Day: August 12, 2018

There is a sociology to death, as there is to everything. There is no better place to understand this than to understand the importance of the family farm, and to see what we are losing as the family farm disappears.

In many ways, the family farm can show us the long and painful way back from isolation, disconnection and hatred. There is so much to be learned from them.

I have been in a score of farms in my life here where I live, mostly taking photos of people who have opened their lives to me, as Ed and Carol Gulley have. More than the cows and milking parlors, the farm kitchens stand out to me as a monument to where we have been and where we are going.

To me, the farm kitchen speaks to the unique community of the farming community, the closeness of farm  families. They also remind of how disconnected most of the rest of us are from one another.

Most of the kitchens look alike, refrigerators and stoves from the 1950’s (real farmers do not ever buy anything new if it can stand up by itself), wooden paneled floors and cabinets, 200-year-old flooring, too few counters, a view of the barns, ancient dishes and glasses stacked up in the sink, old family photos in old  frames on the walls.

Here, you see what made America great, and kept us together,  you can also what we will lose as these farms disappear and are gobbled up by bloodless and insatiably greedy corporate farms and corporate mega-agriculture.

In the the kitchens, farmers learned to talk to one another, something most of us have forgotten how to do.

I hate to think of them vanishing along with their farms.

Just ask the cows who soon, will never again step off of concrete and sit under the sun and the stars in their green pastures.

Sitting in the Gulley kitchen, you would hardly know the father and patriarch,  Ed, is dying just a few yards away.

When Ed was diagnosed, friends and farmers started a Facebook Food Chain, every night, a different family – most of them complete strangers – bring dinner for 12 in plastic and aluminum bins, with pies and salads that could feed an  Army.

They pile their foods and tins and baskets onto shelves in the kitchen, which is filled with food.

Carol only knows who a few of these people are, but her kitchen and refrigerator and table are stuffed with meals for her, her family, her grandchildren, for anyone who wanders in and his hungry. Carol has not cooked a meal in several months.

A farm kitchen is only incidentally about food, it is the heart of the farm, the epicenter of the house. The coffee pot is always full, there are always cookies and cakes on the table, there is alway something to eat. There is always mud and dirt on the floor, people are forever going in and out.

It doesn’t matter what is happening in the next room or the milking parlor or the cow barn. There are always people sitting at the table, there are always conversations rolling back and forth, there is gossip, argument, philosophy, remembrance.

Here is where differences are settled, here is where the family sorts out the agonizing issues relating to Ed’s death, here is where Carol reads her mail, and talks to her children and grandchildren, and sorts out the medication schedule for Ed, which changes every other day.

Today, Carol disagreed with her son Chad about the fairness of Ed’s illness, she wonders every day why the cancer struck him, and not other and less deserving people.

Chad, who just wandered in from another exhausting day working in his day job and coming to milk the cows with his wife Kate, challenged Carol not to go down that path, he said it let to anger, and the two of them – we joined in – had a powerful and compelling conversation about mercy, empathy, Fate and God. It was good for both of them, they both felt better.

Carol, we all understood, was just trying to make sense of the unimaginable.

“Do you believe that God is making these decisions?,” Chad asked me.

No, I said, I am not religious in that way, I can’t hold God responsible for every accident and tragedy in the world. I loved the conversation, it was honest, open and important and both Carol and Chad came to a good place in their farm kitchen, where so many conversations have taken place.

The family I grew up in never had conversations like that, we never talked to each other in such an open and heartfelt way, people just screamed at one another and hurt each other.  There was only argument, no listening or resolution.

Farm kitchens are not like that, people gather to talk and listen.

The farm kitchen is where Maria and I sit and talk and talk with Carol every day – we try to talk about everything but Ed to take  Carol’s mind off of him – but we usually end up sorting out the questions and challenges Carol faces every day. Carol is more at ease there than any other place.

This is where she talks to her children and asks their opinions, it’s where Chad comes to tell her one of the hay wagons has a flat tire, or one of the tractors had a dead battery or another machine needs a new valve. Or where Jordan comes to get a drink, and Kate comes to get a sandwich. Here, we hear that one of the grandchildren doesn’t want to visit Ed any more, she wants to remember him the way he was.

That’s fine, says Carol, it’s up to her.

Here, there are no strangers, everyone is known. In the outside world, we are all becoming strangers. Because we never see and talk to one another, we are forgetting how to understand and compromise with each other.

Because most of us have no farm kitchens, open and bright and welcoming day and night, we splinter into a left and a right, a red and a blue. How can we talk to each other if we never actually see each other?

This is where Chad comes when he has a headache from working 15 hours a day and needs something to eat. Where he tells of being pulled over for speeding by a gracious cop who let him go.

Here is where Carol tries to make sense of what is happening to her.

Here is where the grandkids come in for a cool drink as they come off the hay wagons and  hours of stacking hay for the winter. This is where people come to share the news, to bemoan the weather, to trade money-saving tractor tips, to announce the death of mothers and fathers, to tell of the tragedies that routinely befall farmers and their families.

To comfort and support one another.

Here is where the hospice nurse and aide come to ask Carol how she is and go over Ed’s medicines.

The farm kitchen is a refuge, and a soothing one. It comforts and offers respite and sanctuary.  No matter what happens outside or in the next room, the farm kitchen is up and running.

It is the soul of life here, in such sharp contrast to the disconnected and impersonal world we have built. I have a hard time even picturing where Carol might be for much of the day without the farm kitchen, while Ed lies immobile and paralyzed in the next room.

When I come in in the late afternoon, I go sit with Ed for a while, and Maria heads for the kitchen. Then I join them, I know Carol is easier around women than men sometimes, but because of the farm kitchen, we are getting easier with one another, and because of the farm kitchen, the family and I (and Maria) are getting to know and understand one another.

This, then is a compelling metaphor for the outside world and what it needs. If only Congress had a farm kitchen, if only those new McMansions popping up all over the suburbs had one, if only they were built into row houses in the inner city, if only the left and the right could gather every day instead of clicking on their smartphones for their latest grievances with one another.

In the sociology of life, and of death, the farm kitchen is the soul of connection and community. It does nothing but bring people together. I think it helps people in the most sacred and elemental ways.

Believe me, they will be missed when they are gone.

Nourished by donkey manure, bright sunlight and torrential rain, our gardens have exploded this year, they have never been brighter or thicker. Today, for the first time, I look through my camera lens at the beautiful garden Maria planted, and I saw autumn for the first time this summer.

I see the insects and  ants have left their signature on the flowers and  stems, I see the front row of flowers is beginning to thin out.

I see the light in the afternoon beginning to change and thin. I see autumn. School is just weeks ago, and soon, even with climate change, we will feel the night chill.

Is it only me, or do you see autumn as well?

Diego, a Black Telescope goldfish, partner to Frieda, is dead. He got sick, his left eye swelled dramatically, and he stopped eating two days ago. I think I also saw the first signs of Ich, an infectious disease common to fish, especially when they are moved to new tanks.

I took Diego out of the tank and killed him swiftly, as I had learned to do when I had fish as a kid. On the scale of things, the death of a fish is not a big deal to either  of us.

Maria sees the fish in a visual way, as an artist, and I see the fish in a conceptual way, I believe I am a steward of all the animals on the farm, not a peer or father or super furbaby. I don’t cry for fish or mourn for them.

I make sure they are well cared for and we will go out today or tomorrow and get another fish. I’ll also start treating the tank for Ich. And yes, I am familiar with the treatments and cures.

We are very content with our fish tank, now a 29 gallon tank. We both find it soothing and beautiful to watch the fish. We both love planting the plants and talking about the fish and the snails. I love having fish tank again.

In my mind there is a scale for dealing with deaths on a farm, which is a constant source of lessons about death. Dogs and cats and donkeys first, then sheep, then chickens, then fish, they are the bottom of the loop.

I suppose the Ed Gulley illness has made me extra conscious of perspective. Dying of brain cancer is one thing, a dead fish is another. We buried Diego, who was a good fish, in the back yard pretty close to Gus. we like to bury our dead animals on our farm if we can.

I am not sorry when a fish dies, they don’t live very long, and life happens, and happens, and happens.

The Nobel Laureate Wislawa Szymborska wrote one of her wonderful essays on great love, as recounted in today’s edition of the invaluable website Brain Pickings by Maria Popova. When I read this beautiful reflection on love, the first thing that came into my mind was me and Maria.

Then, almost instantly, the second was Carol Gulley.

I was privileged to witness great love in the past weeks as I’ve watched Carol tend to her dying heart, Ed.

In her  essay, Szymborska nodded to the unseeing cynicism with which people often react to things they do not understand, especially the underpinnings of great love, trivialized by popular culture, rejected by political leaders,  incomprehensible to outside observers and even to the lovers who share it.

Szymborska likens great love to the unconscious optimism of plants:

“It’s like the little tree that springs up in some inexplicable fashion on the side of a cliff: where are its roots, what does it feed on, what miracle produces those green leaves? But it does exist, and it really is green – clearly, then, it’s getting whatever it needs to survive.”

I can’t define great love either, but I have seen it every day in the way in which Carol tends to Ed as his brain cancer has begun to consume him.

In a different way, i see it every day in my own life, I believe Maria and I have a great love for one another, I think I know i when I see it.

I have a friend whose wife is dying of a similar cancer to Ed’s.

She is near death, and she is transformed. As often happens with the dying and chronically ill, it becomes difficult for people to see them, touch them, be close to them.

This, like death itself, is rarely spoken of, but watching Penny, a hospice aide, care for Ed every afternoon is a powerful experience, she radiates genuine love and care, and he clearly feels it,  it calms  him and brings him great comfort.

Very few people can do what she does.

My friend has trouble doing the same thing with his wife, who he says he loves very much.

Cancer is not a kind or gentle disease. She smells differently, looks differently, her face and body is shrunk and, to some people, repellent. I have seen this often in hospice work, it is difficult for many people to bear the disintegration of the human body, especially when it is ravaged by an illness like cancer.

My friend shies from touching his wife, or getting too close with her. It bothers him, he says he feels helpless to change.

Doctors and hospice workers all say it is important to touch the dying, to talk to them, sing to them, caress and kiss them. They may not understand what is happening, but psychologists all say they are aware of being touched, and loved.

Yesterday, I sang a song to Ed, I find it hard to talk to him sometimes, but I always read to him.

While I was sitting next to him, yesterday he surprised me by reaching his right arm out to me, and I held his hand for a long time. I don’t know what he knew at that moment, but I know he knew his hand was being held. I saw him calm.

Carol’s great love for Ed is so visible every time she gets close to him. She is not repelled by him, by his wild eyes,by his looks or smells or sounds, by his dementia or confusion or frantic lashing. Her love for him is pure and undiminished.

In a sense, a disease like brain cancer is profoundly revealing. It tells all of us who we are and how we feel, it is ruthless and honest.

Carol always sees him as “My Farmer,”  no matter how sick he gets, or how he faces.

She kisses him on the forehead, talks to him, reads to him, scolds him a bit when he won’t eat, assures him he is going to a better place, tells him she loves him, rubs his arms to keep him warm, lets him know how the farm is doing, how the cows are, and the grandkids, she squeezes his hand, makes sure his sheets and blankets are covering him.

She never backs away from him, or is disturbed or disgusted by the things that happen to a man, even a strong one, who can’t go to the bathroom, or move himself, or swallow, or  sit up, or tell anyone how he feels or what he wants.

She reassures him now that he can go, that they all understand, they will all be okay, that he will see them all in  heaven, even the dogs and cows and bird and cats and goat.

Carol is convinced that Ed is hanging on waiting to hear everyone in his life tell him that he can go.

But I think Ed is hanging on because he is a strong man with a strong heart. It is not in our hands now, it is in the hands of Mother Nature, or if you prefer, God. I remember a hospice minister telling me that we cannot ever do God’s work, that is a burden to take off of the shoulders of the living. We must, he said,  leave to God what is his.

This love Carol has for Ed, day after day, is a great love. I know she cannot yet see through the sadness and the pain, but I believe one day she will, she is fortunate to know a great love like that. So am I, no matter what happens to me. That is something nothing, even death, can take away from me.

This kind of great love is l like the little tree that springs up on the side of a cliff, or under a concrete overpass. We can’t see it’s roots, or what it feeds on, or what miracle creates those green leaves. But it does exist and it really is green and somehow, it gets what it needs to survive.

I don’t ever tell Carol or her children what to feel as Ed gathers himself to die. I think that is God’s work, and I don’t even believe in the God they worship.

If they were to ask,  would tell them as I have written, that I hope they don’t forget to look beyond what is  sad, and see what can be beautiful about Ed’s death. It is them, and their love for him.

Carol’s great love for Ed is a beautiful thing to see.

It affirms my own sense of hope and affirmation for the best parts of being human, for the love that beats in the hearts of so many people, for the promise and potential of the human spirit.

Seeing this love, I can never despair about what it means to be human, or lose faith in the future.

Robin has overcome her shyness to sing Johnny Cash, here she works on her version of “Ring Of Fire.” I’m told she is also working on Folsom Prison Blues, Emma is concerned she will sing to her day care teacher that she shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.

Come and see. I hate the word, but it is pretty damn cute. What is it about images of the very young that are so uplifting? They offer us hope and promise, there is something pure and tarnished about videos like this, I think they capture the true nature of the human spirit.