The only certain thing about life is death. Its presence is constantly in our lives. But we hardly ever think about it or pay attention to it. Its like a silent partner, tags along with us all the time. Death has scared me and fascinated me for a very long time since I can remember, even as a child. I remember the first time I saw a funeral pire. I was travelling with my maternal grandmother in a bus to her house. I would have been less than 10 years old. It was dusk and the funeral pire was burning and the flames engulfed it. I remember that so vividly and I was frightened and curious. 

I didn't encounter death until my paternal grandfathers death. I have a few memories. Somehow my father was on his way back to our home after visiting his sick dad when we got the news. As soon as he came we packed and went to Galle. I think the body was being prepared in the house. That's what my memory says. Then they closed the doors etc and brought the body from the room it was in, into the main living area. I remember the funeral procession. The crematorium and how people went to see the burning pire in the night or early morning hours. But that's it.

Then the most vivid one the one that caused me much sadness was the death of my uncle, my mothers second brother. We were very close to him and he used to visit us often and we learnt a great deal from him as teenagers. Then more deaths followed. Last year Ranil's dad died. That made me recollect all the deaths I had experienced previously. For some reason the death of his dad seem much potent experience compared some of the previous experiences. It was sudden even though we kind of expected it because of the 2 anyurisms he had. 

But since then I have contemplated not just death and the dying process, but also the ones left behind and how life continues to unfold in the absence of our loved ones. I have also worked with hospice patients over the last two years and even though they die and none are related to me, you build up a relationship with the patient and at times a significant other or a child. 

I have seen people struggle towards the end of their lives. Either from pain or fear or inability to face the fact that their bodies are falling apart. I met a man who was diagnosed with cancer. He was young-74- and had good memory. We struck up a friendship for almost a year before he died just after he turned 75. He was single and had no family except two friends who used to visit him regularly. He was a war veteran, traveled to many places had many girlfriends and partied and drunk and had a good time. But he had a hard time coming to terms with the frailty. He had a a few hard falls cause he tried to walk when he was told not to. He felt like a prisoner, not being able to do the things he wanted to do and go to places he wanted to go to. But he was not bitter. He had a good sense of humor and he always waited for me to come and see him. But every time I left, I could see the twinkle in his eyes fade.

There was a woman around the same age riddled with breast cancer. I don't think she every made peace with death. She was a woman who had gone through domestic violence. She had a son in another state who would visit her once or twice during the time I visited her. She died within 6 months. But she was always crying. When she talked about her son she cried. When she talked about her death ad God she cried. She tried to tell that she was going to be with God but there wasn't a lot of certainty to that. She was also in a great deal of pain. Towards the end her pain medication made her feel frightened and have hallucinations, said the nurses. The last time I saw she was sitting on the bed, in tears. Her brother and a nurse was with her but she was in tears. She calmed down when I sat by her. She died a few days later.

The last patient I visited was 55 year old muslim woman. She was paralized onn her left side and her speech was damaged. So she couldn't talk to me. She would make noises and smile, try to. When I first saw her she looked real bad but with time she recovered well. I met her husband, a man who was 10 years older to her, always in white kurtha suit. Their life story was amazing and he had cared for her for over 15 years since she first had her stroke. Then she started to tell me through her husband, that she wanted him to take her home. Her frustrations clearly came through at time, partly because she wanted to go out and home but she had no control over that decision. Neither over her body. For some reason I felt that she was going to die and she did after a few weeks.

Even though I didnt meet Ranils father before he died or throughout his sickness, I heard it all from Ranil. It was a tough time. He too had  failing body and he struggled with coming to terms with it. 

So all these stories have twirled in my mind from time to time during the past 6 months or so. Following are some of my thoughts and insights

1. Death is not easy. Dying is hard. Partly because we don{t think about it and partly because the world we live in put so much emphasis on the living. I think its a dis-service to people who are living. As hard as a truth it might be, each one of us have to face this in terms of our own deaths and the deaths of those who are closest to us. But while sadness comes and goes, nothing stick for us. I think it's important for us to contemplate death while we live and are capable and not leave it to a time when we don't have our faculties and bodies in the right condition to think about it.

2. We have little control over our bodies. While we all fall sick from time to time, we don't get it what's like to have chronic pain and sickness. It's not easy face a situation where you don't have an answer or have very little control over. I think the illusion of life, is to provide that sense of control. Or we exert so much power until we get what we want or make things happen the way we want. When we are not able to do so, we will justify it. But sickness and imminent feelings of doom cannot be controlled to our desires. Since we've had a life time of practice manipulating our external situations, we do the same towards our end of life events. But with no much results except restlessness, sadness, resentment, frustration and even anger at times.

3. Our emotional world becomes everything. When the body is falling apart, the only things that can give certain balance and a sense of calm is our mind. But unless we have throughout our lives, anchored ourselves in something that can produced that clam, it's hard to ask for it to be at your service when you need it. It's important to have healthy emotional world. When we are young we do much and run around  like chickens with it's head cut off-doing this and doing that-that when we are lying down taking our last breaths, we don't know anything other way of being other than being like chickens with its head cut off. It's a time that requires great strength of the mind and one must prepare as much as can for this experience. sometime I watch these bridal shows and these young girls say that they've thought of their wedding day since they were 5 years old. I think we should think our dying from the moment we are born. Otherwise we waste a lot of time in unnecessary things.

4. Learn those who die. No matter how many funerals we go to and even perhaps our closest, we see it as something that has happened to someone else. For us what is left is the grief and loss. But this should not be it. We need to see the dead person pay respects by all means. But also we must make an effort to realise that this is something that will at some point happen to me, and my closest family member. That lessons somehow eludes us. Maybe we may say it out in words during the time and a mourning period but it does not come home in to our hearts. I think we must see clearly that death is something that happens to me. Then perhaps that might make us take a hard look at how we live right now. For in our living is created our dying experience. Our death and the dying process is not going to be something alien to us. It's in how we have faced and responded to our life on a moment to moment basis. We have a pattern of it, call is our personality or our dominant trait. This is what will get unfolded at time of death and during the dying process. So take a hard look at ow you respond to life while living, for in it lies all the clues and answers we need.

Lies, distortions of truth and injustice: tremors in my emotional world

Last night I was watching news about the testimony by James Comey and the response from the WH and supporters of Mr. Trump. As I was watching it, I noticed that I kept getting increasingly angry and resentful. At the end I switched off the news channel cause my anger gave me a headache. I wondered why I got so angry. As a practicing Buddhist, I could not make peace with it. I kept fighting the lies and the injustice that was happening and the emotions that it aroused in me until it gave me a headache. It was exhausting. 

Then my husband started reading a chapter from the book we have been reading over a month by Ayya Khema. It was very timely. Cause the chapter said that we should not take things personally no matter how right or wrong things maybe. My husband ended up asking me, "why do you have to take it personally?". That was a good question and I had to think about it. Why does lies and distortions of the truth and injustice always get me? Why do I take these emotions so personally every time? As I thought about it, I realized a few things.

I have faced such lies, distortions of truth and injustices by others. I realized that's why these stories strike a never in me.

When I was little I had an aunt who was very unkind to me. I was about 5-6 years old. She used to refuse to give me the food I like to eat after I get back from school for lunch. I loved lentils. My mother would cook it everyday just the way I liked to eat it. But this aunt of mine who lived with us and took care of us while our parents were working during the day, would not give it to me. She will give me just enough and then laugh when I would want more. Or call me names. She also got me to do all the cleaning afterward. She used to look after me, my sister and a cousin of ours during that time. She would drop pick us from school everyday and we would walk home. She never got them to do the cleaning up. I had to do the cleaning up of all our school items like snack boxes and bottles etc. My mother never knew about it. I never told, apparently. But those days I would cry every evening if mother got even slightly late from work. She would come around 5.15-5.45pm. If she didn't come during that time I would be in tears until she did so. I remember feeling sick about losing my mother. I remember having these frightening thoughts about my mother dying and that would scare me so much that I would cry. I was also punished for this. But it didn't stop for a while. Finally my dad realized what was happening because he was at home one day and that day my aunt had hit my across my leg and her finger marks were visible. My father saw this and that got him to send his own sister away. Maybe my crying stopped then, I don't remember.

(I cried while I was writing that paragraph)

I was 16 years old when I finally told this to my parents and my aunt. She apologized and my parents were aghast. I think I forgave everything cause I have had any dealings with this aunt and I haven't felt anger or resentment. 

Then I also had an uncle who supported me through college. It was an ordeal as well. When were were younger and doing well in school, he kept promising that he would help us f we get good grades to go to a foreign university. I particularly grabbed hold on to that idea. I liked it and wanted it. I finally got good grades to enter a good university outside of my country. Suddenly my uncle who had been promising all these things for years started getting quiet. It would have been a difficult time. I remember being very determined to get what I wanted and I was willing to do whatever. Finally with the help of someone we managed to get the necessary documents from my uncle to apply for visa. It never felt  good. Every year I had to call him and ask for the money to be wired. I wasn't sure if he'd send it. But he did. 

Then was the series of incidents with my husband and his family. My husbands mother, was very critical and condescending of me from the beginning. I was never pretty, too fat, not famous or rich enough for her. My family was never posh enough for her. But my husband never noticed any of it for almost 10 years. If he did, he never did anything about it enough to stop it. Over the years his father and sisters too joined in. They cut my family off for no reason. They were astonished why I didn't want to continue to talk to his mother, even after being told why. They treated me like a bad egg even when I had welcomed them and his sisters and treated them well for many years. Our marriage was full of turmoil for a long time. I was exhausted and at times suicidal. It was such an uphill battle. I thought truth was something obvious and decency and fairness was something fundamental that in the absence of it from those who were supposed to protect me left feeling completely out of control and sad and angry. His parents also bad mouthed me to my husband, telling things that were not true and ignoring all the good that I had done. The sisters were supportive of that and was pushing my husband trying to create a wedge between us. I held my husband responsible, for not being there for me, protecting me and standing up to what was right and wrong, for a long time. It was during all this that I took meditation as a practice. Out of sheer desperation and not wanting to hurt myself, I took on to the practice. 

Over the years its helped me a great deal. It's to mostly to see my emotions and work through them in a calm and constructive manner. But it has also helped me to identify where my responsibility ends and others start. That has helped me to stay away from feelings of guilt and take on others emotional drama. 

But despite all that, I still get angry and frustrated when I see lies, injustice prevail. It annoys me how people get away by saying and doing wrong things and are not held accountable for their behaviours. It angers me when people are victimized by those behaviors and no one pays attention to the victims. Power and money seem to protect those abusers and leave the victims out to dry. It makes me very angry. Even when I know there is no point to anger no matter how righteous it may seem. Even when I know in my head that those who do bad have to live with the consequences of their behaviors and I am only responsible for mine. Even when I know "Karma will get the bastards anyway" according to Ajhan Brahm, I still have to live with the strong emotions that get created in me as a reaction to these events from time to time. While not every event shakes my world, the right one at the right time with the right intensity can bring about lot of pain in my heart. I felt that last night and here I am writing about it. Hopefully this will contribute to my own healing process.