredly
silent, like at Mass. None of the many, many synchronized eaters was
squabbling; none were discussing the low price of chicken thighs at Sams
Club; none were asking for a ride to a doctor appointment
later that day; none of them wondered whose turn it was to do dishes.
All of these issues were now moot points and the job at hand was to eat
NOW and eat later at "supper" having eaten breakfast a few hours before.
The job at hand was to sit with those exact
same people at the exact same place and trance out while shoveling in
soft meals meant for mastication-light.
Student that I am of
paths to enlightenment, I noted that days at the nursing home are not
much different from time that students of meditation devote to intense
Sadhana ( spiritual practice) in contemplative settings
like monasteries, caves, contemplative convents and Tibetan/Hindu
retreat rooms. Maybe, yes maybe I can scout out and try to locate that
one or maybe tenth person whose eyes betray their purpose, whose eyes
gave light-out not took it in, whose eyes signaled
me that, "Hey lady, guess what? This isn't such a bad deal. When your
family sends you here we can hang out together? I
sit/eat/shit/sleep/eat/sit but I also pray and use this safe and secret
holy place to practice The Art/Life of Meditation." A hallucination?
Believable message?
As my friend Karen and I left the nursing home after visiting our once critical-care-nurse-classmate,
I heard someone say as they ran to rescue me, "Mam, Mam, you can't
leave here! let me see your wrist band!" Turning around I realized that
she wanted
to shepherd me back inside, thinking I was delusionally abandoning
ship. She grabbed for my left wrist. But I, not quite ready to give up
all of the creature comforts of my second hand clothes stuffed into
three different closets; or give up my car that jettisoned
me all over Ulster County; or give up the thrill of owning and paying
for my iPhone and computer which had become surrogate plastic
friends-in-a-box . I was not ready to join their secular "monastery" and
surrender my ability to be able to walk to Church,
the bank, the grocery store, the park; and I certainly was not ready to
give up my magical back yard and those 5 glorious trees.... my
nature family in disguise.
I assured her that I was not escaping, although a sucker for signs that I am, for a moment I thought her right.
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