I admit to being a prude. I am embarrassed talking about sex, and although I curse regularly, I don’t use sexual terms, I never speak in sexual terms any person, and I never talk about sex.
Maria can tell you that even speaking about sex embarrasses me so much I turn red and often have to cover my face with my hands. And she loves to tease me and make that happen.
This comes from my mother and grandmother.
Minnie Cohen was a penniless refugee from a peasant village in the Ukraine, but she had an imperious air about her, she thought she was the Queen Of Douglas Avenue – a row of three-story tenements – in Providence, which is what we called her. I loved her dearly, but she was an imperious snob sometimes, and she warned me – standing in her peasant dress and thick black shoes – constantly about the poor domestic gifts of gentiles, they did not clean, shop or cook well enough for me.
Aside from the fact that this proved to be true – my wife does not cook, clean or shop much, she is fiercely and proudly undomestic – my grandmother passed this onto my mother, who assumed many of her pretensions and airs.
We never spoke of sex in the house, or talked roughly. “We are,” she would huff, “New Englanders!,” as if Cotton Mather were joining us for dinner.” I think she thought of herself as a descendant of the Puritans, a kind of royalty, above common and ordinary folk. New Englanders by way of Kiev, I would mutter.
So I think this is how i became a prude.
This came up in my mind when I tried to write about Robin Gibbon’s determined effort to breed Hannah, Gus’s mother, with a gentleman Boston Terrier from town named Knox. I assumed Robin would artificially inseminate Hannah, which is what most high-tone breeders I know do.
No messy mounting or intercourse, I thought, just the insertion of semen into the female (I don’t like the term “bitch.”).
But that was before I really knew Robin, a true and deep dog lover through and through.
Robin’s interest in breeding was not show or money or pride, she loved Hannah so much she couldn’t bear the idea that she might live her life without the experience being a mother, or even of loving another dog, if we can say that. You have to understand that Robin takes her two Boston Terriers out for a ride each morning, they insist on it, she says.
Robin wanted it to be a natural experience for Hannah, and she was adamant about finding a gentleman male Boston Terrier, one who would treat Hannah appropriate and give her a positive breeding experience. She was very careful about it.
I noticed in talking with Robin, the vet and other breeders that nobody talked about sex or mating, they all said the dogs would be “tied” or “tied up.” Maybe “bred.”At first, when I heard this business of being “tied,” I thought they were planning some sadomasochistic ritual, I was surprised, it didn’t seem like Robin.
it took me awhile grasp that we were talking about sex, about Hannah getting laid. The first few days with Hannah and Knox didn’t go well. Robin sent me cryptic text messages.
Hannah wasn’t in the mood, she was standoffish, not interested. I was beginning to despair, but nobody had yet messaged anything about sex. Craig Worboys, Knox’s owner, just talked about the two dogs getting together.
“She’s picky” Robin cautioned. And one thing for sure, nobody was going to pressure Hannah to hook up with any horny dog she didn’t like.
Then after a few quiet and silent days, Robin sent me this text: “Positive attempt. Got tied. Will try again later to make sure.”
And then, a day later, a message from Craig: “Good news! Hannah and Knox tied up yesterday. We are going to try it again to make sure.”
I gathered more information later. Hannah had a good time. She screwed her socks off. She had SEX! And more than once. There! I’ve said it.
There, I’ve said it. I never really like pseudonyms. I am glad it was a meaningful and loving experience for Hannah. I can’t wait to meet her puppies. And perhaps I am getting over my sexual hangups about words and won’t blush anymore and my wife can’t torture or tease me.
I believe that all great spirituality is about pain and fear, and if we do not transform or confront our pain (or write about), it will either devour us, or we will transmit it to those around us, most often the ones we love the most.
I’ve had a number experiences in my life which caused me to think and write about death, and I’m grateful for all of them.
One was my hospice therapy work with Izzy and Red (Izzy & Lenore). Another was the death of beloved dogs, which inspired me to write a book about grief (Going Home).
Another was my work at the Mansion Assisted Care Facility, where a number of residents I became close to have died, and the latest is the experience of my good friend Ed Gulley, the dairy farmer, who has been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer.
Death has become a private, most often, invisible, experience in America. As a writer, I feel obliged to acknowledge that death is a universal experience. Everyone reading this has lost something dear to them, or will.
There is no grief I could experience that has not been felt by countless others, including almost every one of my readers, at any age. It is never unique to me. The moment I forget that, my writing becomes useless, and i drift towards narcissism.
The new and deepening reality is that people die in hospitals and nursing homes now, rarely in their own homes.
We very rarely see them die. Health care can be miraculous, but it is often cruel and expensive and impersonal when it comes to dying. We can keep people alive for a long time, but no one wants to be responsible fo how they live.
The media is obsessed with violence in America, but shuns death. The lives of the aged, sick and dying are now controlled by doctors and insurance companies and the vast and impersonal and costly health care system. The word that describes this system for me is de-humanizing.
I know that there are what the nurses and doctors call “good” deaths and “bad” deaths. The good deaths I have seen take planning, courage, support and foresight.
My friend Ed Gulley is writing his own radical chapter about death, he has chosen to die openly and quite publicly, and if he can help it, at home.
He has decided not to be hidden away or made invisible, he will not go quietly into the night.
Ed has refused medical treatment for his brain tumors – a wise decision, according to every doctor or nurse that I know – and is writing about his illness or posting videos about it on his blog, the Bejosh Farm Journal.
He recently posted on Blog Entry No. 20 a video message aimed exclusively at his fellow farmers moving into Spring “rush-rush” mode. In the video Ed warns farmers to take at least five minutes a day to sit in the sun and look up at the sky and cherish life, “before you end up like I am.”
When I went to see him (above) Friday, he was as good as his word, sitting out in the sun with his dog, looking up at the sky.
One thing I have learned about grieving and death is that everyone has the right to approach it in their own way, despite the many doctors and zealots and politicians trying to tell us how we must die.
I love Ed, but of course, we do not always see the world in the same way, that is part of the beauty of our friendship. Ed writes from the heart, his blogs are a diary of perpetual feeling. Not surprisingly, he is turning to poetry, he says it helps him focus his ideas.
Ed has also cautioned me, among others, to take it easier, and “sniff the roses.” As he reviews his life, he is re-considering how hard he worked, and what he neglected to do.
I don’t see relaxing as something I need to do or wish to do. Perhaps I am blind and in denial – I am not really able to stand in his shoes – but I see death now as a part of life, the real issue for me about death making time and thinking ahead to plan for the death I want. But it is still an idea for me, it is not yet upon me.
Since death is a taboo in our society, hardly anyone stops to plan for it. I’d rather go to a movie. I’ve seen so many people who regret not planning when they could.
In modern America, there are few simple or easy deaths. Researchers say that people who turn their dying over to the health care system take an average of six years to die, and it is almost never painless or quick.
The “good” deaths I have seen come from people who think and talk about dying, write their wishes down, talk to lawyers and loved ones about preparing legal documents and who don’t wait for emergencies.
I admit to being taken aback by Ed’s message to the farmers, and I will tell him so.
He seemed to be blaming the good and hard work he did all of his life for his cancer, and that seemed a harsh message to me. I can’t speak for him, but to me, cancer is not a punishment for the hard life of the farmer. Ed is a good man who worked hard for his family every day. And he loved and loves his life.
I had to smile a bit when I saw this video, I pictured all of the farmers listening.
I’ve never met a farmer – including Ed – who has five or ten minutes to spend sitting out in the sun with his dog, I’ve never met a farmer who has come close to doing all of the things he or she needs to do in the course of a day. The life they choose is rich, but full of hard and relentless and mostly unappreciated work.
I know how hard it is to salute the sun when there is a lot of bill-paying work to do. I never could do it.
(I actually have evolved, I spend roughly an hour a day in rest, solitude, contemplation and mediation, more time resting than Ed or any other dairy farmer would spend in a year.
(Writers do not have replacement knees and hips, as a rule, they more frequently have sore butts from sitting. Most of the farmers I know are not bionic men.)
As people approach death, they quite often ask “why?” To me, that is like asking why the sun comes up.
It just does, and we just will. We have nothing to say about it.
I am nonplussed by people who tell me they loved their dead dogs so much they will never get another one. What did they think would happen? And what to we think will happen to us? And do they know that every dog over on the earth has lost a dog?
Ed is not, in my mind, responsible for his cancer, or his perhaps inevitable death. We will all die, of course, and so will everyone we know and love. Acceptance of our deaths is one our most difficult spiritual struggles. Ed writes that he is not fighting the reality of it.
The great spiritual thinkers all teach about letting go of what you don’t need and who you are not. At that place, wrote Richard Rohr, you will have nothing to prove to anybody and nothing to protect.
It’s called freedom, and I believe Ed is close to finding it.
Social media has changed the way we die in America, it has broken the old media taboo about death, and also become a focal point for grieving.
I see people mourning dogs for years after their deaths, and I see people sharing the loss of loved ones almost automatically and drawing upon the sympathy of others. Grieving is not, for many, so lonely an experience as it once was.
A few years ago, it was unthinkable for a many like Ed to share his death in so personal and intimate a way, Even now, it is rare.
But this idea also has its traps and pitfalls, Ed gets messages every day from people all over the world urging him to share every detail of his new journey as often as he can. He is grateful for these messages, and encourages them. They help him.
Ed’s blog posts are a hit online. But I get uneasy about these requests. Ed has the sacred right to say anything he wants about his brain cancer, but I do not have the right to tell him to do it, or plead with him to do it, or even encourage him to do it.
I told him I hope he never feels he is obliged to do it.
This is his choice, every single day, not mine. Social media is a boundary killer, and nobody’s life is a soap opera to be scheduled daily for the amusement or enlightenment of others. He should never feel or be pressured to write a single word about his brain cancer.
Like Ed, I share my life openly, which makes some people uncomfortable. I also keep much of it private.
I see that his blog sometimes make me uncomfortable, that is inevitable and appropriate to me. Good writers always made people uncomfortable, so do truth tellers. Ed is, after all, challenging us to look at death in a close but different way.
Cancer and death should not be comfortable to read about, like a mystery novel is. It is our discomfort which draws us and perhaps gives us the gift of understanding. Heartbreak and disappointment are stepping stones to enlightenment. Falling down is the only way to understand getting up.
I don’t know if I could share the process of dying as openly as Ed is.
But I admire his courage and honesty and openness, and also, his pioneering use of technology to explore death. Ed has rejected the idea of death as a secret, he has refused to disappear, his wish is to share the experience openly and honestly in the hope that others will benefit from it.
