My path includes the challenges that come when one faces a life-threatening illness. The biggest challenge for me is allowing the prospect of death to become a dance with life. There is the awareness that I must acknowledge the very close and real possibility that my life as I know it is over and that it’s very scary for me to enter into the great mystery that is death. No matter what I believe or hold faith to, there is no more awakening moment than that of death. To have an end to all I hold as real be so close, all of life for me takes on a crystal clarity from moment to precious moment. For a time, all moments are precious- making coffee, watching my son walk to school, touching my lover’s brow with my lips. The dance with death becomes a dance with life. What becomes important are the smallest, simplest things.
I spend my life striving to be more, do more, serve more. I have spent my entire adult life helping, healing and supporting people in all sorts of circumstances. It is my calling to be a healer. Getting surprised by a sudden, all encompassing health event and facing my demise was an invitation to stop all of it and to pay attention to what’s happening inside of me. It was an invitation to become selfish.
At first I couldn’t do it. As soon as I was able I began looking for ways to reassure my patients and to find intermediate help for them. I even tried going back to work way too soon only to have an instant relapse that sent me back a few more steps than where I started. I had no choice but to allow what was happening to happen without a big fight. That was a practice for me and I fouled up many times.
Over the long time it took to mostly heal, many gifts came to my awareness. I learned the gift of mindfulness. Because my brain was the part most affected, I had to take movements very slowly. If I didn’t, something would drop, break or I might fall. Sometimes it was funny like when things ended up in the freezer or the oven. Mindfulness had to be a practice for each and every moment. I had to concentrate on exactly what I was doing as I was doing it. For example, drinking a glass of water included the concentrated effort to grasp the glass, lift it, bring it to my mouth without spilling it, sipping, lowering the glass and placing it on the counter. If I missed concentrating on one step, I found myself cleaning up a broken glass and a wet floor or counter.
Over time, I could gradually do more without concentrated effort, but the lessons of mindfulness have not left me. I have a new appreciation for small efforts, for the wonders of our body-mind connection, for the capacity to do more than one thing at a time.
There are so many gifts that came out of that part of the dance of my life that I will have loads to share with you over time. For the present, I am still in awe of so many things I once took for granted. I encourage all of my patients and friends to stop, take a breath and notice what is happening in the moment at various points in the day. For this is life! This is what’s happening right now! There is no other moment! All of our thoughts of the future or the next thing are just that- thoughts. What’s real is what is now.
This practice has me appreciating so much more of life because in the next moment, it’s gone. My son rounded the corner on his way to school. My lips left my lover’s brow. I have finished making the coffee. Now I smell its aroma. Now I taste its flavor and feel the hot liquid on my tongue and down my throat and into my belly. Ummm. It’s all good.
