Tag Archives: introspection

Introspection in a cold breeze

Posted on by

The gates of introspection were thrown open late the other night. It was a mistake, I was not thinking, but they opened all the same. The only public item that washed up was the death of my Mother. She died a few years ago, three days before Christmas.

I took off a month of work, left my family alone, travelled across country, and stayed at her home with her in October/November. I was there twenty four hours a day seven days a week. Or most of it any way. She had told me back in July, that as the time got closer, and it looked like she did not know what she was doing, she did know what she was doing, and it was okay.

Okay, I could understand that. My father in the weeks before he went, did everything he could (or so it seemed) to help me hate him. So my Mother saying this was not something that shocked me. When I was with my Mom, after about a week, I needed a few hours to myself, time away from reality. I asked my Mom if she was okay with me leaving the house for an evening, and she said yes, she would be okay.

It was close to freezing when I left. Less than two hours later I received a phone call from a neighbor that my Mom was outside laying on the ground. They called the ambulance, I raced to the hospital. About ten days later, there was a repeat, this time she was in the back yard, the weather was still freezing. Repeat the story, a few days in the hospital, and home she came. Some days I thought she was really there, and other days I was not sure who was home, if anybody.

One afternoon she wanted to go for a ride. I helped her in the car, started driving, and she started singing. Not a song from her childhood, or a song from the romantic days of her life, but another song. This song had one line, and the same rhythm. For over two hours I drove my Mom around listening to her one line song. I want to mention first that I rarely heard my Mom use any off color language in her life. On this day for over two hours, I listened to her sing, “Thanks for being a prick.” Over and over again. The fact that she was constantly grabbing at the steering wheel trying to turn the car into the ditch was minor compared to the song. She didn’t want to go home, fwiw, so we rode around the countryside, her singing her song, and grabbing at the steering wheel now and again.

A few days later she seemed to want to talk about her life. I asked her something about my Dad. “I don’t know why I married that son-of-a-bitch”, was the only thing she had to say about him. She told me some things about a Great Aunt I never knew I had. She talked a little bit about her Dad, Sisters, and Brothers, and that was about it. End of the end of my life conversation.

Because of all the problems with her body dying, it was impossible for her to come and live with me. I live at altitude, she could not survive without oxygen, and she kept pulling it off. Want to or not, it was time for me to pack up, and go back home. Over the next few weeks, there were some phone conversations, but they were not good, they were pretty ugly actually. She called me on the fifteenth to wish me a Merry Christmas. A week went by, and the phone call came. The hospital made the call as easy as they could, and I appreciated their effort.

It was a day of introspection for me, as I went over that month in my mind. Fortunately for most of us, each day is not our last, and there is time to fix the something we did, or at least acknowledge our faults. I can not guess if that month was really a month with my Mom, or with a shell. A month where things were said, and I never knew if they were true, or even thought about.

Of course it was an hours walk today with a cold stiff breeze, thinking about those last days with my Mom to realize it does not matter. She’s gone, and I am left to walk, and wonder.

Share

Grocery Store Strange

Posted on by

I was at the grocery store last night. I needed some frozen vegetables to make soup with. I also wanted some bananas. As I wandered through the aisles to get to the frozen vegetables, I was thinking of what vegetables I would like in the soup. I looked through the glass doors of the freezer, saw the vegetable mix I wanted, opened the door and took out a package. My decision was based mostly on what vegetables I wanted in the selection. It was also about a ten second process, or so it seemed.

Wandering over to the produce section I looked for bananas. I have noticed bananas these days are normally bunched with five to six bananas in a bunch if they are average size. If they are larger or smaller there are more or less bananas in a bunch. This must make it simple for the produce workers to manage.

My choice should have been simple. Walk up to the bananas, pick a bunch that look fresh without being too green. Unless I do not plan on eating a banana that day, then green is not a factor. For some odd reason the process is not that simple.

I walked up to the bananas were. They were on an end-cap, so there were three levels of bananas with each row about five feet long. Then there was the bigger area at the bottom with the most bananas on it. Of course, these bananas were all picked at the same time from the same place. Naturally most of these bananas looked the same with the exception of size. Larger bananas were four to a bunch, smaller bananas were six to eight to a bunch. The things you learn when you go to buy bananas.

I found myself looking at all the bananas on every row. I took a bunch from the bottom, because they are all mostly the same. Then I set them back down and looked some more. I picked a bunch on the middle row. Then I set them down too. Of course as I looked at all the other bunches of bananas they did not really look any different from the ones I had picked up. But they had to be, otherwise why wouldn’t I pick them? I ended up satisfied with a bunch from the right side of the middle row. They were the perfect bananas for me for some unknown reason. I thought about picking out bananas and realized I do the same thing with milk, bread, eggs, and other items at the grocery store.

My analytical self, said all the bananas, loaves of bread, and containers of milk are equal. The bananas separate out by size, but taste the same. So why did I need to look over all the bananas, and pick two bunches, change my mind and finally select the bunch I did?

On the way home it dawned on me that most people when given a choice of one type of cookie, cracker, or fruit, we have a need to pick a certain one that meets some unknown criteria we probably are not even aware of. It is in a certain place on the plate, resting at a certain angle, I don’t know. It sure is strange now that I have noticed it in me.

Share

Know your death, and live a better life

Posted on by

Carlos Castaneda wrote many pages on the subject, as he transcribed the thoughts of Don Juan and others onto paper. Castaneda wrote with much passion about being intimate with ones own death. The Marine Corps alludes to this in every commercial, as does the Army, probably the Air Force and Navy to a lesser extent.

The Marine Corps is not satisfied with a hot body to mindlessly charge a machine gun nest. The Marine Corps wants people who are intimately aware of their own death. People who are intimate with their own death are more aware than other people, and generally, when they do something it is for the right reasons. That may sound silly, but it is not. If the Marine Core just wanted cannon fodder, they would not be focused on the extreme, and intensive training each recruit goes through before he or she is entitled to call themselves a Marine.
When I first read Castaneda, I thought to myself, he was being silly and overly dramatic. We are all going to die someday, so who cares? That is exactly what Castaneda and the Marine Corps care about. Most people walking the earth today simply do not care about their pending death. They are either scared of the thought, or they push it out into that place we put everything that will occur sometime, but not soon.
If I wished to waste your time, I could list thousands of examples of people who never considered their death in any fashion, and without warning they ceased to exist. I can name only a few people that I know personally who have really taken the time to contemplate their death and have become intimate with it.
Those folks that are intimate with their own deaths know their is no time to waste. Wasting time is not the same as doing nothing. Wasting time is not caring about your own individual actions or their effects on others and the world around you. Wasting time because there is always a time in the future to make things right.
People who are intimate with their death know that that future may end in the next instant, and they do not have a guarantee of any future time. When I began to have an understanding of this concept it seemed sort of silly. Of course I have plenty of time. I have tomorrow, probably next month, most likely next year, and so on, and so forth.

People who are intimate with their own death live with a different thinking about time. They understand that they may not be here tomorrow, so they do everything in a right now time. They know they do not have time to ignore their children, their spouse, or themselves. Ten minutes from now may be too late for them to come back and correct any mistakes, apologize, or decide to pay attention.
This does not mean that people who are intimate with their own deaths are morbid, or fixated on the end of their lives, because they are not. What they are is more mindful, aware of their actions, and how they affect those around them. They are generally less prone to quick bursts of anger. They are more open with their feelings, and appear to have thicker skins than others in their social group. They are also more comfortable with themselves because they are intimate with their own deaths.
Like anyone else, they do not know when their death is going to happen, or how it will happen, but they know it could be in the next five minutes. Because of this knowledge they are more careful to make this minute count. As uncomfortable as it may sound, try to contemplate your own death, and become friends with it. It will change your life for the better in ways you never thought possible. You will begin to understand how precious and brief your life, and the lives of those around you really are.

Technorati Tags: , , , , ,

Share