life – Page 3 – The BeZine

Naomi Baltuck, Photo Essay, Photography/Photographer

In Your Hands

Posted on July 23, 2013July 21, 2013 by Naomi Baltuck

My daughter Bea and I were having a little fun with shadows on the grounds of Dover Castle.

It made me think about writing–and life. Life puts the raw material into our hands, and it’s up to us to mold it into whatever work of art we envision. Look for the right light and context, and you can do so much with so little, and to great effect.

All images and words copyright Naomi Baltuck

NAOMI BALTUCK ~ is a Contributing Editor and Resident Storyteller here at Bardo. She is a world-traveler and an award-winning writer, photographer, and story-teller whose works of fiction and nonfiction are available through Amazon HERE. Naomi presents her wonderful photo-stories – always interesting and rich with meaning and humor – at Writing Between the Lines, Life from the Writer’s POV. She also conducts workshops such as Peace Porridge (multicultural stories to promote cooperation, goodwill, and peaceful coexistence), Whispers in the Graveyard (a spellbinding array of haunting and mysterious stories), Tandem Tales, Traveling Light Around the World, and others. For more on her programs visit Naomi Baltuck.com

Charles W Martin

just messing with you…

Posted on June 24, 2013June 22, 2013 by slpmartin

a verizon service truck
pulled away from aunt bea’s
just as I drove up
i asked if she’d
had phone difficulties
she said
no
i had one of those
business lines installed
with
an automatic phone dialer
it randomly calls either
the irs
or
iran
when it calls
the irs
it asks when
the next dance lesson
is going to be held
and
when it calls iran
it just selects
some random number
says
as-salam
then
hangs up
i just want to see
if the nsc
is doing their
ss
kgb
secret police thing
maybe
they’ll send
one of those
handsome
fbi
or
partying cia agents
around
to
ask me
personal
questions

– Charles W. Martin

CHARLES W. MARTIN, Ph.D. (Reading Between the Minds) ~ Throughout Charlie’s educational training and career in speech and language therapy, he maintained a devotion to the arts (literature/poetry, the theater, music and photography). He was a published poet before he completed his graduate work. Since his retirement in 2010, he has turned his full attention to his poetry and photography. He publishes a poem and a photographic art piece each day on his blog. Charlie has been blogging since January 31, 2010. He is hugely popular for his poetry, his ethic, and his support of other poets and bloggers.

Recently Charlie self-published a book of poetry entitled The Hawk Chronicles and will soon publish another book called A Bea in Your Bonnet: First Sting. The Hawk Chronicles is available through both Lulu and Amazon. In The Hawk Chronicles, Charlie provides a personification of his resident hawk with poems and photos taken over a two year period. By invitation Charlie has shown his photographs in local businesses that display the works of outstanding artists.

Contributing Writer, General Interest, Karen Fayeth

From Father to Son to Daughter

Posted on June 14, 2013June 6, 2013 by Karen Fayeth

After my dad passed away several years ago, my mom gave me possession of the family collection of photo albums and scrap books, and I made the solemn promise I’d keep them safe.

It was an easy promise because I adore all the family artifacts. As a kid, I used to dive into the scrapbook pages and smile at photos of my hot young mom (she was stunning!) and my smart young dad (he was geeky!).

My mom was a great scrapbooker and I have mountains of artifacts to explore including photos, family letters and souvenirs.

The hand written letters are what I cherish the most. Reading words inked out in the strong hand of my great grandfather on his official stationary gives me a sense of connection to a man I never knew, yet his very DNA is alive within me. I can learn who he was by the choice of language and the surety of his pen stroke.

My grandfather on my father’s side was also a good letter writer. He had a keen sense for telling the mundane facts while inserting a good dose of wry humor. He was close to all eight of his children and since my father had moved a good distance from home, the two stayed close by writing letters.

Among the piles of correspondence I found a gem in an envelope from my grandfather to my father. It was typewritten using carbon paper, so perhaps my grandfather was making copies for all of his kids.

Because the photo (below) of an old letter may be difficult to read, here is what it says:

12 Things To Remember

* *

1. The value of time

2. The success of perseverance.

3. The pleasure of working.

4. The dignity of simplicity.

5. The worth of character.

6. The power of kindness.

7. The influence of example.

8. The obligation of duty.

9. The wisdom of economy.

10. The virtue of patience.

11. The improvement of talent.

12. The joy of originating.

The handwritten bit up in the corner says, “Read weekly, a good guide – Dad”

Such simple words that encapsulate such very strong values. This is endearing fatherly advice to a son and it is timeless. This was written in 1949, but is just as applicable 64 years later.

This advice was passed from father to son, and holding it in my hands it passes again, now from from father to daughter.

This guide has meaning to me and gives me much to ponder as I wade through another busy work week and think about who I am and who I came from.

And who I want to be.

To all fathers and grandfathers, I wish you a very joyful Father’s Day. May your own good words find their way through the generations.

***

KAREN FAYETH ~ is one of our regular contributing writers. She is our new tech manager, site co-administrator along with Jamie and Terri, and fiction and creative nonfiction editor. She blogs at Oh Fair New Mexico. Born with the writer’s eye and the heart of a story-teller, Karen Fayeth’s work is colored by the Mexican, Native American, and Western influences of her roots in rural New Mexico complemented by a growing urban aesthetic. Karen now lives in the San Francisco Bay area. When she’s not spinning a tale, she works as a senior executive for science and technology research organization.

Karen has won awards for her writing, photography, and art. Recent publication credits include a series of three features in New Mexico magazine and an essay with the online magazine Wild Violet. Her latest short story will be published in the May edition of Foliate Oak. Karen’s photography is garnering considerable attention, her photo titled “Bromance” (featuring Aubry Huff and Pat Burrell) was featured on MLB Network’s Intentional Talk hosted by Chris Rose and Kevin Millar.

Guest Writer, Poems/Poetry

String Theory

Posted on May 24, 2013May 25, 2013 by The Bardo Group Beguines

the work of TJ Therein

Don’t ask me how, don’t ask me why
But energy will never die
It merely changes shape and form
Regardless of faith and decorum
All things are bound by this dharma
This my friend is part of Karma
We will die and in death disperse
Seeds upon wind of universe
On what ground those seeds settle and grow
Is something no one can really know
Some say angels with halos and wings
But we know nothing of these things
There is more to elephant than just tusk
And our bodies no more than mortal husk
It is the fruit that it contains
That baffles our little birdbrains
It confounds the fool as it does the wise
Because energy never dies

– Timothy James Therien

© 2013, poem and portrait (below), Timothy James Therien, All rights reserved
Photo credit ~ Scientific American cover, November 2007, under Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License 2.5 generic via Wikipedia

TIMOTHY JAMES “TJ” THERIEN (Liars, Hypocrites & The Development of Human Emotions) ~ is a guest writer today on Into the Bardo. He has been blogging since November 2012 and has already garnered a significant and loyal following. He says in another poem “I am not a writer … I am possessed by unseen spirit/And my hand is so moved/Words dictated to me by inner voice/Muse speaks when she wants to speak…” That sounds an awful lot like work coming from sacred space. TJ tells us that he was born 1968 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and current resides in The Eastern Townships, Quebec, Canada. He’s lived briefly in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and Parry Sound, Ontario Canada. He participates in Poet’s Corner. His “About” is posted HERE.

Contributing Writer, Poems/Poetry

Hot Chocolate With Mary

Posted on May 22, 2013May 25, 2013 by The Bardo Group Beguines

the work of Victoria C. Slotto

The leaves of an elm splash
dappled sunlight on the forest
floor. A chill lingers in the
air so we share hot chocolate
from a thermos, pour the creamy
liquid into insulated mugs.

Age does not prevent her
from sprawling on the earth
she loves so passionately.
She leans against the tree’s
stout trunk, says, “I’m yours.”

My mouth is dry like when
the dentist stuffs it full of
cotton rolls. Disbelief numbs
me till she laughs—a sound
as real as songs of her beloved
birds that sing their prayers
in unison from the surrounding
branches and marshy meadows.

“I’m yours,” she says again,
reminding me I’m here to do
the interview I’ve wished for,
nurtured in my imagination
since I discovered her.

“Your life,” I coax, knowing
that but a single word suffices.

As for myself
I swung the door open and there was
The wordless singing world. And I ran for my life.

“You ran to it?”

“Yes, immersed myself in beauty.”
While on and on the sparrow sings.

“And aging? If you don’t mind, that is.”

In the deep fall, don’t you imagine the leaves think
how comfortable it will be to touch
the earth…?”

…and what shall I wish for myself but,
being so struck by the lightning of years
to live with what is left, loving.

“Any regrets?”

There wasn’t
time enough for all the wonderful things
I could think of to do

In a single day…

“If you could choreograph your death?”

…Maybe on a midsummer night’s eve,
And without fanfare.

“About death?”

So it is
if the heart has devoted itself to love, there is
not a single inch of emptiness. Gladness gleams
all the way to the grave.

“And after?”

If there’s a temple, I haven’t found it yet,
I simply go on drifting, in the heaven of grass
and the weeds.

She takes her leave.
I watch her walk across the fields,
stopping to listen
or to follow the flight of a heron.
She’s alone now
with Percy her dog
and memories of having lived well.

I would do just about anything to spend an hour with Mary Oliver, a poet who has touched my life and my writing so deeply. This is an imagined interview. The responses in italics are all snippets of her poetry chosen from New and Selected Poems, Volume Two.

– Victoria C. Slotto

Victoria at the Palm Springs Writer's Expo March 2012 — Victoria at the Palm Springs Writer’s Expo March 2012

VICTORIA C. SLOTTO (Victoria C. Slotto, Author: Fiction, Poetry and Writing Prompts) ~ a Contributing Writer to Into the Bardo ,attributes her writing influences to her spirituality, her dealings with grief and loss, and nature. Having spent twenty-eight years as a nun, Victoria left the convent but continued to work as a nurse in the fields of death and dying, Victoria has seen and experienced much. A result of Victoria’s life experience is the ability to connect with readers on an intimate level. She resides in Reno, Nevada, with her husband and two dogs and spends several months of the year in Palm Desert, California.

Winter is Past is her first novel. It was published in 2012 by Lucky Bat Books. She has a second novel in process and also a poetry chapbook. Victoria is also an accomplished blogger and poet who has assumed a leadership role in d’Verse Poet’s Pub. You can read more ofher fine poetry HERE.

Spiritual Practice

Shift Into Heart with Quick Coherence Techniques

Posted on April 17, 2013April 13, 2013 by Terri

This article is from the folks at shiftyourlife.com-Tracy Latz M.D. and Marion Ross, PhD. Republished with permission.

Our friends at HeartMath have described a wonderful technique to rapidly get into your heart. The Quick Coherence® Technique ( a heart math trademark) helps you create a coherent state, offering access to your heart’s intelligence. It uses the power of your heart to balance thoughts and emotions, helping you to achieve a neutral, poised state for clear thinking. It is a powerful technique that connects you with your energetic heart zone to help you release stress, balance your emotions and feel better fast.

Quick Coherence® will help you find a feeling of ease and inner harmony that will be reflected in your heart rhythms. The heart is a primary generator of rhythm in your body, influencing brain processes that control your nervous system, cognitive function and emotion. More coherent heart rhythms facilitate brain function, allowing you more access to your higher intelligence so you can improve your focus, creativity, intuition and higher-level decision-making. When you’re in heart-rhythm coherence, you perform at your best – what athletes call being in the zone. You feel confident, positive, focused and calm yet energized.

Step 1: Heart Focus.
Focus your attention on the area around your heart, the area in the center of your chest. If you prefer, the first couple of times you try it, place your hand over the center of your chest to help keep your attention in the heart area.

Step 2: Heart Breathing.
Breathe deeply but normally and feel as if your breath is coming in and going out through your heart area. Continue breathing with ease until you find a natural inner rhythm that feels good to you.

Step 3: Heart Feeling.
As you maintain your heart focus and heart breathing, activate a positive feeling. Recall a positive feeling, a time when you felt good inside, and try to re-experience the feeling. One of the easiest ways to generate a positive, heart-based feeling is to remember a special place you’ve been to or the love you feel for a close friend or family member or treasured pet. This is the most important step.

Quick Coherence® is especially useful when you start to feel a draining emotion such as frustration, irritation, anxiety or stress. Using Quick Coherence at the onset of less intense negative emotions can keep them from escalating into something worse. This technique is especially useful after you’ve had an emotional blowup to bring yourself back into balance quickly.

You can do the Quick Coherence® Technique anytime, anywhere and no one will know you’re doing it. In less than a minute, it creates positive changes in your heart rhythms, sending powerful signals to the brain that can improve how you’re feeling. Apply this one-minute technique first thing in the morning, before or during phone calls or meetings, in the middle of a difficult conversation, when you feel overwhelmed or pressed for time, or anytime you simply want to practice increasing your coherence. You can also use Quick Coherence whenever you need more coordination, speed and fluidity in your reactions.

Another technique that we, The Shift Doctors, regularly teach in seminars, to patients and in our books comes from the Buddhist tradition and is called The Loving Benefactor Meditation. The meditation goes as as follows:

(This meditation can also be downloaded at iTunes and is from our 2nd companion CD for our book Shift: 12 Keys to Shift Your Life – for details see meditation page at shiftyourlife.com ). This meditation is great for getting into your heart in about 30 seconds or less.

Find a comfortable, seated position on a chair or cushion and allow your body to settle into position. Close your eyes and begin to focus your attention on your breath, following your cycles of inhalation and exhalation. Notice the rising and falling sensations in your belly as you breathe in and out and follow this for a few cycles.

Now try to bring to mind a heartfelt sense or visual image of someone whom you believe embodies the qualities of unconditional love and compassion. This person can be a friend or relative, a religious or historical figure, a spiritual being or just someone who embodies these qualities. Picture this person as if they were sitting or standing right in front of you.

Look into their eyes and feel the absolute unconditional love and compassion flowing from them towards you. Now, radiate feelings of love and gratitude back towards this person. Whenever you feel your mind wandering, gently bring your attention back to the image of the loving friend, historical or spiritual image and once again practice radiating love, empathy and compassion towards them. Feel their love, empathy and compassion radiating back towards you.

You can choose to stay with your Loving Benefactor and feel their love flowing to you and your love flowing to them for up to 20 minutes. You can also have your Loving Benefactor move slowly around your left side and stand behind your left shoulder to be with you as you go about your day. You can still feel them present when you open your eyes! Know that this Loving Benefactor is sending you love every minute of every day.

In addition, The Mountain Meditation can be quite helpful to melt away stress or anxiety. When you are feeling helpless, powerless, inadequate or have angst about meeting a challenge that is facing you in your life, the ‘Mountain Meditation’ can prove to be a transformative experience. If you are ready to feel your inner strength, click on the meditation above, sit back, close your eyes and prepare for a journey (led by ‘The Shift Doctors’) back to vitality and your powerful inner nature. Listen to The Mountain Meditation by clicking here!

Hope these tips and tools are helpful –

Loads of Light to all!

Tracy Latz, M.D.and Marion Ross PhD. (a.k.a. “The Shift Doctors”)

**The Shift Doctors (Tracy Latz, M.D. & Marion Ross, Ph.D.) are available for keynote talks, classes, events or for seminars (1/2 day or up to 2 day) on Energy Medicine personal transformation, team-building, motivation, anger management, intuitive development, or collaboration for private groups, conferences, corporations or corporate events. Contact them at info@shiftyourlife.com or find out more about their books, DVD’s, CD’s and tools for personal transformation at www.shiftyourlife.com.

Essay, General Interest, Guest Writer

LIFE INTO ART

Posted on February 4, 2013February 3, 2013 by The Bardo Group Beguines

LIFE INTO ART

Marilynn Mair (Celebrating a Year)

I think, looking back at my wayward path through the years, that the most valuable life skill one needs to develop in order to succeed, is to learn how to improvise. Life will never be smooth or rosy, except in very small stretches. Opportunities for your skill set may never materialize, love may not be as generous to you as you are to it, life as you planned it will definitely at some point go astray. Set-backs and tragedies await, and if you are to cope, to carry on, you need to be able to take a hard look at the pieces on the board and figure your best way forward. Right where you stand, right where you never expected to be. Imagination helps, optimism is a crucial ingredient even if it seems to have temporarily disappeared. No one teaches us how to do this, we learn from necessity. But it certainly puts jazz in a whole different perspective. And poetry, abstract painting, things most people think they don’t understand. Because, really, we are all just learning how to make life imitate art.

I think that if all we had in life to guide us was this paragraph by Marilynn Mair, we’d be okay. Life is the art of taking the jarring notes, the unlikely word, the unexpected juxtapositions, the odd shadings and turning them into something lovely. Life is the teacher. Art is the text. Creating art is survival, the way we work out understanding and meaning. Jamie Dedes

MARILYNN MAIR ~ of Celebrating a Year is known as the “angel of the tremolo” and “the first lady of mandolin”. Marilynn is Professor of Music at Roger Williams University, Bristol, Rhode Island. Her most recent CDs are Meu Bandolim and Enigmatica. Her most recent book is Brazilian Choro – A Method for Mandolin. For more of Marilynn’s story, link HERE. Marilynn Mair is a contributing writer to Into the Bardo.

Ann Emerson, General Interest

MEANING

Posted on July 24, 2012July 24, 2012 by The Bardo Group Beguines

Ann shares a quote from Dr. John Gardner, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understand, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success and failure is of less account.”

Photo credit ~ Canelón Grande Reservoir, Canelones, Uruguay by Juan Carlos Gonzalez, Public Domain Pictures.net

General Interest, Teachers

WALK THE EARTH

Posted on May 17, 2012May 16, 2012 by The Bardo Group Beguines

“If we perceived Life with reverence, we would stand in awe at the experience of physical Life and walk the Earth in a very deep sense of gratitude.”

Gary Zukav

Thoughts from the Seat of the Soul

♥

Photo credit ~ Peter Griffin, Public Domain Pictures.net

Jamie Dedes, Perspectives on Cancer, Uncategorized

PERSPECTIVES ON CANCER #33: Writing Your Self, Transforming Personal Material

Posted on October 14, 2011October 12, 2011 by The Bardo Group Beguines

WRITING YOUR SELF

Book Review

Jamie Dedes

We feel this book review puts a fine close on our series, Perspectives in Cancer. Writing as a healing art, whether as a purely personal exercise or for publication, is powerful. One of the authors of Writing Your Self, Myra Schneider, learned that with her much appreciated work,Writing My Way Though Cancer. That effort informs much of Writing Your Self.

This review was originally published at Musing by Moonlight.

Four of Myra’s poems were published earlier in this series.

We wrote the book because we believe that personal writing is very potent both for the writer and the reader, because some of the greatest literature is rooted in personal material. Myra Schneider in an interview HERE.

The subtitle of this book about writing is “transforming personal material.” I think it is implicitly also about personal transformation. It always seems to me that writing and reading about life is a healing activity, a way to live hugely, and a way to empower ourselves and others. If we can do it well enough to engage others, whether our purpose is to leave a record behind for family, to set the record straight, or simply to share and entertain, the experience is rewarding. Writing is a powerful healing path.

Writing Your Self is the most comprehensive book of its type that I’ve yet to read, and I’ve read many. It is organized in two parts:

Part I: Here the focus is on life experiences, the exploration of those human experiences that are universal. These include childhood, self-conceptions, relationships, displacement, physical and mental illness and disability, and abuse.
Part II: Here the focus is on writing techniques, recognizing material that is unfinished, working on refinements, and developing work projects.

Writing Your Self is rich with examples from known and unknown writers including the authors. By example as well as explanation the authors reinforce what we all intuitively understand to be true: that telling stories preserves identity and clarifies the human condition. It helps us understand what it means to be human. The experience of working through the book was something like a rite of passage.

I very much can see the use of this book by individuals training themselves and by teachers of adult learners who wish to write memoir, poetry, fiction, or creative non-fiction. It would be useful in hospital therapeutic writing programs or in writing programs for active seniors.

Memories, both recent and distant, tell us who we are and so play a crucial role in our experience of life…

You may have memories which you want to plunge into or you may have material like a diary or letters which summon them up. There are other ways though of triggering memories. We offer a series of suggestions. Chapter 13, Accessing memories, secret letters, monologues and dialogues, visualizations.

I think Chapter 13 alone is worth the price of admission. I work a lot off of childhood memories and even the event that happened two minutes ago comes back to me with dreamlike qualities when I sit to write. I have not thought of the things I do naturally as triggers, but indeed they are. It was quite interesting to see these natural aids laid-out and organized on the page to read: objects and place as starting points, physical sensation as triggers, people in memory, and predominant feelings. The section on secret letters – that is, letters that you write someone and never send – was particularly interesting. I’ve only done this twice in my life, but I know some folks who do it all the time. I’m sure it is a common practice and would make a fine jumping-off point for some and a satisfactory exercise – complete in itself – for others. The authors go on to monologues and dialogues, which certainly everyone spins in their heads. They discuss visualization. Hey, if you can see it, you can write it.

I’m an experienced writer and I enjoyed the book and the exercises and learned a few new things, got a few new ideas. If you are inexperienced or stuck midway in a transition from one form of writing to another, you’ll benefit from the exercises, ideas, and instruction in Writing Your Self: Transforming Personal Experience. This one’s a definite thumbs-up.

Myra Schneider is a British poet, a poetry and writing tutor, and author of the acclaimed book: Writing My Way Through Cancer. Your can visit her HERE.

John Killick was a teacher for 30 years, in further, adult and prison education, but has written all his life. His work includes both prose works and poetry. You can visit him HERE.

Copyrighted cover art, fair use.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Jamie Dedes ~ Jamie is a former freelance feature writer and columnist whose topic specialties were employment, vocational training, and business. She finds the blessing of medical retirement to be more time to indulge in her poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction. She has two novels in progress, one in final edits, and is pulling together a poetry collection. Her primary playground is Musing by Moonlight. She is the founder and editor/administrator of Into the Bardo. Jamie’s mother was diagnosed with cancer the first time at thirty-six. She went three rounds with breast cancer, one with thyroid cancer, and died at seventy-six of breast and colon cancer.

Guest Writer, Poems/Poetry

PERSPECTIVES ON CANCER #24: More Than Love At First Sight

Posted on October 6, 2011 by The Bardo Group Beguines

MORE THAN LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT

Dan Roberson

I said, “I
fell in love with you at first sight,”

You said, “Oh,
it was a crazy night,”

I said, “The
moon was beautiful and bright,

But I couldn’t see anything but you,”

You said, “I
don’t think that was true,

You came in with
someone dressed in blue,”

I said, “I’ll
have to admit once more you’re right,

Let’s just
forget about love at first sight,”

It was not
as important as I thought it would be,

It was a
step in the right direction, don’t you agree?

We were
newlyweds ready to begin,

Confident we
could change the world, again and again,

But it was the
second step, or maybe it was three or four,

When we
connected deeply, right at heart’s door,

Steps five
or six, we really began to communicate,

Every day I
grew more in love, it was such a happy state,

Knowing your
love for me was also deep,

Made it so
easy to have a restful sleep,

Love at
first sight seemed unreal and so long ago,

As life
expanded our love continued to grow,

We were stepping
into our future, two of a kind,

I was so
crazy about you as if I’d lost my mind,

Years went
by so quickly with you at my side,

And I still
thought of you as my beautiful bride,

When you
were stricken with that terrible disease,

I had to
tell you “I love you” to put your mind at ease,

I still
loved you when your hair began to fall,

It didn’t
change the way I felt, no, not at all,

The moon outside
is breathtaking and luminous tonight,

But you’re
lying here cold in the middle of the night,

Your frail
body is still beautiful to my sight,

I’ll lie
beside you until morning’s early light,

Remembering
tears and laughter we shared,

The ways we showed
each other we cared,

How we
worked through our problems every day,

Learned to
forgive and to often pray,

We didn’t
let disagreements go on long,

As we trusted
each other we were twice as strong,

I didn’t
really understand love at first sight,

We took our
turns at being wrong and right,

Now you’ve
left this earth on your final flight,

And my heart
is filled with love at last sight.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Dan Roberson ~ lives in Kansas City, Missouri. He says, ” I celebrate life. I retired from teaching and now I’m looking for new parades to lead, or to follow. I’m alone, still hoping to be a published author, and trying to stay on my chosen path. I have no anchor to hold me down and I’m ready to rid myself of possessions that impede progress. I want my imagination to soar. I’m open to learning about new worlds, new countries and languages, and different ways to look at things I thought I knew. Every day is a bonus day and I look forward to the challenges it brings. I’m finding out that technology is fast and getting faster and there is much information that I need to learn.” You’ll find Dan at My Blog.

Jamie Dedes, Perspectives on Cancer

PERSPECTIVES IN CANCER #16: Parvathy

Posted on September 27, 2011September 27, 2011 by The Bardo Group Beguines

PARVATHY

Jamie Dedes

You are the one I most hoped would make it

You of the vibrant colors, the valiant heart

You young with laughter, wise in sadness

Winging your way past the river of forgetfulness

Several years ago a brave and kind man started a local group for those of us with life threatening illness and our caretakers. Through it, it has been an honor and a privilege to meet people who remain heroic and funny and compassionate in the face of life’s great mystery, death. We want the same things: more life, less pain, less fear. We fear the same things: the unknown, will it hurt, will I feel cold and lonely, is there something, is there nothing, will I loose my “I”. We suffer remorse for the loss of ourselves and the time we won’t get. We wonder if in the end anyone will remember us. We fear separation from the people we love and of not being able to finish our work. We fear for our children and grandchildren if we are not here. Quite a number in our group have gone into remission or otherwise improved and moved on. Others we have lost to ALS . . . old age . . .Now we have lost Parvathy, the youngest, I believe, to cancer. I don’t think she made it to thirty-five.

This summer before Parvathy died, I spent a day with her at Filoli Gardens. The flowers were stunning, but dull beside the glow of Parvathy’s inner grace and enjoyment of the day and its wonders, which are many at Filoli. We talked of life and of hopes for the future. She still hoped for a healthy resolution and a future that would include a child with her new, young husband. She had pursued a successful professional career, and there were things she wished to accomplish. We got tea in the cafe and then sat in the gardens to drink it. We were good company, I think, despite differences in age, culture, and education. We did have a bond, after all. It is a bond all humans share, but not all of us face up to or are confronted with in the context of terminal illness.

For many of us, death comes slowly. First we give up a bit of our hearing, then a bit of our sight, then more than a little of our agility, height, and memory. Eventually, we heave a sigh and off we go, shedding the fleshy capsule. We have time to do things, to say good-bye slowly, to savor, to say to ourselves and others, “Hey, it was a great ride. No regrets.” Parvathy didn’t have time. It was all much too fast and much too painful. Her life had its high moments, certainly. She told me about some of them. But she did grow up in a war torn country. She lost a brother to war. She suffered from a terrible illness. She struggled with anger and remorse over these experiences. She tried to understand them and to understand a God who would do this to her and her family. In the end, she may have decided that her life had been good. I hope she did. I hope she could focus on the joys and find some peace. I wasn’t there. I don’t know. I just wished for her nothing less than what she wished for herself: a long life and less painful one.

May your soul find peace, our dear, beautiful Parvathy. You are not and will not be forgotten. The warmth of your spirit lives on in our hearts.

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“If we perceived Life with reverence, we would stand in awe at the experience of physical Life and walk the Earth in a very deep sense of gratitude.”

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