Not Her Keeper

These days spent at the hospital with my mother are so intense. Yesterday, I looked into her eyes, several times, and we locked in, and I smiled and I reminded her it was me, and she smiled back, to tell me her happiness. She liked it when I played her favorite tunes, songs she used to sing all the time before her stroke. And she surprised me when she reached out for a magazine. I found myself starting to hope. 

Then came the dinner tray, and she did not make it past the first spoonful of the green puree. Same with the yogurt, and the applesauce. I asked the nurse, and she could not give me any reassurance. Yes, it could mean the end is near, or not. 

Today, I arrived to find her lying in bed and hooked up to a monitor, eyes closed and seemingly in pain with a frozen frown on her face. I was told her heart had gone to 150 in the morning and she was under close watch again. She did not acknowledge my presence. Her roommate was screaming for her children to come and take her. I thought, how incredibly stressful this must be for my mother to be subjected to so much. And I realized there was nothing to do, other than sit by her side, hold her hand, and remind her often that I was there with her. 

Ayya Khema says this about love: 

My attachment and my fear can only have a negative influence on my love. My children do not belong to me; they belong to themselves. I'm not their keeper, any more than they are my keepers. We are linked to each other, but not bound to each other - that is a huge difference. 

~ from I Give You My Life ~ 

Ayya Khema is referring to her children, but the same goes with our parents. I have been watching grief take hold in my body, a very physical sensation akin to being torn apart, literally. The stronger the bond, the more painful the parting, and there is certainly no stronger tie than between mother and child. It goes both ways. I am grateful for the practice to point me in the right direction. I am to feel the grief, fully, and relax around it, giving it space, and guarding the mind from adding more. My mother needs me to be at peace, and free from the anxiety of anticipated loss.

Continuing With the Love Lesson

Today was another day spent at the bedside of my mother. She barely acknowledged me, and slept most of the time. 

I am continuing to wrestle with regret, remorse, sorrow, and self-forgiveness. And turning to Ayya Khema for much needed wisdom [relevant excerpts from her talk on Metta with my commentaries]:

If we start blaming ourselves or others for all the things that we do wrong, we'll never stop blaming. It's a totally useless activity, because for any negativity that we have and heap blame on top of, it means we've then got two negativities. What we would like is to get rid of negativity. So instead of blaming we look at it, accept it, and change it.

Yes, stopping right there, the regret, the remorse, the self-blame. With the understanding that the heart can only open as much as it is able, depending on causes and conditions, not least of all, the presence of mindfulness.

It's human beings that we need to work with. All of us have that opportunity constantly, and there's no excuse not to do it, because this is actually what our life is all about. It's an adult education class. We've asked the question already: "What am I supposed to do with my life?" Well, it's very simple: this is an adult education class. That's all life is all about. Now, if we were going to school still, we would have exams, wouldn't we? In school they were usually kind enough to tell us when the exam would be, and they usually also told us what the exam topic was, so we could at least bone up on it and try to learn as much about it as possible. Well, we've got exams in daily life all the time, but nobody tells the date nor the topic, so we've got to be constantly ready. And just as in school, if we don't pass the exams, we going to be put back and have to do the class over again. Daily life is the same -- if we don't pass the exam, we get the whole thing over again. Next time it might be called Mary instead of Pauline, or John instead of Tom -- whatever it may be, but it's the same lesson over again. So instead of being unprepared when all these exams come about, the best thing to do is to use our daily lives as an adult education class and see what we can learn from each encounter.

Just learning to love, and accepting the limits of one's heart. I, we are all students in the matter of love.

At the same time, we also need to realize that we only have this one moment. The past is gone, irrevocably gone. We can learn from it. We can see some of the things that we might have done differently, and could do differently now, but that's all.

That's all. Not dwelling in ideas about the past, those fabrications of the mind that can hinder the possibilities of this present moment. The truth is, my heart has opened completely to receiving her love, and giving her love as well. No one else is asking since when. 

Many people find it difficult to love themselves -- sometimes because they know themselves too well. [laughter] Which means that they're judging. We don't have to judge ourselves, we can just love ourselves. Judging ourselves and loving ourselves do not have to be in the same breath. We can first love this manifestation of universal existence which we call "Me." And then, if we really want to make some changes, we can find out what needs to be changed, but we don't have to mix up those two, we don't have to mix up our bad qualities with our love for ourselves. They don't have anything to do with each other. 

Not making the mistake of placing a condition on self-love. I am not perfect, I made mistakes, I did not love her as I could have. That does not mean I cannot love myself.

Another important step is seeing, not only that we share everything, but also that our own difficulties need to be treated with compassion. Not with the idea, "I should have known better, I could do better, or somebody else has done it to me." Just compassion. Compassion is a very important entry into love. The two are very connected, and they're also interchangeable. The far enemy of compassion, of course, is cruelty, but the near enemy is pity. We're not sorry for ourselves or for others. We need to have empathy, not pity. "Com" is "with," "passion" = "feeling," with feeling. Empathy.

Holding myself with great tenderness, and understanding. I did not know better then. It's taken me all this time, and that's the way it is. 

We weren't brought here into this life to be engaged as judge and jury. Nobody gave us that job. It's self-appointed. [laughter] And this self-appointment is not even pleasurable -- doesn't pay anything in the first place -- and it only makes difficulty. But we can drop all this judge and jury business; at least try. In the beginning, one does it a little. It's much easier to love.

That last final point is enough.

Tell me about your own tales of learning to forgive yourself, and your journey to love.

A Lesson in Love

Sitting by my mother’s bed at the hospital, my heart is filled with emotions. Mostly love, and deep grief from a new threshold passed over a few days ago. My mother‘s stroke has left her unable to speak. Monday morning, she and I had been singing together La Java Bleue over the phone. When I saw her yesterday for the first time since her stroke, she recognized me instantly and smiled, with one tear out of the corner of her right eye. It hit me right there, the immensity of her love, and of my love back to her. The nurse said it was the first time they had seen her open both eyes since she got admitted Tuesday night. There is no telling whether she will speak or move her right leg again. She makes grunting noises when I put the phone on her ear and my brother speaks to her.

Sitting by my mother’s bed, my mind takes me to hard places, mostly memories of when I rejected her   love, and I was not there for her. Of course, I thought had reasons every time. I dismissed her as too anxious, too dependent, and wanting to live her unlived life through me . . . I wished for her to be other than she could be, less depressed, happier, less demanding of my love and my brother’s love. I moved far away, five thousand miles, to live ‘my own life’. This is what the mind does whenever it is intent on closing the heart. There were also the times, more recent, during the beginning of her Alzheimer’s when the illness exacerbated those traits of hers, and I did not know then the real cause, and I reacted unkindly. There is no rewind button on life. Instead, one is left with the karmic consequences of past misdeeds and missed opportunities to love.

Sitting by my mother’s bed, listening to the monitor’s beeping sounds and the commotion in the hallway, I take refuge in practice, and decide to turn the guilt that besieges me, into a teacher of love. No need to keep adding more misery, this time self-directed. Guilt, rightly understood, is a call to move forward with the heart wide open, and with mindfulness. Using the sting of regret as a constant reminder to guard from the mind’s deceiving ways. Dwelling in love, at this moment, first for my mother, and also myself, I feel a shift, an immense gratitude for this one more gift from her. And I review all the gifts she bestowed on me starting with the gift of life itself.

May she be at peace, and at ease during this transition.

May I also be at peace, and at ease.

And may this serves to help you love better, more often.

Motherhood, Love, and Mindfulness

Mother's Day . . . has arrived, and with it the usual onslaught of happy stories glorifying mothers everywhere. 

Mother's Day . . . for me is a day to reflect on Ayya Khema's commentary on  the Buddha's fourth remembrance:

"Everything that is mine and is dear to me must change" relates particularly aptly to our relationship with our children and our partners. Children begin changing from the day they are born. But they disappear or they can disappear [. . .]

None of us really believe that our children or partner belong to us. Nevertheless we feel that way about them and want to hold on to them. The various relationship problems in families arise out of this. 

[. . .] We think we have to determine the way our children develop. We think we can decide what they should and should not do. We not only want to keep our children and partners for ourselves, but we think they should live in accordance with our wishes and our conception of them. And none of this is true. 

We have to let go if we want to live and love in freedom. Not even one's own body is "mine", the Buddha said, so how can another person be "mine"? Everyone creates his or her own karma. 

[. . .] Pure love is love that has not wish to hold and to keep but is simply given freely. 

~ Ayya Khema, I Give You My Life ~ 

Mother's day . . . is a time to thank both of my daughters for helping me awaken to the nature of true motherly love, as so beautifully expressed by Ayya Khema.