Dying to Live

Dying to Live

What does it mean to be in the winter of my life? It means that I’m stuck in the mud of “poor me” by expending all my thinking power on sickness and symptoms. It means I can’t activate, actuate or contemplate my life creatively enough to finish my memoirs. It means that my life is over. It’s not. I just find myself wishing it were lately. I always thought I’d age gracefully.

When I finally pay attention, I hear the sea rolling onto the beach, alerting me to the glorious rosy, violet sunset on the window side of my studio home and the ever-changing potpourri of street sounds on the door side. Nature and nurture. So many blessings climb up from my Mexican street: friends, family, healers, pets, even husbands.

I’m not afraid of death. I’m afraid of life –the very breath of life. If I breathe deeply as I must, to get back to my Self, I cough. It’s a relentless cough. “Be One with the cough,” my friend, Charlie says. “Be One with the breathlessness.” It seems to me that I AM one with it and that’s the problem. The affliction takes over like an addiction.

Yesterday I actually killed myself with living. I started out with the joyful anticipation of starting a writing course on line to get me going again. All day my eyes were riveted to the In-box. I’d liaisoned with my satellite man in Toronto to get Shelley’s T.V. working and the groomer had come to do her thing and I’d “oh’d and “ah’d” over Timmy’s beautiful Bichon self and Di brought her Lola for grooming too and we had visited, determined to skirt our ailments as the sole topic of conversation (her cancer and my T.B.), and Larisa had wafted in, self-groomed and beautiful, reminding me of my youth, and Charlie had arrived from Chapala for his once every two years whirlwind visit and his drinking buddy had tied into my vodka to the tune of four shots in an hour and I had answered my e-mails with my eyes ever on the In-box and I’d sympathized with my caregiver whose rare fit of ennui was explained by, “I’m tired”. I was dead.

Terrified that I’d already lost the glow, the gratitude, the renewed spirit and the will that the writing course had promised to bring me, I ruminated on how the truth hurts!

“You look great”, Charlie’s pal (prefacing his wanting a drink) said.

“Why don’t I feel great?” I’m thinking.

Exposing the ‘greatness’ as a lie, he quipped, “Where do I find the hot chicks in this town?”

Setting myself up by using a line from the past, I parried, “You’re looking at one.”

“No, I mean YOUNG chicks,” he said. It was the first time anyone but I, myself had actually told me I was too old for anything.

“Jeez”, I said, “How rude.” Since when is truth rude? Since always. We always euphemize our observations. Why can’t we ‘euthanize’ that habit and flow with authenticity even when it wounds?

Lungs are the seat of sadness. I grieve the loss of my youth. Where did my body go? What are these flapping arms, these wrinkles, these dark circles under my eyes, these aches and these pains doing here? I speak of them with derision. Where is my Knowing of unconditional love and acceptance when it comes to poor little old orphan Annie?

Maybe the crying in my chest needs to express itself more freely so it won’t be trapped there. How do I describe myself when all the energy is gone? I know this not to be true or I’d be dead. But last night my energy was so sapped, I thought I WOULD die. AND I had enough energy to take care of myself: to turn down cocktail hour with friends and dinner with others; to drink bronchial tea; to use jarabe, my inhalers, lozenges, chest salve and salt water. I had the energy to watch the “Golden Globes” from bed, surviving the night, waking up ready to write, to notice that there must be a part of me that wants to stay.

Do I really want to die, or am I really dying to write, to speak, to inspire, to listen, to love, to observe more. To observe? “What do I want to observe?”, I ask myself. The question is dripping with sarcasm: Like the world’s news of Canadian kids bullying and murdering children? Like presidents sending youngsters to war? Like fat, middle aged men looking for young, beautiful ‘chicks’? Like my own kids living their journeys with intermittent pain and suffering just like me but sometimes doing it in ways that I don’t know how to embrace? Like so many dear ones plagued with illness and sorrow?

I know that it is as unconstructively cruel to project the winter of my soul and its fears onto others, as it is to condemn myself for my own shadowed journey. When I know positive thinking to be more powerful, why don’t I just say, “Yes” to life again? My gratitude journal reminds me of the blessed creative passions shaping my loved one’s amazing lives and mine. I am thankful after all. If I can’t age gracefully, I might at least age gratefully.