Pathos, Eros, and Aramis

 [This will be posted as a Silken On Sex podcast episode in the near future]

The weather is California cliche: the sun is bright, the sky is a cloudless blue. The scent of California bay and eucalyptus waft by on a sea breeze. Children splash in the pool. Laughter bounces around the courtyard.

From my chair on the balcony I try to extend my senses, to feel something -- anything -- but what I’m feeling now.

Pathos.

I am doing my best to be present with my body, to understand how this pathos feels, not just emotionally, but physically.

Right now, it feels under-oxygenated. My breath is shorter, faster. It no longer fills my center. My muscles are tight. Twitchy. Restless. My shoulders ride higher, up near my ears.  I feel it in my gut, too, the tightness. An ache has settled in my chest, my eyes. It is a long list.

This is what anxiety and anguish feels like in the flesh.

In my head, it feels like being small and afraid in the face of uncertainty. Trapped. Cut-off. Cornered. I feel like I must act, must do something, anything. But what?

And so I remind myself to breathe.

Life is uncertain, and no amount of resistance to that fact is going to change Reality. Reality is mutable, transient, turbulent. Unpredictable. And yet, it is what it is.

Accept, my mind says. But my body betrays emotional resistance.

I figured that my sisters and I would grow old together, the three of us. The Three Musketeers. I thought we’d be hard-of-hearing old ladies sitting on the back porch swing, laughing until we had to pee, talking about the good old days with Grandmother, the rides down the hill in our little red wagon, and riding horses on the mesa in Colorado. I thought we’d go on vacations, bicycle rides for three, and scold grandchildren.  Then one sister died in 2008 after a long illness, and I revised that dream to just the two of us. But today, the likelihood of my baby sister surviving to my age is slim, never mind to old age. And I feel. A lot of things.

I know we all die. And I know it isn’t anything to be afraid of. I got that, really got it, when I was holding my grandfather’s hand as he exhaled the last bits of himself two years ago.  I understand the beauty of the life-cycle, the transitory nature of it, the glory of a life well-lived. You could say that I am at peace with Death.

But to die young, ah. To lose someone in the prime of life. To watch them hunch in on themselves with pain. The pain of living. Of breathing. Of being. I can handle it. Watching someone die from cancer isn’t a new experience for me. But I’m not enjoying it. It is very stressful on everyone. Especially my sister.

Underneath it all, I’m sad for me. And for her kids. And for our parents — who will have to deal with out-living another of their children.

Life is. And quite often these days, life is Pathos.

Eros and Aramis.

Citrus, cinnamon, and sandalwood: the scent of his Aramis cologne envelops me as Gabriel’s arms do. I rest my forehead against his shoulder and breathe him into me. He always seems to know when I’m in that place, that overwhelmed, anxious and impatient place. He hugs me hard, his arms forming a tight band that pops my back. A welcome release.

“You’re cold,” he murmurs against my ear. “How can you be cold? It’s over 80 degrees out here.”

“I’ve forgotten warmth,” I mutter back, dispirited and exhausted. And cold. I’ve been sleeping with the electric blanket on. In Summer.

He steps backward, holding me at arm's length. He starts to say something, but his eyes are riveted on my breasts. My nipples. Bra-less and cold, my nipples were already hard, but his nearness, the scent of him, have added additional length.

His hand reaches toward my right breast, thumb grazing the nipple. His touch sparks through me, little electric arrows racing along my nerve-endings, dissipating the fog of despair wrapped around me like a comforter. I feel!

Another brush of his thumb and I gasp and sway, my eyes closing. So good. So sweet. Pleasure is so life-affirming.

He steps nearer, his hand never leaving my breast. I can feel the warmth radiating from him. I tilt my face up to his, eyes closed, like a flower following the sun. My mouth trembles with a sad smile and tears well up under my eyelids.

“Make love to me,” I ask him, implore him. “Make me feel alive.”

He steps around me. Pulls the hair away from my neck and brushes my skin with his shadow.  A sharp, hissing intake of my breath. I feel that! Mmmmm… yes!

His arms encircle me, one around my shoulders, the other, my midriff. He draws me backwards, off the balcony, and guides me down onto the persian carpet. With feather-light kisses and touches he opens my blouse, exposing my breasts.

More tears at his gentleness. I need this.

When his mouth closes over my erect nipple, my entire body vibrates with erotic energy. My pathos subsides beneath a tide of Aramis-scented eros as I surrender to a new feeling: I’m alive!

So gloriously fucking alive!

*  *  *

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Visitations

I thought I was reconciled to my sister's death. It has been 14 months now, and I thought I'd accepted it, as I accepted Grandfather's death a few months ago. I thought I was at peace. Until I woke up sobbing this morning.

I had a heartbreaking dream. At the end of it, Tammy said, "I don't want you or Terri to come see me anymore," and then walked away from me. She was so slender and frail she was nearly transparent in the sunlight. I said, "Please Tammy, lets talk about this." She kept walking, her blonde hair a halo of light. "Why won't you talk about it?" I followed her and she went around a car, putting it between us. "There is nothing left to say," she said. In my dream, her words hit me like a blow to the chest. "How can you say that?" I cried out to her. "We're so young! We can't spend the rest of our lives not talking." I saw her moving on the other side of the car. She bent down to look at me through a window and I did the same. When she spoke, the world cracked, throwing me into wakefulness and tears. "There is nothing left to say. I'm dead."

I sobbed in the shower. Huge, body-wracking sobs. I don't know that I've ever cried like that before, though I'd seen it. She cried like that when we finally got to Hawaii to bury Mom. I miss her so much. Every day. Where Grandfather was, there is a place of peace and acceptance. But where Tammy was, there is emptiness, sadness. I try to remember good things, happy things. I remember the summers spent so near where I am living now: playing in the redwoods, swinging in hammocks, legs dangling high up in the plum trees eating not-quite-ripe fruit until we were sick. I try to fill that empty space with beauty, but its often sucked away like water in sand, leaving me aching.

My lover held me as I cried. Said it was ok when I apologized for alarming him. I told him I missed Tammy so much and he kissed me and said, "You tried so hard... You did everything you could... She chose to go."

Yes, she chose to go. I know. Her life became nothing but pain and shadows and she let go. She became the angel my niece talks about all the time, the Auntie who took her on magic carpet rides and keeps her company when her mommy is 3000 miles away. I have Tammy's ashes in a box with a teddybear that smells like Grandmother for company. But that is what remained of her body. Where is her spirit? WHERE IS MY SISTER?

I'm pretty sanguine about the Big Unanswerables. Most of the time it is enough just to be able to frame the questions and recognize which ones can be answered empirically and which ones cannot. And most of the time, I let the Unanswerables go and focus on what can be solved. I thought I'd let this one go, but my subconscious served it up to me once again. I guess that is part of the grieving process. I just hope it doesn't clobber me so hard next time ;)

To Sir, With Love

Within an hour of his death, my cousin and I poured some whiskey and drank a toast to Granddad, a toast taken from the title of the book I'd been reading to him the past two days. To Sir, with love. May he rest in peace.


He was waiting for me to come to him, and his decline once I arrived was stunning in its swiftness. He kept his faculties the entire time, and he died peacefully at home, with loved ones at his side. It has been my role in this family to help ease passings, and perhaps because I have finally fully embraced that role, this passing was the most peaceful yet. I was in a place of love and acceptance, and every thought, every word, every touch was loving and grateful. Thank you for letting me take care of you, it is a priviledge, I told him, after he apologized for his incontinence and need to be cleaned up. Its ok, you can let go now, I projected my thoughts at him. I'll be here to care for the living.


My aunt home from work, I made sure he was comfortable, and then I lay down for a nap, my first bit of sleep in 36 hours. I was unsurprised when my aunt awakened me 90 minutes later to say he was gone. I rose and held his hand and watched the last of his breath leave his lungs and I felt so radiant inside. I could not help but smile through my tears, fully at peace, both with his death, and that of my sister.


The year began with a death and now it ends with one. Another few days and it will be Solstice, when the dying of the light is transformed into renewal. A new year, with new beginnings, and new endings. I can live with that knowledge, just as I can live with the uncertainty of details. Life is a brush that paints in broad, sweeping strokes. When I look ahead, I can see the outline, the dips and curves. But the details, ah, those are completed in the fullness of each moment -- and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Halloween

Halloween!
Portland is crawling with people in costumes. Hundreds of scantily-clad women walking around, turning my head and that of my guest. He and I have different tastes in women, but we still enjoy looking and comparing notes. Since he did not have a costume and was not certain he was up to HOWL or the Erotic Ball, we went instead to the Bagdad Theater in the Hawthorne District. We got our pizza and pitcher of beer and watched a hysterically funny movie.

Halloween!
Tammy's birthday. God how I miss her. God how I tried to save her. Some find comfort in thinking that she has gone on to another, better place, but that comfort is a luxury I cannot seem to buy into. The only certainty in life is death and there is no comfort in that. She is gone 10 months now and it feels like the ache of loss will never go away. I know it will, eventually. I know this, but there is no comfort in that knowledge either, just immense sadness and a pervasive sense of failure. I think, in some ways, it is this sense of failure that drives me south, this feeling of having failed my sister and my family and myself.

Thanksgiving!
I am giving up my life here in Portland to move to California, where I will be near my loved ones. The feeling of relief once I made that choice was profound. The emotions are complex. Do I sense within myself hope for redemption for this imagined sin of failing to keep my sister alive? Who knows? In a few moments it is the Day of the Dead. It seems fitting.

Sadness by email

My father emailed me. I always tighten up a bit when I see his name in my mailbox. He usually writes when he has something important to tell me and doesn't want to do it by phone because we'll both end up in tears. Even so, I tried to think positively, but the first line was a punch in the gut. My father's father is dying. Three months at most, they say. They found a mass in his lung and he doesn't want to fight it, not at his age. So my father emailed me that he is preparing to go stay with his father, and get him on hospice and care for him until his time comes. He said he's feeling very sad and low on energy--its been a tough year--and begged me to take care, because I'm one of the few people he has to draw on at this time.

How do you respond to that kind of news? What do you tell a man who has dealt with death and dying and illness in his children and siblings now facing the death of his father? I wasn't quite sure how to respond, so I just started writing.

It is ok to be depressed over Granddad. Its been a tough year. Sometimes I feel like shaking my fist at Heaven and saying "Enough is enough!" And other times, I feel like asking "Doesn't Heaven have enough angels yet?" But mostly, I recognize that in life there is only one certainty, and that is death. And while I am not ready to embrace that certainty for myself, Granddad is. And I respect that. And am willing to let him go. I remember how hard it was for Granny and Tammy to go. They wanted to, both of them, they were so tired, but we wanted them to stay. And in that spiritual tug-of-war there is no difference between winning and losing--there is just struggle and resistance. Truth be told I've not got much resistance left. I have learned Acceptance with a capital 'A'. Not acceptance as in resignation, but acceptance as in, this is how Life is, this is my reality, and I can waste my energy fighting Life, or I can accept what it throws at me and fight for what I can change, and for the differences I can make in the world.

I am glad that you can go be with him. Please do. I am sure he wants you there, but most importantly, it is where you want to be. Just know that you don't have to suck it up. Its ok to be sad, its ok to cry. Granddad understands tears now. He's developed an intimacy with them since his stroke, and in some ways tears are sacred and they've anointed him again and again over the years. Love will out, one way or another, and so will joy and sorrow. I love you.

Keep taking good care of yourself. Let me know what I can do for you both. I'll be here.

Even if I said the wrong things, I hope he knows I mean them in the best way. The sad thing is that today is his mother's birthday. Sad news to dispense on a day we remember her by, my tiny grandmother with her fuschia lipstick and silvery crew-cut hair. Miss you, Granny.

California Dreamin'

In Romeo & Juliet, Mercutio said something like: "A plague upon your house. Upon both your houses!"

There are days when I feel like my house is under a plague.

I have three sisters left. Two are ill, one terminally so. The third is the twin of the one who is terminal. She is exhausted from months of care-giving and is wondering how she is going to live life without her twin. My step-mother cries a lot, and prays. My father is stressed, tired, infinitely sad. My father's sister just had surgery. My father's brother is in the hospital. My mother's brother is disabled and unwell.

Its crazy.

Meanwhile, my life is assuming a new rhythm. My step-mother is happy I'm here. I am a breath of fresh air, she says, a big-energy person who fills a room, and ever the astonishing child. I try to be upbeat and positive, to radiate compassion, to hold her when she cries over her daughter's suffering. I show everyone photos of Tammy, of Oregon, of my travels, and entice them to eat things they've never had before: mini-wedges of mango and ginger stilton, slices of warm artisan bread with chevre, balls of gorgonzola rolled in chopped nuts and baked. Slices of english cucumber with mascarpone and bits of cured meat, fruit, or nuts on top.

Some nights I take my turn checking on Caro every two hours, making sure she is comfortable, applying topical medications, adjusting the blankets. Pain has creased her forehead prematurely. Her eyes are tired. She sleeps a lot, and when she speaks, her voice is barely above a whisper. Soon, we hope. Soon her suffering will end, please, oh merciful God we pray, amen.

Sometimes at night my body curls around the grief in my middle, and I cry. Sometimes, sleepless, I open my laptop and write.

And sometimes I listen to my self-hypnosis scripts. Relax, my own voice tells me. Bathe in the healing white light of my consciousness. Know myself as the possibility of freedom, of joy, and powerful peace. Listen to the sea birds, imagine myself swimming the ocean, rocking in it, comforted by it, my own tears of sadness blending with it. Awaken rested, refreshed, at peace, my own voice whispers into my ears just before I end the trance and send myself to sleep.

And in the morning I am strong again, a mountain of light with just a few spots of erosion showing. No landslides yet. (A twinge. Tammy's favorite song: Landslide.)

Some days I spend at a friend's house, taking a time-out. We watch movies and play games, taking breaks to go for sushi and dim sum. He does his best to make me smile, and lets me snuggle up to him, and just be. And best of all, at his place I can sleep. Sometimes I stretch out on his bed and nap with his cat in the sunlight, letting the ocean breeze tickle my skin.

Life is what it is. The plague will pass. Meanwhile, I'm doing my best to live each day fully, even in extraordinary circumstances like these.

weariness

There are many kinds of weariness.
There is physical weariness, which is remedied by rest.
There is mental weariness, which is remedied by sleep.
There is emotional weariness, which is remedied by love.
And there is weariness of the spirit, which is assuaged by time.

I am bone-deep weary on all fronts. Had I the energy, I might even be in despair, but alas I'm too weary even for that.

A dear one opened his home to me and I slept 14 hours--unheard of for me, the woman who never sleeps more than six hours. I slept, making up for the long nights of giving meds every hour to the sister who is still living but jealous of the one who died. I am so sad that every ounce of water in me feels like a pound of tears.

I am home now, and in a short while I will be going back to work, back to the world of taxes and financial services. A world of precision. A world whose parameters I know well and know how to control. A world in which the solution is always 'zero', regardless of the problem. At work, when my colleagues get caught up in the drama of an error, I remind them that they are focusing on the problem, instead of the solution.

What is my solution to loss and death and weariness? WORK.

Leaving Massachusetts

The sun shone. The rain came, a torrential downpour complete with thunder and lightning. And then it snowed. And rained some more. All in 10 days. I'd forgotten how bizarre the weather could be in New England.

She was brain dead but we kept her on life support long enough for them to find donors for her organs. Four people were given a second chance at life. This is a comfort to me somehow, knowing that some part of her lives on in others. Like me, she had no children.

She was cremated. Her urn is actually a beautiful wooden box, which we will take to Hawaii. We will disburse her ashes in the same place we did our mother's ashes 6 years ago.

I went to her boyfriend's house to get her things. I had this odd moment, this memory-echo, when I went to get into the rental car stuffed full of clothing and paperwork and medical supplies. I remembered Tammy and me in Hilo, standing next to my mother's car, which contained all of her belongings. It seemed so sad that her life fit into a car, and my sister Tammy sobbed then, horrible wracking sobs that echoed in the jungle with the same mournful quality as wolves howling. My other sister unpacked the rental car when I got to her place. I couldn't seem to do it. I was so blocked on it, for some reason. But she understood and did it for me.


We had a quiet ceremony at the funeral home. Just family and a few close friends. Friends of hers opened their restaurant early and served us lunch. I had homemade tortellini soup and a portobello mushroom salad. It was all quite tasty. It was the first thing I remember tasting in a week, actually.

Friday we opened her bar for a goodbye party. Last call for alcohol. It was just for 4 hours, but there must have been 250 people who showed up to pay their respects and send her off. I think she would have liked it. She always threw a good party.

I'm in Portland now, with an 18 hour turn-around and then to California to see my sister Caro before she dies. She said come now, she is tired. The tumor on her aorta makes every beat of her heart painful, and she is ready to go. And so I am coming.

Such a painful way to start a new year, with so much loss and suffering. I could make it mean a lot of different things about the world, about life... I could chose to make it mean that life is unfair, that it sucks--all sorts of things. I choose instead to make it mean that Tammy is free of suffering and Caro soon will be, and that life is what it is and every day we have is the most important day of our lives.

Beautiful Soul

I was fortunate to be her sister for all of her 38 years. She was a vibrant, extraordinary woman with a smile that never grew up. She always looked so vulnerable and sweet when she smiled, like she was six years old and sharing a part of her soul. Her last two years were pain-filled and exhausting, and now she is free. For this I am grateful, though selfishly, I wish she was still here.

I'd gotten lulled by the daily routine of my life, and forgotten its transience. If the only certainty in life is that we will die, and the time of death is uncertain, then it is best to live each day as fully as possible, lulled by nothing, taking none of it for granted.

Life, Death, and the Amaryllis

I am the dance of snowflakes as they tumble down a chasm. My nature cannot overcome the howling wind nor the inevitability of gravity, but I dance anyway. Is it the dance of life, or is it the dance of death? I do not know. I know only that I dance.

I packed two suitcases last night, one for the East Coast, one for the West Coast. I awakened from a bad dream at 2am. So much on my mind, so many trips ahead. California to see one sister who is dying, Massachusetts to be with another for surgery to remove cancer, and lo, phone calls at 4am, a third sister in a coma. The brain aneurism fairy visited her in the middle of the night. Frantic father, torn between two coasts -- the deathbed of one daughter, and now another. How sad, to have three daughters in their thirties sick or dying. He must feel like the biblical Job.


"How are you holding up?" a friend asked.
I answered, "The amaryllis on my windowsill is blooming."
A moment later I thought, How Zen.

'self' as a function of 'being'

Enlightenment struck my mind like lightening as I sat on the cheerful orange-red couch, looking into the care-worn face of the woman I was paying to coach me through the 'grieving process'--a process which seemed so simple on paper... In that moment, the two halves of my brain split open like a flowerbud erupting. With exquisite clarity, I awakened to the realization that I had a fixed conception of who I was, who my True Self was. I had this idea that my Self was something that existed somewhere, that it was a thing. And I recognized that most people I knew subscribed to this notion of the 'thingness of self'.

In examining this concept, I found that there were defining moments in my life that seemed to reveal something about me, sometimes good, sometimes bad. I could find myself in a set of circumstances and know, based upon my past experiences and my understanding of who I was as a result, that it was something I could or could not handle. A bully could push another child down and I would fearlessly walk up to him and give him a push back and belittle him. Why wasn't I afraid? Because I knew myself as someone who could withstand a bigger bully than any I would ever find in the school yard (my father) and I knew myself as a protector of those smaller than myself (my sisters). I knew myself as smart and my sisters as pretty, because that is what others said. I knew myself as kind because I found myself unable to intentionally harm another. I knew myself as unlovable, despite all the people in my life who said they loved me, because when I was a girl my mother left me, and if my mother left me, surely there must have been something wrong with me, because your mom is supposed to love you always, no matter what, right? Grandmother told me that a young lady must be cool, calm, collected, cultured, poised, refined, and intelligent, and she did her best to raise me up as such, and for the most part, I self-identified as those things. It was a comfort to know who I was in the uncertain, ever-changing mess that life was.

A few years ago, I found myself experiencing a profound dissatisfaction with who I was, and what's more, a stubborn resistance to changing. I found myself saying "That's just how I am" and "I've always been that way", far too often, using those words as a barrier between my self and the dangers of questioning the nature of that self. Four people I loved died in as many years, and my inability or unwillingness to process and share my pain and grief created a gulf between myself and the living. Eventually, it was my recognition that the stress-response and coping mechanisms I had developed prior to adulthood were hopelessly outdated and needed changing that caused me step outside myself and seek help and open my mind to 'new' ideas.

"I feel lost, I don't know who I am anymore," I told my therapist. "I used to know who I was. I need help finding myself, finding better ways to cope with death and stress."

"What if there is no True Self?" My therapist asked me. "What if there is no Self to find? What if the only way to cope with stress is to accept the inevitability of loss and let your old Self die?"

And so I began an inquiry into the nature of the 'thingness of self', and in time that inquiry led me to consider that 'self' is not a static thing, but rather, that 'self' is a function of 'being'. By this, I mean, the self is a function of who we are being in the present moment. And it just so happens that, for much of my life, who I was being was my past. Who I was being was the self I had constructed, the Shining Tower of Self built with stones labeled 'smart' and 'strong' and 'resilient' and 'kind', and in its shadow dwelled all the things about myself I had rejected. The sea of life pounded at this foundation--at the thingness--of my self, and I did battle with it, resenting the intrusions of uncertainty and change and loss.

And as I did so, I grew more rigid. I clung to a way of being that was defined by what had worked for me in the past. I am these things, I told myself, I have these qualities, and I will survive this--I will not be undermined. My stubborn attachment to this sense of myself basically lead me to pretend that everything was fine when it was not. Eventually, the tension created between the circumstances of my life, and the person I was trying to be, made things unbearable for me. I was trying to force the reality of the moment to fit into the mold of the past so I wouldn't have to change.

And one day I stood at the top of the shining tower of self, and I bared myself to the agony of my being, to the agony that who I was being was creating in me, and something happened. For the first time in my adult life I was truly present to the moment, and to my experience of it, and in that moment of transcendence I understood. I understood that who I was was a function of who I was being, and that I was free to choose to be another way, and that I had nothing to lose by embracing each and every moment of my life as it came. I had nothing to lose because the past was dead and I had been living in and being in the past, and in doing so was denying myself life. I once mourned the loss of my innocence, of my wonder, of the magical thinking of childhood. Today I experience wonder and joy. I know innocence when I am not reliving the past in the present moment. And I have embraced 'magical thinking' -- I have learned to think in terms of what is possible -- no matter how improbable -- and pull it toward me, to live it, to live as if it is not just a possibility, but a reality.

Because if who I am is not set in stone, then I can be whoever I want to be. And if who I am is not set in stone, then neither is my future. Anything I want out of life is possible if I am true to the moment, and living in the moment, and being who I want to be, each moment, every moment of my life. So, if I want to know who I am, I have only to examine how I am being. And if how I am being is out of sync with who I want to be, well then, its either time to revise my expectations of who I want to be, or, its time to bring my actions in line with who I want to be, so as to avoid unnecessary anguish and suffering. Who I am (for myself and others) is truly a function of who I am being in the world.

And speaking of being, right now I am being very lazy. I should be packing, not babble-writing.

Death, peace, and beauty

So.... my mother died six years ago, just before the September 11th attack. I was struggling with grief and guilt and travel arrangements when the towers fell, and the national decent into an orgy of televised mourning and sabre-rattling derailed both my grieving process and my attempts to get to Hawaii to deal with my mother's remains. It was 10 days from her death before I successfully reached Hilo. It was 4 years from her death before I successfully grieved her.

Today I mark her death with surprising equanimity, considering all the 9/11 and Osama bin Ladin / al Qaeda media coverage. I've made my peace with myself, with her, with the past that came between us. I carry within me now a whole new sense of self-acceptance as a result of that peace-making: the roles of the unfit mother and the ungrateful daughter were not true to who we were, but they were real to us in the context in which we experienced each other. It is a powerful thing, being able to make such distinctions.

In laying her ghost to rest, I finally grew up.

I am applying the lessons learned the past two years toward dealing with my sister's situation. She will live to see her 38th birthday next month. Most likely, anyway. I am finding it difficult to live powerfully in the face of her suffering, but where I can, I am choosing not to focus on the helplessness which this situation is engendering in me. I am an adult now, truly adult in my emotions and thought processes and actions. I accept--no, I choose--What Is. And having chosen What Is, I am at peace with it. I am at peace with it, and that peace creates an opening to create a future in which I remember my sister as a vital woman who lived a full life, instead of one in which I continually mourn her as someone who died much too soon.

My relationships with others, my sense of connectedness, is the measure by which the beauty of life is understood. And the beauty of death.