Mary  

Sun4.10.23

Suffering from a cold for over a week now.  The eyes puffed up and running, red nose peeling.  I cough and cough, blow and blow.  Each morning on waking, I try to decide if I'm getting better or worse, worse seems to be winning.  Being ill is like a small death, a preparation.  Illness involves a change of direction in one's life.  The body rebels against unsatisfactory situations.  A fundamental change is needed.  On that note I've decided to explore some of my thoughts on the process of dying.

In the late 90's I worked as Coordinator of the Patient Support Team at Franklin Memorial Hospital; I visited and provided comfort to the dying, to amputees, to those with cancer, with AIDS and other life threatening diseases.  It was a time in my life when I began to understand that there were certain things I needed to stand up for, to fight for, and yes if needed, to die for; that who and what I was could not maintain a viable life if I denied my core beliefs.  I knew this to be true as well as I knew my own hands.  This was not courage, rather it was an inevitability that I was trying to understand.

I believe that the soul knows of the coming of death and invites it.  What is it Freud said -- There are no accidents?  I think there are no surprises either.  The ancient one, the soul's perceiver knows all that is coming.  I took the job, which certainly appeared at the appropriate moment, because I wanted to learn about dying, how a person dies.

What did I learn?  Slow death is an almost unbearably frightening experience and one deals with it as best one can.  Some do better than others.  I never saw a person refuse chemotherapy.  One woman came close but at the last minute changed her mind.  Contrary to media hype, most people figure while there's a sliver of hope, it's worth the pain.  Of course I realize I was dealing with people who had chosen to die in a hospital and I might have drawn different conclusions had I ministered to those dying at home.  Most of those who were conscious in their last moments had no misgivings; I also learned that wisdom and enlightenment spares you nothing, indeed the ignorant seem to fare better.

Dying is a hell of a business.  And each person chooses their own way of doing it.  Seeing that quite a few leave this world in a total state of denial was a shocker.  No preparation, no reflection, no final words to loved ones.  The TV in their mind plays continuously throughout their final experience.

Of the many people I counseled, several cases in which the issue of love played a prominent role stick to my mind.  The very first patient I saw is one of them.  He was a doctor dying of cancer.  I arrived in a room bare of any personal belongings.  Everything was spotlessly in place, even his bed was unruffled.  He spoke softly with some effort, describing precisely at what stage of development his cancer was in.  Very near death, his attention was withdrawn from the world around him, a small mummified presence neatly placed at center of bed.  His wife entered as we spoke and she asked who I was and what my duties were.  "You're not needed here," she told me, "I take care of him."  I turned to him and I saw on his face a look that explained everything.  Not a word was spoken, but I understood that his wife was a burden to him, that he felt responsible for her and that he would endure her ministrations because of it.  

And he did.  I would see this man at death's door being wheeled outdoors for fresh air by a woman who could not let go of him, who could not do what every loved one must do, and that is to give permission to the dying.  She was the doctor's wife and without him she held no importance.  She couldn't let go of that.  I saw him several times afterward.  Always in that same impersonal room with the unruffled bed.  He was resigned to his fate, totally isolated and trapped in the structure he'd made of his life.  It was not an easy death.

Then there was Mary.  I don't remember what was wrong with her.  When I came into the picture she had already been informed she would not go back home, not ever again.  Staff was looking to find her nursing home facilities.  Her family was ransacking her home as she lay in the hospital.  Her condition was such that she was in excruciating pain from morning till night and medication held no relief.  We had a staff meeting about what could be done to alleviate her situation with her doctor, the shift nurses, the physical therapist, myself and members of my team, everyone involved in her care.  Having someone with her seemed to help so we set up shifts to keep her company.  It was hard on me being with someone in such pain.  I brought her tapes of soothing nature music, I read to her, rubbed her body.  

I would go home in the evening thoroughly drained and demoralized.  One day I walked into the hospital and when I went to visit Mary something unusual happened.  I winked at her!  A spontaneous act which she didn't take kindly to.  What I was doing was disrespectful to a dying woman, surely.  But yet we had arrived at a moment of truth that she was trying to avoid.  What was this intuitive truth that I had stumbled on like the resolution of a koan?   She was complicit in her method of dying.  She did not want to die alone and unloved.  We were both playing a part in a play.  The pain was real, there was no denying that, the attention was real.  She might have chosen otherwise.  That very day a medication was found that worked on her and shortly thereafter she was transferred to a nursing home.

MANHATTAN SEERESS NOW ON EBOOKS

Eight o'clock Sunday morning, the police arrive at her apartment in Greenwich Village, "How long have you been living here?" The roommate Elizabeth, after having accepted her half of the deposit money and rent for their new apartment, has called the police. 

New York City doesn’t open its arms to welcome her, but she’s arrived and the adventure of her life is about to unfold.  She’s come from Maine with an invitation from Sarah Lawrence College to participate in the graduate writing program.

How one becomes a seeress is what this memoir explores. Stories have been specifically selected to illustrate, from the sublime to the practical, a spiritual journey introduced in each chapter by an atout, the Tarot’s major archetypes.   From the Fool, to The World, our human journey with its risk and folly unfolds. There is also an artist here alive to her new world seeking inspiration among artists on the Lower East side, learning the ways and foods of her Chinese neighbors, falling in love.