Well by now you have probably guessed that this is about our son Matthew's journey to the end of his life and the lesson's I am learning walking with him. It is my wish not to teach you about the lessons I learn but simply to expose them to you for you to think about on your journey. It is inevitable that each of us will wake up from this dream and experience another reality, yet we spend very little time talking about our mortality. Actually we spend much more time and effort jogging and running away from death. I do not believe that the discussion needs to be depressing or macabre, we can approach it with humour and a search for clarity. The proof of that pudding will be in the eating as my dear mother used to say.
In some ways all of my life has been preparing me for this journey with Matthew. As a young child my first experience with death was the passing away of my maternal grandmother, Pearls. I recall her with great love and affection because she treated me with great love and affection. Next my paternal grandmother,Nana, who was waked at her home. The casket was open and I recall the coolness of her skin as my father made me touch her hands. Shortly after that my paternal grandfather, Billo, followed Nana. My childhood friend Michael Brown who died on a construction site when tons of earth buried him in a foundation. In university Gail Spooner died in a car accident and as a young man my friend Sean Palmer killed himself. My mother-in-law Nora who I loved deeply came to stay with us for 3 weeks while her eldest daughter Johanna, who died of ALS, traveled to Ireland with her daughter and son-in-law. Nora was with us for a year and died with us. There were also great aunts and uncles that passed on. When I was first married to my life partner and my partner for life, Monica, I would sometimes wake up and look at her sleeping and think 'O my God we will only have 40 years together if we are lucky. I loved her so much that 40 years seemed like a very short time. I became aware that I had developed a very strong fear of death and loss.
What to do about it? About this time in my life I became interested in the eastern wisdom tradition and I read somewhere that the only way to deal with our fear is to confront it. To walk into death. But where could I confront my demons?
Dearest Brian,
ReplyDeleteSelfishly, I am happy to have stumbled across your blog. It was a great comfort to read your thoughts. I often think about Matthew and his journey. Sometimes, it's a subtle, triggered, memory - seeing children playing foot hockey reminds me of the Foley basement on Sir Gawain. Sometimes, it's more overt - Every trip to Stouffville to see my parents leads to an inevitable drive or walk past the old house on Second Street. And I think.
I still meet Sean for our regular lunches at Cora's - less lately that's he's on paternity leave - and we talk much about Matthew and the family. With a lot of hugs and prayers.
May you all be guided, with strength, into this unknown terrain.
All of my love,
Lori Niles-Hofmann