I Don't Know Where I Am...

I mean, I do, I am in Morro Bay.  But emotionally, emotionally I am lost to myself.  I have been waking at 3 am, earlier some days for a couple of weeks now.  A lot going on, a lot for my tender mind to hold, too much I guess because my resting mind has been unable to hold it, so it spills out in the early morning hours and requires conscious attention I would rather leave there sleeping.

Things are ending...all of them out of my control.  All of them losses I would rather not face, shoulder, endure.  But that is not real life, real life requires, demands in fact, this constantly unremitting cessation of things we hold dear.  Sometimes they are ripped from us.  Other times it is a more gradual leaving. The pain is shaped by the contours of loss.  No exit being better than the other because one cannot talk of loss in a way that scales such things.  It is all hard.  It levels all of us.

I don’t know where I am because I see what is happening and I know it is just the hard side of living.  There is nothing to really do, but I feel I should prepare anyway.  I feel like there are things I can do to make this process easier or better. And there is not.  It has its own ideas about these things.  It has its own issues with the currency of now.  And, to be fair, it’s job far larger than me and all my petty ideas about how and what should go down.  Death does not have time to consult with me.  Death just has to come, swiftly or slowly, and I just have to deal with it.

The loss isn’t anyone’s fault, though I do suppose there are circumstances as this whole thing goes down that might allow me to place blame on someone who didn’t listen...but I am not sure how much good that would do anyone at all. Not listening isn’t a crime, it is callous and cold, but it isn’t a crime.  Thankfully, I suppose, because I would have been locked up years ago.

I don’t know where I am because I have never been asked to let go like this...not in this way, not in this manner.  I have been privileged and spoiled.  And now, I find myself without a ballast.  I do not know what happens next, even though I absolutely know what happens next.

I probably should cry, that might help.  But I hate crying although for different reasons than I used to...I used to hate crying because I hated the weakness it telegraphed.  Now I hate it because it makes my head hurt and then my sinuses are fucked for days.  The weakness was never really weakness, it is healthy and normal to cry when things are sad.  But having shut that down and held it hostage for so long, it comes rarely for me now. It isn’t that I don’t feel the pain, the loss and the heartbreak.  It is that I frequently am denied access to that particular interior within me.  I shut me out and down for so long, that tendril within me is atrophied and withered...rarely able to host such heavy feelings.

I know my dad is dying.  It has been happening at an ever increasing rate and pace.  I have seen the downward spiral, have been held by it, watched it progress even as I politely requested it would fuck right off.  It did not, in fact, fuck off and sneered at me as it increased its pace.  The downward spiral gives no fucks, that is super clear.

I do not know where I am because a part of me wants him to go.  Wants to increase the speed with which this happens.  Not because I want him to go, but because this is the ugly, gnarled part and I can feel the shifting sands beneath me swirling in a threatening way.  And I know the bottom will fall out, the rug shall be ripped out and away from me.  I know this will happen and I know I will survive but the injuries sustained during this whole bottom falling/rug pulling situation is going to hurt and I really fucking hate that.

I do not know where I am because as much as I know he is going to die and do not wish for him to linger in this mortal plane, suffering, confused, lost to us and himself.  I do not want to preserve his life for the sake of delaying our grief  and sadness.  I do not want him to be held in this limbo for any longer.  It is time, or rather it feels like it is time...I swear, as he lay sleeping the other day, I smelled death within him.  I cannot describe the scent of death any better than I can describe the scent of living.  But I will tell you that I knew exactly what it was the second I experienced it. A vaporized threat to one who still clings to life and living.

So I do not want to hold him here.  I do not want him to suffer.  But that is not for me to decide.  I cannot make those calls, there are just those of us who suffer before we leave and I cannot really make sense of that.  Like at all.

So I do not know where I am in all this death and dying business.  Part of me accepts that it will just move forward and it really doesn’t matter what I want or need.  My job, in this life’s end situation is not to like it or not, it is just to accept that it is underway and I am not in control of anything at all.  And then there is this other part of me that is mounting an insurrection...preparing for battle like I have a fucking chance to win or even gain ground.  Any victory I might achieve immediately lost upon myself because what did I really gain?  More time for suffering?  Postponing the inevitable?  And what does that really gain anyone at all?

So I find myself because I went looking...and even though I cannot name the place where I was found, I know that it is spacious enough to hold all my doubts, my fears and the tears that will invariably come for me.  I know my time is best spent being present, working hard to advocate, to stand tall in my own life as testament to the fact that I still have one.  A good one at that.  I need to find a patience I do not currently possess.  To be still and allow all the shit that is swirling within me to settle, because clarity is required and vital for him and for those of us who remain...

And as I write this, the tears begin to fall which was maybe the whole purpose of this entire thing.  To say the things that make me sad enough to cry.  To sit alone in my hotel room, fire blazing, the world still sleeping on a Sunday morning at 3:50 am which is a normal and sensible thing to do. Perhaps I just needed to journey to my interior to cull up the ancient parts of me that used to be tender and delicate.  To invite them safe passage to the exterior of me.  To allow them to move towards me in a way that I refuse to so very often.

I have to own there is a part of me now that sits here, writing, crying and drinking coffee that wonders if this is just another self styled drama.  But while I fear that, I know it isn’t.  It is surrender and acceptance taking over and locking down my being, tethering me to a place where I will survive but the coming moments shall not be pretty.  Perhaps they will be sublime?  Perhaps they will just be gut wrenchingly sad.

So I find myself lost a little to me right now.  Not sure where to step, where there is solid footing, accepting that perhaps there is not firm ground upon which to stand.  Perhaps free fall is just in the cards for me, now.  For all of us who wait as death calls a crowd and holds the room.  I suppose I could view death as the arrogant victor.  But I do not choose that.  I, instead, choose to see death as humble, sent to do an awful task, to gather the living from the living, and spirit them away to places we think of often, but attempt not to think about far more often.  Death, at least to me, slinks around like a feral cat, who is starving for food, water and attention.  Audacious in his meager ask.  And he will slink away as soon as he is sated, grateful, humble, but wretched all the same. And death will move on to take another’s loved one, being done with us for a moment.  And I can feel that pain acutely.  For us, for whomever is next in line.  I shall not run, or hide or attempt to distract myself because to do that I feel I would devalue the life that is leaving.  No, my task is to stand stalwart and sturdy, to just be here, witness to the life well lived, grieving the loss which is all of ours and knowing that the pain of the exit shall last for the remainder of my days.  One does not really ever get over the loss of a parent.  You just find a way to live with it.

I pray that my dad is granted swift passage, I pray that all those he loved that came before, are waiting for him.  I pray his mom, his little sister can be there to help him transition.  I pray his time in the bardo is safe, healing and peaceful.  I pray that he makes it to the other side, unafraid and that his time in the human plane was good enough for him to leave us with no regrets.  I know he amended what he could.  I know we did too.  And I guess, having no experience with the current situation, I guess that just has to be good enough, you know?  He was born, he lived, he fucked it all up, he did his best to put it right and now he waits for his time to come to be called home or wherever the fuck it is called, the place where we go, the other side of the veil...

My most fervent wish is that he go in peace, he go quickly, without fear or hurt or pain.  That he transition as painlessly as possible.  He and I both lived lives in ways that created more pain than was necessary for actual living.  So I pray that he find safe passage that does not belabor the point.  I am watching dad, I see you.  We are all good. It is ok to go now. I have mom, I will take care of her.  You are free.  I love you.

Again, still...always and forever.