By C. Graham Campbell, Ph.D
As a Buddhist leaning spiritual student, I wish I could tell you that looking death in the eye was a choice motivated solely because that is an important part of the path. Unfortunately, that would be less than honest. An onslaught of health issues between 2015 and 2023 required it.
I was preparing for shoulder surgery which turned out to be misdiagnosed upper chest pain. Part of the work-up before the surgery was an EKG which discovered a cardiac ‘left bundle branch block’ which required immediate surgery. Recovery was slow and uncomfortable. Seven months later I was cleared for hip preplacement and six months later a second hip replacement. Next, I entered physical therapy, did lots of exercises, took plenty of medications and found a new medical team. Then, out of nowhere, I experienced a swallowing problem that meant eating only pureed food for several months. I was infected very early as Covid-19 swept the world and was hospitalized for several days. This was more frightening than the technically more dangerous heart surgery since no one in the hospital had much of an idea of what they were doing. Symptoms of fatigue, body aches and worst of all thick brain fog lasting several months turned me into what became known as a ‘long hauler’ barely walking, often dizzy, and unable to think. If my brain was going to turn to mush, I thought dying was an acceptable alternative. The only place of safety was my apartment preferably sitting in my recliner. After another hospitalization the Covid symptoms began to recede but the decline in my abilities did not. I abruptly and reluctantly retired and stopped driving. Neither of which I wanted to do but were completely necessary since I still could not read for fifteen minutes let alone listen for one, or several, for fifty-minute sessions. Intersections and other cars on the road were more than I could handle. I could neither focus nor drive to my office. A pacemaker was installed in July of 2021 which was thankfully the final surgery up to this point.
The list of fading skills and competencies could easily go one for several more sentences, but the point is that I was dragged into facing death kicking and screaming.
BEGINNING TO WAKE UP
Death is arguably the most important and difficult of spiritual practices. It is the ‘super boot camp’ in being present. My experience now is that if I can be present to death I can be present to anything. Buddhist monks meditate for months on death. They meditate in cemeteries visualizing their coffin and their dead body deteriorating. Over the years I had read about these practices but thought them odd and too much for me. Such is the path of denial. But death kicked me several times in places where it really hurt. I surrendered to the process and began looking into what was happening.
I had meditated on and off for many years, so I was familiar with the rudimentary levels of Mindfulness. I was grateful that I was not a complete rookie. My denial clung to me much more effectively than many of my physical and emotional skills. It finally dawned on me that my life would never be the same. Watching hours of mindless television sometimes seemed like a good idea. Fortunately, my family lit a campfire of loving support around me. And with the help of a cadre of competent medical care givers my health began to stabilize. The decline slowed down but did not stop. I had groceries delivered because there was no way I could carry anything upstairs into my house. In this time while meditating became a way to quite literally catch my breath.
John O’Donohue says this best in his marvelous book, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom.
There is a presence that walks the road of life with
you. This presence accompanies your every movement.
It shadows your every thought and feeling. The name of
this presence is Death.
I began to see how early death becomes this shadow companion. My parents lived in Nova Scotia, Canada. Coal mining territory where disaster is just a series of blasts of the community warning siren away. When my father returned from WWII, he and my mother quickly got married and had a daughter one year later who died in childbirth. Within a year I was born. And in another year a second daughter also died in childbirth. Those two would-be sisters were the bookends of my incarnation. Death is not only an individual event. It also vibrates with family and cultural history.
A PLACE TO STAND
SPIRITUAL PRACTICES
As the Covid fog slowly lifted at its own turtle like pace, I gradually returned to my spiritual practices with as much determination as I could possibly muster. Hope gently accompanied them. I followed the breath closely and entered whatever arose, which especially at first, was mostly fear, confusion and longing for my old life to return. It was not pleasant, but it was a beginning. Meditation, journaling, reading, and my recliner were the only things on which I could rely. I devoured several books on dying of which Kathleen Dowling Singh’s The Grace in Dying: A Message of Comfort, Hope and Spiritual Transformation was especially helpful. Along with being very empathic about the struggle in facing death she was particularly insistent that if we are concerned about the limited amount of time remaining in our lives, we do not want to squander any of it by denial, avoiding, dodging, or running away from what is in front of us. The gift of death is that it is a call to be present now. There is no more time to waste. As country star Tim McGraw sings it is time “to live like you’re dying.” Frequent breathing in and out with all of it. How can I live like I’m dying and “go high flying” as he urges if I can barely walk.
My mantra became ‘I want more, and more and more of me. Letting go of daily routines and activities felt like letting go of ME. Would my old energetic self come back? Would I continue to dissolve into the ether? Breathing in and out watching this internal struggle felt never ending. Breathing in a breath is born, breathing out a breath is dying in a continual cycle of birth and death. As long as one is breathing one is close to both life and death.
Breathing in and out seeing my ego battling for control. I want more of Graham to continue and see that this might not be in the cards. The battle itself is exhausting. Fighting the reality of limited abilities and declining skills leads to its own form of death in exhaustion, despair, and depression. That we all die was no longer some remote distant possibility I read about in some book. Will anything remain of ME, or will I simply dissolve into the cosmos? If I am not here, where will I be? Then I discovered Thich Nhat Hahn’s wonderful book No Death, No Fear: Comforting Wisdom for Life. Hahn explains the Buddha speaks of five remembrances including that we are all subject to aging, illness, and death. All that is close to us will change and die. Finally, the only possession we have is our commitment to mindfulness. Hahn provides a meditation on each of the remembrances which reads in part,
Breathing in, I know I shall die.
Breathing out I know I cannot escape death.
Hundreds of in breaths and out breaths with each one seeing it is my nature to age and die as is true of everyone I love. There is no escape. My usual ways of absconding from this no longer work. Hanh assures me that I will survive in the smoke going up the chimney in the crematorium. Or in the trees that built the funeral home, or in the rain nurturing the trees nurtured by the rain. There is solace in this but it is pale in the face of my ego’s fear. While none of this was easy a different level of seeing and living emerged ever so slowly. The more ME I can have is right now not in extended time but increased quality as I face it. Singh also talks of each letting go as a piece of transcendence over holding on in which we get closer to the Truth of who we are. The loss, fear and pain still hover in my life but are less intense.
I used to love to go out into storms. The wilder the storm the more I love the rawness of wind, rain or snow blowing directly into my face. Last winter a beautiful blizzard blew into town. Wonderful. But walking in the snow and ice is slippery, especially with a cane. I went out but stayed within crawling distance of my front door. Not good enough. Too muted, sterile, and tame. Why bother? Breathing into loss and grief. Letting go of as much as I can. Letting go of that adventurous spirit meant tears and despair. How muted would my life become?
Sometimes that was all I could be present for. I watched myself wanting to throw dishes through the windows. I did not actually indulge that desire mostly because if I did at the end I knew I would only want more dishes and windows. With each letting go I saw that I was still here letting go, experiencing each small transcendence out of ego. With that I sensed a feeling of contentment arising. As I write this afternoon, I spy out of the corner of my eye, the sandwich plate left on my desk from yesterday which a little inner voice encourages me to pick up and throw. Now I just kind of laugh and see how much more growing I can do.
I hope I get ten more years though it could just as easily be ten more minutes or even seconds. And in truth, if I get the ten years, I’ll probably want ten more minutes.
A FEW NOT QUITE FINAL THOUGHTS
The three universals for all humans are birth, breath, and death. Each intimately interwoven with the others. Interestingly, the last two are often not seen. I never thought much about breath until I got asthma or even more so when I started meditating. The universal of death becomes utterly impersonal until it inevitably erupts into life. Death is a universal that is known when faced but what is unknowable is its ‘when.’ We can not know when it will come except that it comes in its own time no matter how much we try to bargain for more. Facing death involves stepping into both the known and unknowable in a very personal way. In facing this we can awaken to every moment between now and whenever it arrives. That is the gift of death, not only is it boot camp for being present but is the Prime Motivator for living in the present. The only way to get more of me is in the Eternal Now of this moment.
Certainly, more will arrive while death and I continue to do our dance. I will try to do less hiding. I will likely want more but hopefully that ends up with more right now. Death takes the lid off life allowing me to enter into all of the mysteries I face every day. I don’t always like it all but I am grateful for all of it.
C. Graham Campbell, Ph.D. is a seventy-five-year-old late blooming author. He has explored the human psyche and soul as a psychologist for over forty years in central Massachusetts. Now retired, he spends most of his time meditating, writing and as a nature photographer. His works have appeared in Psychotherapy Networker, Natural New England, Leaping Clear, Ravens Perch and Bacopa Literary Review. He is currently working on a book of nature mysticism.
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