For Harshaji

[Guest guest]

Dear Harshaji:

 

You remain in my thoughts and prayers, as much as your father does, in

different ways and for different reasons. I want to thank you for your

honesty and courage in coming to the Sangha with your feelings and

emotions surrounding this life experience. While you do not hold yourself

out as such, there are those of us, myself included, who think of you as

a teacher, as a Guru, if you will :-) For you to honestly express your

feelings to us at this time only reinforces my faith and trust in you.

You could just as easily have played the role and the game of

"don't know...don't care," but you did not.

 

Today is a strange combination of thoughts for me as December 15 was my father's

birthdate. So I think of Tonyji and his Irish saying...that we cry when a child

is born and laugh when a person dies. Truth is...nothing could

be further FROM the truth in reality. But then the question...

for whom do we cry and for whom do we laugh?

And...who is crying...who is laughing?

 

I remember when my Dad was passing and near his time.

At the hospice where he was blessed to pass, the nurse there

pointed out to all of us how important it was for us to give him

permission to go. Many people hold on, not for themselves,

but for those who will be left behind. They know, even when they are

no longer visibly conscious, of the suffering and pain of their loved ones.

So, for you and your Mom and your brother, you Dad will probably

put up the good fight.

 

In her book, On Death and Dying, Kubler-Ross spoke quite a bit about this.

She made the same observations as the wisdom imparted to us by the woman

who worked at the hospice, that we avoid death, not so much our own, as that

of those whom we love and cherish. The greatest gift you can give him is to give

him permission, from your heart to his, to surrender if that is what is asked.

 

With love and respect,

 

Joyce

 

I am copying a bit of what I have written about my reading of Kubler-Ross, below,

for what it is worth...

....THE CYCLE OF DEATH

The cycle of death is made up of the five stages of grief explored by

the remarkable Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, in her book On Death and Dying.

I got the book after Mom died. I was so overwhelmed by her sudden

death and by my feelings at her death. I was only 28 at the time and

she was not supposed to die yet.

Ms. Ross provided comfort and understanding to me at a most difficult

stage in my life and I will always be grateful to her for her courage

in exploring the grief surrounding death. Whether it is a loss of a

loved one, a loss of a relationship, or a loss of the spirit, we go

through life in and out of the stages of the cycle of death.

First Stage: DENIAL...denial, at least partial denial, is used by

almost all patients, not only during the first stages of illness or

following confrontation, but also later on from time to time. Who was

it who said, "we cannot look at the sun all the time, we cannot face

death all the time?"

Second Stage: ANGER...When the first stage of denial cannot be

maintained any longer, it is replaced by feelings of anger, rage,

envy, and resentment. We do not think of the reasons for the anger

and take it personally, when it has originally nothing or little to

do with the people who become the target of the anger."

Third Stage: BARGAINING...The third stage, the stage of bargaining, is

less well known but equally helpful to the patient, though only for

brief periods of time. If we have been unable to face the sad facts

in the first period and have been angry with people and God in the

second phase, maybe we can succeed in entering in some sort of an

agreement which may postpone the inevitable happening: "If God has

decided to take us from this earth and he did not respond to my angry

pleas, he may be more favorable if I ask nicely."

Fourth Stage: DEPRESSION...His numbness or stoicism, his anger and

rage will soon be replaced with a sense of great loss...The second

type of depression is one which does not occur as a result of a past

loss but is taking into account impending losses...All these reasons

for depressions are well known to everybody who deals with patients.

If I were to attempt to differentiate these two kinds of depressions,

I would regard the first one as a reactive depression, the second one

a preparatory depression.

Fifth Stage: ACCEPTANCE...Acceptance should not be mistaken for a

happy stage. It is almost void of feelings. It is as if the pain has

gone, the struggle is over, and there comes a time for "the final

rest before the long journey" as one patient phrased it.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. MD

from On Death and Dying

 

These stages of death and dying don’t always follow the same

designated pathway. They are not limited to death of the body. They

are very much a part of the soul and the heart. In fact, you can go

back and forth between stages, catapulted through them by your own

confusion. You can be in denial, then in depression, then in anger

and back to depression, you can try to bargain, then you give up and

go back to anger, then to depression, and so on and so on and so on.

The cycle is one which never ends...