Frank was dead. Frank still is dead. Kind of.

It’s appropriate that all this started with the death of a little old man.  A grumpy dispirited stranger to everybody who knew him, and Frank being Frank all he could see, when he looked around, was his own meanness being reflected back at him. It was there in every face, in every little thing someone did. It isn’t that he wasn’t polite, he often said ‘thank you’ when I brought him a cup of tea, or made him a sandwich. It was just that he took all these little things for granted, as if it was his right to receive. ‘Thank you’ was just a polite response neither signifying nor engendering any sense of gratitude.

I’d known Frank for a long time, long enough to be close friends, and I guess as far as he was concerned, we were that . Me, I felt sorry for him. Sorry that he chose to be so miserable, chose to see peoples’ shadows rather than their smiles. Sorry that he had trouble breathing. He was living a laboured life.

I didn’t like him. I didn’t liked who he was. I didn’t like how he saw the world. For Frank it was small. There was little change, little movement in his world. Its foundations were his memories around him, as if he could not step outside its boundaries. He saw a small world and because of this he knew it as limiting, as constraining him from what he wanted to be.

Being around Frank when he was alive was difficult for me. Difficult for everyone. I just kept coming back though, everyday, often twice a day, to see him, to listen to him. To feel his self-righteous indignation, his spite and his simmering anger. It never seemed to change, and because I was his friend I would sit with him in his tiny room as if in a bunker as he fired salvos at all those that dared approach.

It was hard work, and when he died, it was all worth it.  Being around Frank when he was dead was liberating.  I felt an amazing sense of freedom that made all the constant negativity I had chosen to endure a minor irritation. What happened after Frank died changed my life forever, and perhaps changed his as well. Definitely changed his. Frank’s story only really started after he was dead. His life was just the skeleton, with his death he started to grow flesh, to come alive, frankenstein-like.  As he grew, as his story came to light, so did I.

When Frank stopped being Frank, I knew it was up to me. It is my turn to be frank. It is my turn to tell you bluntly, as Frank told me, what the secret is. I’m hoping that coming to know the secret will change your life. It is getting close to my time to die, and before that happens I want to share with someone, I want to share with you, all about being Frank.

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

My legs and lower back ache a little from my jogging yesterday evening, nevertheless I am feeling a hell of a lot better than I did yesterday morning. I do smell though, I guess the jogging didn’t help and the stench is probably as much in my clothes as my body. However regardless of the pain and the smell my race towards the sunset last night was well worth it. What an experience, and god it felt good riding up there through the night sky. Ha – I just love having experiences like that, ones I would have never imagined, never anticipated and may never have again.

I slipped into my routines easily and lazily again this morning and by 9 I have already meditated, done an hour of grammar study and am working on my dharma course. Most of my effort for the rest of the day is towards completing my CELTA task, although it seems to stretch on forever.

My routines were interrupted today by a knock on the front door. Quite a fright really and I anxiously went to answer it concerned that it could be another of Jim’s friends and that by opening the door I would be letting go of my solitude and freedom. It wasn’t a friend but a couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses, or maybe not, I’m not sure. It was the ones with the Watch Tower (which now, in writing this reminds me of one of my favourite Dylan songs). Two women, older and younger, the younger some sort of sorcerer’s apprentice for she said not a word, just stood slightly back making her presence felt through her impenetrable silence. I afterwards imagined her coming back at twilight, by herself, curious and searching, seeking more of my eastern philosophies. There is the kernel of a poignant wee vignette there, one that I didn’t take time to pursue.

They were polite and after a first cursory glance said and did nothing to make me feel self-conscious standing at the door in my long-johns and undershirt. Even I forgot about it as Diana and I talked for some time. She seemed genuinely interested in my way of thinking and I hers, especially the part about the actual resurrection of the dead (no way!). She did clarify that those who were chosen to be resurrected would get a new body, which is a good thing really especially if you had died of some debilitating disease that had wasted you away.

One of the things she said that got me thinking was that none of us able to say when we want to die, not when we will die, but when we want to die. If we were told to pick a time, we couldn’t. I have thought something similar and that is that I often feel as if I am ready to die, perhaps not that I want to die, but that I am ready. What Diana said made me think that if I could choose my time to die, and could do so in a peaceful way, would I choose sometime soon? When I mentioned this she responded with “isn’t there so much more you want to do and see, so much more to experience”. Yes of course there is, and yet while those things are all new and different (like riding through the night on top of a truck) in essence they are all the same. I feel as if I know that essence, I have it inside me and no amount of new experiences can change or alter or add to that. And I know also that the number of experiences to be had is infinite. Wherever we are, whatever we have already done there is always going to be more to experience, more things to do and see and feel. Always more, that’s just the way it is. So that doesn’t seem like a good reason not to be ready, because we will never be ready. So maybe I’m happy with the essence I have and I no longer feel any great need to keep chasing after more, I don’t know.

We parted friends, and in terms of what I am doing here, especially writing my dharma course, it was a perfect interruption. Later in the afternoon one of the tasks for the CELTA coursework was to comment on three listening experiences I had had today. Uh-oh. I was grateful for Diana’s visit as at least I’d had one listening experience today. I had heard no other voices than hers today, so to make up the three I decided to turn on the radio (to listen to the DJ) and play an album on the old turntable (I chose Van Morrison’s  ‘Poetic Champions Compose’). I never got to play the album, perhaps tomorrow, but I did turn the radio on. It took some time to warm up (it’s an old one) and in my impatience I twiddled the tuner, finally settling on a random station. I sat and refocused on some grammar study letting the radio play in the background. Within minutes I was listening intently as the DJ was talking about resurrection. So I listened and realized I had chosen a Christian station, odd in itself, in that the first and only conversation I had had in 4 days, only an hour or so ago was with a Christian and overtly about Christianity. Odder still that I was listening again to ideas about resurrection? Synchronistic for sure. So I stopped listening and just sat with it, dwelt in the significance of this ‘coincidence’. I soon dawned on me it was Easter and from there it was only a moment away to my father, who died on Easter Friday some 25 years ago. As I sat with my feelings and thoughts, it felt as if I had somehow neglected him lately, I hadn’t been thinking about him much over the last few years. Now when I did, I found him with mum, arm in arm, happy. They were together again in my mind, in my spirit’s eye. I have not seen them like this for a very long time. It realized it wasn’t that I had neglected him, or her, they just wanted to let me know.

I made another spontaneous decision late this evening, I washed my clothes in the bathtub and then after I had hung them on the line I washed myself under Jim’s outdoor solar shower. I felt good showering outside, very invigorating!.

There was one other thing that I heard on the radio, just a very brief snippet that once again reminded me of where I am. It was a mention of daylight saving, coming to an end perhaps, the need to turn the clocks back or forward tonight. I didn’t hear enough to know what was going on, just enough to know that maybe something was. It didn’t take long for me to let it go, as like mum, it made no difference to me. My schedules and routines had no reference to anything outside of themselves.

…day three

….day five

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

On Death 
 

You would know the secret of death.
But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life?
The owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day cannot unveil the mystery of light.
If you would indeed behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide unto the body of life.
For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.
In the depth of your hopes and desires lies your silent knowledge of the beyond;
And like seeds dreaming beneath the snow your heart dreams of spring.
Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.
Your fear of death is but the trembling of the shepherd when he stands before the king whose hand is to be laid upon him in honour.
Is the shepherd not joyful beneath his trembling, that he shall wear the mark of the king?
Yet is he not more mindful of his trembling?
For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?
And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?
Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.
And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb.
And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

Kahlil Gibran

Thanks Phil for sending me this wonderful poem on one of my favourite subjects. Being around people close to death is like being around people close to birth I find.  Just so much less baggage involved – the baggage that we all accumulate as we travel through this wonderful life. The baggage that makes us who we ‘are’ – for the briefest of moments between birth and death.  The briefest of moments between an in-breath and an out-breath. That is our life. It is not something to hold on to – it is something to let go of, naturally.

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

Sometimes we learn

that

someone dies.

Someone we know.

That puts a stop to things. We stop.

Maybe just for a little while, a moment over a cup of coffee and a cigarette, and as I smoke and drink I think not only of the person who has gone and of those remaining. I think of my life, my self.

I stop and realise where I am.

I realise that only this morning I said as I passed Hazel at the bottom of the steps, ”Everyday alive is a good day’. To which she responded, as if seeking confirmation, ‘Is it?’

‘Sure is’, I fired back at her.

She looked dubious.

I realise it was only a week or so ago that I told a complete stranger the most important things I thought she should know. Things like – I love you. That you are a wonderful, fantastic, amazing, incredible, beautiful person who has the potential to be ALL you ever imagined and more. That you have the potential to be totally and utterly FREE. That we are all blessed. That through simply being alive we have been given the most magical of gifts -the gift of LIBERATION – we have been blessed with the power to set ourselves free.

Funny what happens in a day.

We may discover that someone we know is no longer alive.

We may start to appreciate and be grateful for all that we have and all that we are.

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

A moment of recognition. Once I was so afraid of these. Now I sit calmly and write in my father’s hand. He guides me, steadies my desire to make haste.

patience is a virtue…

action speaks louder than words

Thanks dad. You don’t get enough credit methinks. I am your gentle giant. Thank you for the love so consistent, the attention that never waivered. I never questioned your love – and now as a father myself, I praise you. You showed me the way, and mum, well she …

… was a gypsy

a wild moment, uncontrollable, unrestrained, a crazy shot in the dark, a lightening bolt.

I am discovering her once again. A sister. A step-daughter. This is the mum I came to this country to find. And now as I sit in this northern town, what about you? Is there someone to find? Is there somewhere to go?

Not yet. Now I sit calmly and write – and wonder how can we be too busy in our lives to stop and care for our parents as they lie dying? I was too busy when you died. Sorry dad. Now all these years later I realise there is something else I wished I had said to you as I sat beside you.

I wanted to tell you that it’s all OK. I wanted to look into your eyes and tell you there is nothing to fear. That is what I didn’t say.

I was too busy. Too afraid of life myself to be able to reassure you of the wonder and glory and grace of death.

And the thing is, you knew my fear, and it was you who looked it my eyes, you who squeezed my hand, and told me.

Thank you. Thank you for all the time you spent with me. Thank you for the vigour with which you lived. And now all these years later, thank you for the dignity with which you died.

You showed me the way. One final act of parental guidance – you let me know that dying is ok.

And maybe it was also your love for mum that gave you the courage to choose to die. In your dying you changed me – into the man who loved your wife. Into the man who stood by her, who sat by her as she lay dying and looked into her eyes and reassured her than it was all ok.

I think you knew what you were doing.

as i write this

my father is with me

a northerner

i feel him

he is in this mark

upon the page

he is quiet

as the bell tolls

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x