what I do not wish for everybody,
including those I think of
as my worst enemies?
~ Aaron
Another drive across the state of Florida, this time for our second vaccine, and this time we know where we are going. We are going to an ALL Spanish-speaking pharmacy near Miami. (See: A Dios Mio )
I have been transcribing Ram Dass speaking about Living and Dying.
So, now once you want to be free—at first you want to hang out with people that keep you high—later, you want to confront the fires that catch you, you want to purify through those fires. You just find yourself drawn towards the things that are still catching you, so that you can get to the point where you can be in them but not lost in them. Where you can keep your space even when you’re in them.
And dying is one of the big ones that sucks everybody in, and so part of the work is developing the ability to be with somebody that’s dying, or be dying yourself, and stay very clear and very present because those that are from religions that focus on the moment of death, which is most of the religions that have reincarnation in them, see life as a preparation for the moment of death
Many people in this culture don’t want to talk about death. They resist aging. They want an easy way out of something that is inescapable. So, there is suffering….
Our Canadian friends, Davey and Eli, had to leave Florida and go back to Canada or risk losing their medical coverage because he had been hospitalized with diverticulitis. The night before they left, we rang their doorbell, stepped back, and when Davey opened the door, John and I began to sing: Davey, Davey, give us your answer true, we’re half crazy, all for the love of you. Courtney’s won’t be a stylish marriage, without you there in your carriage, and we’ll be switched if she’ll be hitched without Davey and Eli there, too.
His eyes met mine…. and he said softly, “The best part of your singing was getting to see your smile.”
Davey has not seen me without a mask for over a year now.
Dass says any time there is suffering, it’s a clue to where your mind is holding.
My mind is holding to the question of how to see/be with my family (and meet our new great-grandson, Jackson) who are all in Tennessee. It is right on the way from Florida to Michigan. Visiting with them has always been what made leaving Florida something to be embraced. We saw Stacey and Doug and Adam and Brad and Christina briefly on the way down, but we have not seen our grand-daughter, Courtney, since November 2019. We have yet to meet the baby in person. We long for things to be normal again. To see smiling faces. To eat at the same table. To touch the same playing cards as I win 500 Rummy….
We will do what we can to help us all be able to gather again without fear of getting or giving a virus that humans don’t yet have herd immunity toward. A virus that ended the life of our grand-daughter’s other grandpa. Paw Paw was in the hospital with the coronavirus and he did not get to meet Jackson.
How can I wish for myself what I do not wish for everybody?
Dass says when Mahatma Gandhi was dying he walked out into his yard, an assassin shot him three times. Our image of an assassin in America – we think of the Kennedy brothers, Martin Luther King, always there is horror and violence connected with it, and we imagine (if we can the imagine) that the moment someone is shot they are stunned or confused. Gandhi had just as much time as the others when he was shot, but when he was shot and falls over he just says, “Ram.” He goes out on the name of God.
We, too, go out on the name of God. We will again drive to Florida’s East Coast.
And for that we are very grateful….
Muy agradecida. Muy agradecido.
