Answering the Call

Before I started reading Buddhist material, I thought it was just a strange obsession of mine.

Death.

My goal in life was to be ready for death.

To keep myself more present, I would play what I called “the dead game,” imagining I had already died and was getting to visit earth in my old body for an hour or two.

Or, like Patti Digh, I would propose to myself, what would you do if you knew you had only x days to live?

All my practice comes down to one thing. When that moment comes, should I be fortunate enough to have even a little warning, I want to be able to relax into it.

This is why I practice letting go of the world of form now.

Whenever I get lazy in my mindfulness practice…

Whenever a particularly challenging situation pushes my buttons and I fail to handle it mindfully…

All I have to do to get myself right back on track is remind myself that death might be like that.

“When you are dying, Kelly, there might be some aspect of it that pushes the same button. Clinging. I like it this way, I don’t like it that way. I don’t want to die NOW. I don’t want to die THIS WAY.”

A lack of peace. A lack of accepting what is.

When I realize that I am missing an opportunity to build those “accepting the Now” muscles now, whoa Nelly! That wakes me up. I get cracking.  I turn lovingly toward whatever situation had me riled. A chance to practice! A chance to get better at accepting what already is. A chance to practice dying.

There is nothing but nothing more important to me.

====

Then I started reading Buddhist material, I discovered this is not just my little quirk. There are loads of teachers out there who recommend meditating on your own death to help you live your life more mindfully, more fully, more in each present moment.  Thich Nhat Hanh advised me, in his book the Miracle of Mindfulness, to meditate on my own corpse being eaten by worms.

I get it. The human tendency to deny our own mortality is so strong that it takes that much determination to break through the veil of denial. If you picture your own corpse being worm food… I mean really picture your own body on that metal cart in the morgue and later in the ground and later feeding little bugs… then maybe, just maybe you can taste the reality of the finiteness of your time in the earth school.

====

Midlife crisis.

My friend J is so blessed. She went to school to become what she dreamed of becoming. She is a social worker and she works with homeless people every day. Her calling is also her livelihood.

I have not managed that in my life.

I have fallen into a series of nice jobs halfway between administrative and technical that have paid the bills.

In the meantime a very soft, barely audible voice in my back of my mind has occasionally called to me about what I want to be when I grow up.  What about my gifts?  What about serving humankind? What about my dreams?

I’ve had a lot of them… fantasies about what I shoud be doing with my life.

I am hesitant to list any of them here because I don’t want to open myself up to the very painful experience of having someone who is insensitive to my particular set of phobias, anxieties and self-confidence issues to say, “Oh, you could do THAT, Kelly. Go for it.”

No, YOU could do that. If I could do it I would already have done it.

Since reaching the MIDlife years, however, the voice asking me what in the hell I’m doing with my life is getting louder than the voice telling me I can’t, I’ll fail, I don’t know where to start.

=====

The experience with my grandfather taught me something about myself. It taught me that I am one of only a handful of people comfortable talking about death with someone who is dying.  Comfortable touching someone who is dying. Comfortable offering to talk if talk is desired, to sit silently if that is what is right in that moment, to fluff the pillow or do the dishes or rub on the lotion or bring the drink of water, if that is what is helpful. Comfortable opening my heart and crying with the other person, if that is what arises from the authenticity of the moment.

My latest and most consuming fantasy about what I could do with my life?

Death midwife.

Some people specialize in ushering little angels into the world. I want to specialize in the facilitating a peaceful exit.

And so I have spent a lot of hours lately imagining how to go about getting into this field. I’ve been devouring books like “Final Gifts” and “What Dying People Want” and “The Real Work of Dying.”

I have to keep working 8:30 to 5:00 to pay my rent, which doesn’t leave a lot of time or money for a chaplaincy program or graduate school.

I do not want to move back in with Sylvain and his family, and I don’t want to go back to Arkansas and live with my mother. Well, not yet, anyway. Not if there is another way.

So there my logical brain told me I was stuck. It said there was no way to pursue my dream, my calling.

So I prayed about it fervently.

And an answer came.

The answer voice told me that I do not need to worry about so many steps down the road, I only need to take one step in the direction of my dream.

Things will unfold from there as they are meant to.

And so I picked up the phone last week and called the volunteer coordinator at the Hospice of Windsor and Essex County.

My volunteer orientation is next week.