Day: September 1, 2018

Over the course of my life, I have seen many people die in anger and fear and bittterness, often with a deep unwillingness to accept mortality, theirs, their loved ones, even their dogs and cats,

These deaths become painful rituals of suffering, anger, grief, even guilt for those left behind.

In these cases, death is  always and only a source of pain. It never becomes a gift, an inspiration, a treasure left behind. There is little to send others, and it sometimes seems as if the human spirit has been extinguished and lost in the darkness.

My friend Ed Gulley died recently, and I believe  he had a good death. I have seen some of those also. They give me great hope.

I witnessed his death first hand, day after day, not in the very intense way way of his wife or family, but in the way of a friend free to come and go and help when possible.

Now that I have a chance to look back and reflect on the way Ed died, I can see more clearly what made it a good death, and what he left behind for others to keep

I want to say that death is sad, but  not only sad. I want to say that there is such a thing as a good death.

Ed and I talked about death quite a bit in the weeks and months before he died. Brain cancer is awful, but it does have one ironic benefit – those stricken know they will die and can prepare for it.

Ed and I shared our feelings about death, we saw it in the same way.

Most importantly, we both believed that we are responsible for the way we die. if we wish, we can die the way we choose to die.

Writes Henry Nouwen of death, “We have to choose between clinging to life in such a way that death becomes nothing but a failure, or letting go of life in freedom so that we can be given to others as a source of hope. This is a crucial choice and we have to “work” on that choice every day of our lives. Death does not have to be our final failure, our final defeat in the struggle of life, our unavoidable fate.”

Nouwen  beautifully and clearly expresses my deepest feelings about death, seeds planted in my conversion to Quakerism when I was young, and also in my decade of hospice volunteer and therapy work, and in assisted care facilities.

Preparation for a good death, I believe, begins with a human desire to give something of ourselves to others, something Ed Gulley did intuitively and enthusiastically for all of his life. I hope to do the same.

In this way, we can make our deaths a final gift, rather than only a final misery. I have this idea of death being fruitful, especially when it is a free gift, no strings attached.

Ed was committed to helping many people – neighbors, friends, cousins.

A small Army of beneficiaries turned up at his home and funeral to give thanks for his gifts of generosity of spirit and material things. His children were given the gift of inspiration and guidance, he was a strong anchor for his family and wife.

The thing I most remember about Ed came after he died, when his whole family and many friends gathered with beautiful stories to tell about how he had given love and new life and comfort to so many people and new hope to those who mourned his passing.

His children were given the great gift of having loved their father so much. I appreciate that gift, it was denied me.

It was clear to me that his spirit, so full of humor and experience and wisdom, will continue to touch and guide people for many years to come.

There is an old Christian saying I love: “We are called to become bread for each other – bread for the world.”

Ed became bread for his family, bread for the world. That is also my mission. So many people need bread.

It is common, even easy to sing the praises of the dead, when all is forgiven and grief overrides our many human foibles. People loved Ed in a very real and enduring way.  I was glad to be a part of Ed’s passing, grateful to be reminded once again that there is such a thing as a good death.

It takes thought and work and awareness.

A good death begins well before death comes. I was with Ed when he planned the kind of death he wished to have, and that is the one he had. He was constantly giving himself to other people.

Here is our choice: we can act as if we are entitled to live forever, and be stunned and unmoored whenever death appears, or we can  live with the joyful anticipation that our greatest desire to live our lives for others can be fulfilled in the way we choose to die.

I hope for a death in which I lay down my life in freedom, when me and those around me will be reminded of how much was given, not how much was lost.

Audio: If you prefer to hear my voice, this is my reading of this post, a new way to tell my stories.

Those of you who have been kind enough to follow me this past few years might be aware of how improbable my life is now, how many curious and unexpected twists it has taken, and how long and sometimes uphill a process it has been.

And how rich and full it has become.

Many of the people I know are wringing their hands and beating their breasts over the current state of things, and as much suffering and worry as there is, these past few years have been  good to me, they have opened doors and gates for me and let me down a road I believe I was destined to travel.

This time has brought me riches and satisfaction and joy beyond my imagination just a short while ago. In darkness, there is learning and awakening.

I think the issue for any spiritual or feeling person is whether or not there is anything in our world that we can truly call “sacred,” whether it be God or love or purpose. Something is sacred when it is devoted to a religious or spiritual or higher purpose, I believe I have found such a purpose.

In recent weeks, and thanks in great measure to this collection of strangers we call the Army Of Good,  we have altered some lives, human and animal.

Kelly Patrick has burned her tent and moved out of it into a comfortable, safe and dry home, thanks to the support we provided her in being able to rent a place to live for herself, her daughter and her grandson.

Every time it rains, I give thanks that she is in that better place, she is a good person with a good heart, she deserves to live in a real home.

This week, Sakler Moo, an especially gifted and courteous young refugee from Thailand, who has suffered greatly on his journey to America, was accepted into a prestigious school called the Albany Academy.

We were able to give the school the  $6,000 that was needed to close the gap between what they could give him and what he needed to pay his tuition.

He starts school September 7, and I have committed myself to paying this money over the next three years as well.

Sakler’s young live is forever changed.

In a new kind of adventure for me, I have joined forces with a loving group of animal lovers called the Friends Of Homeless Animals to find good and loving homes for some of the most desperate and poorly treated animals in our world.

They are the saddest of the sad, the lepers of the dog world, and we have already found good homes for two of them, considered unadoptable by their rescuers just a few weeks ago. Their names are Evie and Jen, and hopefully, Albert one day soon.

They are dogs, of course, but more than that, they are timely and needed symbols of our own love,  empathy and humanity the two things we are do disturbed to find receding in our culture and political life.

When I looked beyond the narrow confines of my farm, I see so much anger and conflict it is hard to be hopeful about our lives, but then I have found my own attitude to resignation and despair: doing some good, what could be simpler?

It is easier to do good fo dogs than people, and cheaper. But both are rewarding in their own way.

Dogs are a mirror of our lives, they reflect us and our own ability to find compassion and bring it into our lives. Yesterday, a community of strangers, from Arkansas to Texas to Upstate New York to Minnesota joined hands and hearts to give Evie a loving home for the rest of her days.

Hers was a life far down the list of our self-absorbed human concerns, now transformed. It does take a village, and we are one. For Debra in Minnesota, Evie’s life was not too small to save.

And then there are the Mansion residents, people I have come to know and love. They are also symbols beyond their own reality, a measure of how we can care for the vulnerable and the sometimes abandoned in small but meaningful ways.

It feels sacred to me to bring them the mechanics of life – soap, shoes, underwear, socks, stamps and envelopes, books and movies, attention and affection.

Every time I see the gratitude and relief in their eyes to be able to walk in shoes that fit I feel a kind of joy once unknown to me. Mostly, they wish to be known and remembered as they move to the edge of life.

It is a minor miracle to me – and I think to many of you – to change a life in profound and last ways, from Sakler Moo to Kelly Patrick to poor Evie left to die in a filthy concrete cell.

What I most want to say here is that when the totality of my life is lived as a series of Beloved messages sent out into the world, then everything I meet and everything that happens to me and to us becomes a unique opportunity to choose a life that cannot be conquered by anger, cruelty or the smallness of spirit, or even by death.

In my life, joy and suffering become the way to spiritual fulfillment, which I am beginning to feel in life for the first time.

In a letter to his friend, a philosopher, the author Julien Green wrote: “When you think of the mystical experience of many saints, you may ask yourself whether joy and suffering aren’t aspects of the same phenomenon on a very high level.”

I think, for me, this is so. We are sent her for a very short time, and I have come to see that it best spent on the search for good, not wealth or power. Some days, I can hardly believe I can be involved in so much good.

I am coming to see that this is not temporal, or fleeting. It is here inside of me for real. I think they call that faith.

Thanks to you all for making this possible.

Audio: Remember Albert