Dying Wiser #4
Wisdom through Literature; Eldering through Dad: This is Touch Two
A continuation from Dying Wiser #3—because SO MUCH can be said about the importance of human touch.
The world-renown poet and modern-day philosopher, David Whyte, was born in Great Britain and lives here in Washington state on Whidbey Island. He is also of Irish descent so he speaks with a mesmerizing lilt and recites his poetry in a very unique manner. He is one of my favorite poets.
In 2014, he wrote a book called “Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment, and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words, (Many Rivers Press, 2015).” One of those words…
Touch.
Touch: “…the meeting with something or someone other than ourselves.” This “having Dad here with us for his end of life care” relationship is a form of meeting. Having Dad now as such an intimate part of our family, in our home, his new forever home, surfaces SO many opportunities of touching for understanding through all the mysteries that dying provides. I don’t think there’s been much fear of holding Dad in this place of pending death. But for certain, we, with Dad, are touching mystery.
Whether we touch only what we see, or the mystery of what lies beneath the veil of what we see, we are made for unending meeting and exchange. (p. 247)
And it is “unending.” Once touched in this manner, there can never be a forgetting. So Kristin and I are very cognizant of each moment of exchange we have with Dad, through all forms of touch, because each will be indelibly imprinted in our hearts for eternity. Sure, the details of the mundane exchanges will be lost to distant memory, but not the meaning behind the reason for all the exchanges: to serve Dad in his living as we approach his dying. And then to serve in THAT place of intimate touch as well—that ultimate veiled space of mystery.
When I look at Dad, I know I’m always looking at a dying person. Because the same is true were I to be looking at…you, right? Most times, I don’t see that dying person (such is the reality of the veil of ordinary living) until, that is, we close the distance of space, of expectation, of “wish it were different,” and have to do what we inevitably have to do countless times every day: touch each other. And then there is this curious and mysterious meeting (touch) of living and dying within the body of this one precious person I have the honor of serving.
In that space of intimate exchange, one of the veils of mystery is lifted: I know always that when I am touching my Dad by helping him move from place to place, by showering him, by fluffing the pillow that supports his back as he leans back in his chair, and by kissing his forehead at bedtime, I am touching my dying Dad. This Truth is undeniable—and it is all due to the grace of human touch.
Every day, in Dad, I see “the very fierce consequences of being bodily present in the world” through his aging, his Parkinson’s, his dementia, and tremor, and shuffling gait, and bowel movements, and his nightmares. And I will bear witness to the final fierce consequence: that of his physical death. If we had the will and desire, if we broke down our fear and denial of death that is the modus operandi of our Western culture, we should want it no other way. If we knew better (we = our present culture, for our ancestors used to know better), Assisted Living facilities would struggle for clients.
And this form of meeting, of touching the mystery of dying, is vital for us in a different kind of way too. David Whyte reminds us:
To forge an untouchable, invulnerable identity is actually a sign of retreat from this world; of weakness; a sign of fear rather than strength, and betrays a strange misunderstanding of an abiding, foundational and necessary reality: that untouched, we disappear. (p. 249)
NOT wanting to be touched like this, by avoiding being fully present and bearing full witness to “a dying,” out of fear or whatever, means we inch closer to our own disappearance in this world. You have to make a grand effort not to be touched by something. The ultimate grand effort would be to disappear yourself from it all—once and for all. I’m also finding one cannot simply pick and choose when not to be touched if you aim to be fully human and present—to have the courage to be touched means you are present in the world for it all: the good, the not so good, the easy, the hard, the happy, and the sad; the living, AND the dying. This how you expand the boundaries of your humanness.
And THAT is a good thing!
It always seems to me that those Souls I’ve met along my own journey who seem to be the most alive, with deep wells of wisdom and heart, who are the most grounded in this world; in other words, those Souls who seem to be the most human and present and compassionate, have allowed their own hearts to be touched deeply and intimately and fully, with no apologies, by what Jon Kabat Zinn calls: “the full catastrophe of life;” which includes joy AND grief. Far from disappearing, those Souls, if we look for them, and invite them, become our Elders—our beacons guiding us through the veiled fog that is the mystery of dying.
Now, touching Dad in this manner, with this knowing, with his dying, means I am being touched. Indeed, WE all are being touched. Dad’s dying is enriching life—his, mine, ours, yours. This is what Elders do simply as a result of living “the being” of an Elder—they die wiser. By allowing Dad to touch me in this manner (for I always have the choice of not being touched; or even a denial that I always am), I am becoming more human. I’ll admit there IS a touch of selfishness in having him here due to this: Dad, as my Elder, is helping me be a better person.
And as each touch deepens, as they gain in depth and color and texture, eventually, because we are in this for the duration, there is a touching of Souls. This I need as the way of lifting the final veil of mystery: Dad’s final Eldering lesson…
…his Death.
We are practicing living in the moment now, in preparation for journeying through that final leg of Dad’s Journey Home, because we have no idea how to do that, until we are going through it. Hence the wondrous mystery of it all. That journey allows us to be with Dad up until his very last step.
David Whyte reminds us, as Dad completes those final steps, and as he’ll takes his last one over that veiled threshold into the mysterious beyond, there will be a new form of meeting. We cannot go with Dad there, but we can prepare ourselves to be touched in a new way. A new way of touching as I (we) learn, from that point on, how to live NOT without Dad’s physical presence, but with the new form of Love he will leave behind. This new way of meeting is through a resonance of Souls.
And once Souls have touched like that, there is never a forgetting.
THAT resonant embrace,
THAT meeting,
THAT touch,
lasts for eternity.
And yet with all this real talk of dying and death, I know this: until you are dead, you are fully alive. My Dad is alive! He is living. He is Eldering those whom he is touching every day and in all ways. And he is creating memories for us. Memories that will keep him alive for eternity within our hearts…
…the one place in all the Universe where the intimacy of a human touch is NEVER forgotten.
T plus 78 days…and counting. And in each, Dad leaves imprints in our hearts—through his gentle touch.
Many fond memories.