To Those Who are Gone

Murrays, c. 1931
Originally uploaded by Shugetsu

All these people are gone.

On one day in 1931 or so, they paused after a day of picking apples. Seventy-seven years later, what remains of them is memory, their shadow in the features of their children, and the fuzzy capture of this one moment.

The little girl in front is my Aunt Pat. I adored her when I met her sixty years later. Her children, my cousins, are dear to me. But on that day, she was a toddler with an apple.

In front of her sits my Great Aunt Ann. As an old lady, she answered all the letters I wrote her.

Behind her, Marguerite, of French Canadian stock, married one of her brothers. When I met her at Ann's house, they ribbed one another over their age difference; Marguerite is two years older than Ann, and always will be.

But they are all gone.

We are coming to the season of death, when summer gives way to fall. Everything seems to be spinning down, to some deeper place. Leaves circle to earth, to take up existence as loam. The financial markets are in disarray--where does the money go, when shares in a company lose their value?

On Tuesday, my mother in law was found dead in her house. Her life was too short, marked by hard work and little enjoyment. She had just retired. She was ill, but her death was a surprise.

And so we have been struggling with the big questions. Why do we die? Does life mean anything, beyond what we give it? Why are we here? Is there a reason for any of it?

There is no pat answer to these koans. You find the truth by living it.

What I feel now is a deeper engagement with the Dharma-unfolding-as-life, a kind of surrender, or faith. Faith that things find their own way, regardless of our ideas about them. Faith that this woman's life was what it was, as perfect and complete as a life can be. That we all fall, one day, like leaves to loam. That the days we have are precious; that they contain tiny unfurlings of life and death that mirror the Great Pattern.

And, this is sad. We have been sad. It is time to be sad, to look more closely at the life we are living, and the life we want to live. One day, we too, will be nothing but a photograph, and one day, not even that.

Love, Pain, Politics. The Usual.

Often I have forgotten the nobility of the First Noble Truth. Suffering catalyzes and cauterizes us. It does not always lead to a deepening of experience, but many a better human has looked back in rueful gratitude on her darkest hour. But that is abstraction.

Here is concretion: If there were no frustration or dissatisfaction, the baby would never learn to crawl. Lacking any desire for things to be different, he would not feel a colassal urge to get from one place to the next.

The milestones are piling up fast and furious around our little apartment. Every physical one-- the trunk lifted off the ground; the three-point pushup; all these mini-steps leading to crawling--every milestone is accompanied by great complaining, caterwauling, and carrying on.

It's painful, I am surprised to find. Painful to be with a child learning to crawl.

Painful also to be with a child who has sprouted eight teeth in three months. But now the infant fairies have given us Motrin, which is an anti-inflammatory, which Tylenol was not.

Knowing I could relieve some of the baby's suffering, and judging that I should not do so, because it would involve way-too-much drugs--that hurts most of all. Is my reasoning sound? Am I harming my child? Or is he already, from the moment of his birth, an exceptionally fortunate child?

I don't know. I'm not not accustomed to having someone's life so completely in my hands. One day it will become less complete--he will have more power over himself--and become commonplace.

---

Today we were walking through the chill air, baby riding on my front, and we stopped at an intersection. If not for my defensive pedestrian instincts, we would have been mowed down at the corner by a woman in a car bearing stickers that said, "SARAH/McCAIN" and "IT'S A CHILD NOT A CHOICE."

Not from these parts, obviously.

I don't think I can begin to accurately unfurl my political feelings here. And I don't want to. Suffice to say, I will be relieved when this election is over. I am under the impression that newsworthy events (other than the financial bailout) continue in the rest of the world. Today's Oregonian helpfully told me it would take over 65 years to count every one of the 700 billion dollars in the proposed bailout.

Better start counting, blessing upon blessing: I am alive. Baby is well. Found teething biscuits that delight and distract him. Have funds for food and teething biscuits. Took huge 3.5 hour nap today to compensate for a sleepless night. And so forth. 700 billion is perhaps a drop in the bucket, seen like that.

Belonging

Sometimes, when the baby falls asleep, a great tenderness overwhelms me. It's as if all the day's caterwauling and carrying-on collapses down into one truth: this is my little son, and his precious life is my main responsibility.

The baby feels something for me in return. I don't think you could call it love--it's something more primal. There is an element of need involved: the baby experiences a non-negotiable requirement for maternal attention, maternal sustenance, maternal babywearing. And there is an element of "Belonging."

It took years of practice, and years of falling in love-or-something-like-it for me to finally identify Belonging as a force. Beyond the interpersonal reward of being seen and understood, deeper than the sensory pleasures that accompany affection between humans, is a fundamental desire to Belong.

The strength of the urge to Belong is what keeps us in situations that have long since ceased to be rewarding. It's not an obvious mental construct; it goes beyond saying to yourself, "These are my people. Therefore I will stay here." It is a feeling that you are part of something that also includes other beings.

So beyond any notion of what it means to "be a family," there is the unavoidable fact of our Belonging. The baby does not do tenderness yet, or compassion, or anything generally recognized as "love." But he does Belong, with a passion and a wildness, as if his survival depended on it.

Which I suppose it does.

Wisdom Quote from the Buddha

Poison won't penetrate where there is no wound.