From comfortable distanc.., p.15
From Comfortable Distances, page 15
“I never promised you a rose garden,” her mother sang, and Tess rubbed the fingers of her free hand against the grass, feeling the ground beneath her. Under the lingering moon, and persisting sun, Tess began to sing along, letting go of trying to make sense of the feelings washing through her. The rising sun glowed vibrant as it began to dominate in the sky. Tess felt her heart wrenching open, as if it too was making room for warmth and light. She didn’t want her mother to die—that’s what filtered through her, and yet she knew that her mother viewed the concepts of birth and death as an ongoing process in the chain of living. That was what it was to be a Buddhist: to believe that when one form of life ended, another began.
They went inside when the bugs began to be a nuisance, her mother wanting to rest for a bit, so that Tess helped her up the stairs, then her mother insisting that Tess must be tired, that rest would do her some good after the long drive, telling her to close her eyes, if only for 15 minutes, that work would wait. She patted the bed beside her, setting down a pillow for Tess, so that Tess lied down on the bed beside her mother, like sisters, for the first time in she couldn’t remember how many decades. She assured her mother that she would rest for a few minutes and the next thing she knew, she must have fallen asleep.
The second fall came hours later. Tess heard it and in the who, what, why, when of waking, and then she was up and out of bed before she realized that she was in her mother's bedroom. She rushed down the stairs, into the kitchen, where her mother lay in quiet agony on the tiled floor. She had been reaching for a bowl to make Tess pancakes. Silver dollars, Tess’s favorite. The emergency surgery—her mother had fractured her hip and dislocated her pelvis—took hours, and even with pain killers, the doctor told Tess that her mother would be uncomfortable for weeks, if not months to come, not to mention that she would need blood transfusions as a precaution for her Leukemia, although she was in remission. He believed that her mother needed round-the-clock care to get her through the fracture and suggested that they transfer her to an assisted living facility affiliated with the hospital the next morning. Tess proposed bringing a nurse into her home to stay with her mother, or even taking her back to Brooklyn to stay with Tess, but the doctor felt that she would be better off in a facility. “Just to be sure she’s monitored and that she heals properly; we can’t risk any complications,” he had said, assuring Tess that it was temporary, just until her mother could walk on her own again. With Tess’s ultimate consent, they were able to get her a room in the home. When Tess returned to her mother’s empty home that night, after packing up a suitcase of what she supposed her mother would need for the move in the morning, she wept. She felt as if she had committed her mother to an institution. Tess wiped at her swollen eyes at the kitchen table and blew her nose—life was not fair. It was not fair to love someone so much only to watch them suffer. It was not fair that such a good woman, a woman who had devoted her life to others, was now going to be stuck in an assisted living home, for who knew how long? How could a life so well lived, so meaningful, turn into this? She wept off and on until her head throbbed and jaw ached from clenching her teeth, and she moved into her mother’s bedroom as if in a trance, falling asleep in her clothes.
Her mother carried on in her most positive manner when she was checked into her temporary home the next day. “How lovely the view is and what a wonderful bath tub,” she said when Tess wheeled her around. Tess decided to stay on in Woodstock so that she could visit with her mother each day until, she supposed, either she grew accustomed to this new situation or her mother did. In those first few days of her mother’s confinement, Tess sprouted black and blues all over her body—first a knee, then an elbow, and later, her thighs and calves. Her mother’s doctor diagnosed it as a mixture of stress and an eating deficiency. Who, Tess had wondered in her weakest moments, would provide her with round-the-clock care when she needed it? Selfish and small as the thought made her feel, Tess hated the aloneness she felt once her mother was in the home. Nirodha. She read over and over the Four Noble Truths, which her mother had engraved into a wooden plaque that hung over the fireplace in the large meditation room of her home.
Life means suffering.
The origin of suffering is attachment.
The cessation of suffering is attainable.
The path to the cessation of suffering.
“Mom,” Tess said, as her mother’s eyes began to gradually open.
Her mother had tossed and turned in and out of sleep in the narrow bed, for almost an hour. The sour smell of urine coming from her mother’s bedpan had nauseated her but she had held off on calling in the nurse so as to let her mother rest. She didn’t know how anyone could heal in a room with walls the color of phlegm, and cold, industrial-tiled floors—a mishmash of white and grey flecks.
“It’s nice to see you,” her mother said.
Her mother was not as sharp the first few days, but the doctor assured Tess it was a result of the painkillers from her fall. To Tess, it was as if in a matter of a few days, her mother had submerged underwater.
“How are you feeling, Mom?”
Her mother sat up in bed and glanced around.
“There’s sunlight,” she said, her eyes on the window.
“Yes,” Tess said. It’s a lovely spring day,” she said.
Her mother’s eyes moved from the window to Tess, sitting in a chair beside the bed.
“Come here,” her mother said and Tess was out of her chair and leaning close to her mother. Her mother patted her hand on the bed. “Sit,” she said.
She took Tess in for a few moments before she reached out and touched her hair, her face. Tess felt the tears in her eyes begin to fall. Her mother’s touch had always been so healing to her. Tess closed her eyes, letting her mother’s fingertips trace her face.
“Contesta,” she said, wiping the tears from Tess’s cheeks.
Her mother believed that crying was healthy, a way to cleanse the soul.
“I’m here, Mom. I’m here,” she said. It had always been the two of them. Regardless of how many people had been involved in their lives, it had always been Tess and her mom.
Her mother reached her arm around Tess, pulling her upper body down so that Tess was resting beside her from her waist down.
“Don’t waste your days on this earth, Contesta. Make all of the days count, even the ones that may be difficult for you. Make them all count. And make peace with time. It’s not an obstacle. It’s the keeper for all that you have done and all that you have yet to do.”
Tess sat up to face her mother. Her mother’s hand traveled down her shoulder until it landed on Tess’s hand.
“What is it that you want in your life?” her mother asked.
She shook her head. “I don’t know,” Tess said.
Her mother smiled her beautiful, gentle smile at Tess. It was the expression Tess wanted to have with her always.
“When I used to ask you that as a teenager, you used to say that you wanted to move away from Woodstock, that you wanted to be a business woman. Was that what you wanted?” her mother said.
Tess shrugged. “Back then, yes. I suppose.”
“What you think you want is not always what you want,” her mother said.
“I want you to be okay,” she said.
Her mother laughed. “I’m exactly as the universe believes I need to be.”
“Do you think I’ve made mistakes?” Tess said.
“My dear child. Mistakes? What does any of that matter? There are no mistakes in living. Just living.”
Her mother’s eyes were on the window again. A sense of urgency rushed through Tess.
“What did you mean when you said that what you think you want is not always what you want?” Tess asked.
Her mother closed her eyes. Tess wasn’t sure if the painkillers were making her drift back into her fog or if the conversation had worn her out.
“Mother,” Tess said.
“To be open to possibilities,” her mother said. “To not always take the route you think is the one you should be traveling on. Your life can be so many things, Tess,” she said. “If you are open, it can be so many things,” and with that, she was resting.
It was then, sleeping in her mother's bed at night in the house in Woodstock, that Tess began to examine the crevices of herself that she tended to stay away from when her life was in autopilot. Tess began to realize that she had never let her mother inside, had never shared her fears or her dreams with her mother, and maybe that was because Tess had not yet connected with what her fears or her dreams were. It made Tess still and quiet and desperate that there was a chance that her mother was never going to get to know her. Tess began to realize that if you didn't speak up, if you didn’t find a way to communicate first with yourself and then with the people you loved, there may not always be the chance to speak up. But what frightened Tess most of all wasn't about anyone else getting to know her—it was the possibility of her never getting to know herself. Each night in her mother's bed, feeling smaller than she ever remembered feeling, she cradled herself in a ball and prayed with an intensity that she had never experienced. She felt her prayers in every ounce of her being before she released them into the void surrounding her, depleting her as much as the new-found space made her feel strangely whole and complete.
The call that her mother had passed came at dawn on her fourth day at the home. The ringing phone had startled Tess. Snakes, she had dreamt of being suspended in a muddy river and snakes trying to get at her, poised to bite her, lurking in every direction as she tried to escape from them. “She passed in her sleep. Sometime in the last hour,” the nurse had said. “It seems to be from natural causes. Please come right away.” Tess got out of bed and when she hung up the phone, she squatted, closing her eyes, as if seeking shelter from a brutal wind. The gravity of it all pulled her to the earth. Shocks of nausea vibrated her being so that she felt as if she were on the verge of vomiting and stifled back deep belly coughs. Here it was. The day she had dreaded more than any day of her life without her realizing it. Her mother was gone. She felt anchored to the ground while at the same time she felt as if she were weightless, incapable of keeping herself upright.
At the assisted living home, there was a thick, static quality to the air that made Tess gasp when she walked into her mother’s room. Air, it was hard for her to get air. It looked to her as if her mother was sleeping soundly and yet to the touch, her hand was already beginning to grow cold. She looked peaceful enough—her face calm, serene, her body neat and compact as she lay there, the sheets tucked nicely up by her chest. Tess clasped her cold, lifeless hand in her own and it hit her. She brushed her mother’s hand against her face and kissed it once and again, before she knelt down beside the bed and with her eyes closed, her mother’s hand on her face, she prayed. For her mother to have a safe journey, for her mother to have a joyful ever after, for her to know peace, to love and to know that she was loved. She wished she could bring her back, that she could have her mother for only another moment, or hour or week. The tears were free flowing and Tess felt herself growing weaker, tired, suddenly so tired, exhaustion overcoming her. She rested her upper body on the bed, close to her mother. It was so peaceful there, being close to her. “I’m sorry for your loss,” the nurse who walked into the room said, and Tess pulled herself up. “I’ll give you some time,” and Tess nodded as she walked out. The white board on the wall across from her bed read May 6th. An early May day. A spring day full of so much hope. The last day of her mother’s life. Sorry for your loss. The words resonated deep within her.
There wasn’t anger or sorrow so much as a feeling of incredible emptiness and then came a feeling of coldness at being so alone in the world, of being separated from her mother in such a complete, permanent way. Tess didn’t want to leave her. Her logical mind told her that what she was clinging to was just her mother’s shell. That her mother’s soul had already moved on to some new realm. Her mother’s soul may be right there with her as she swooned beside her. She smiled; she could hear her mother saying, “Why do you weep and cry? I’m right here with you.”
A different nurse popped her head into the room: “A few more minutes and then we need to move her.”
Tess nodded. The life had gone out of her mother, passed through her and away. Her mother was no longer with her in the flesh. It didn’t seem possible to Tess. It was time for her to go. They needed to move her mother. She bent to kiss her forehead and then her hand and her cheek and then she nodded to the nurse who had walked back into the room and said, “thank you,” in a meek voice and she was moving down the hallway, out of the building, into the parking lot and she was looking for her car, where did she park that car of hers, and she thought of Michael’s comment that it was a funeral car and suddenly she hated the car, hated death and everything associated with it, and then she spotted the car and plopped into the driver’s seat and sat there, with her head pressed to the steering wheel, locked in, trying to remember where she lived, how to get there, what was next.
The days following passed with Tess in a daze. She felt as if her heart had shut off, like a valve on a summer home in the winter. There were the funeral arrangements to make, friends and family to call. There were the conversations with Prakash, calls to Michael, telling him that she was fine, that he needn’t make the trip up there. As selfish as it may have been, the thought of being around others just then made her feel rushed. She wanted to be alone in the house if only for a bit longer. It was the first time in her life that she had been alone in the house without the prospect of her mother coming home.
The silence and spaciousness of the empty house made her feel eerie and free at the same time. She felt connected to her mother being there in the silence. She walked the upstairs halls, her bare feet grazing the cool hardwood floors, and studied the mahogany wood-framed pictures which adorned the walls—pictures of her mother with her friends, various spiritual leaders whose names escaped Tess. Tess as a teenager, and then a young woman and then a mother, Tess and Prakash. She tried to imagine what it was her mother had felt or thought as she walked through those halls, living alone in the house all those years. There was a level of compassion and acceptance and love, true love, that Tess felt for her mother in those days of solitude.
Resting on her mother’s bed, she read the pamphlets on Four Noble Truths and The Noble Eightfold Path that her mother had formulated and stacked in a wooden trunk in the larger of the two meditation rooms, near the stacks of sitting cushions. The pamphlets had been for the people who used to come to the morning meditations to see what they were all about prior to their becoming regulars at the house—practicing Buddhists. Tess remembered when her mother had typed up the pages, reading them aloud as she did, and then brought them into town and run off copies of them at the library, stapling each one and how a week or so later one of her followers had volunteered to have them bound with a cover into pamphlets. Tess remembered keeping both pamphlets by her bedside table for a time, tracing the glossy photo of Prajnaparamita, the Mother of all Buddha’s, and Yeshe Tsogyal, the Mother of Tibetan Buddhism, alternating reading them before she went to bed, believing that some of the concepts may seep in and make sense to her by the morning, but they never did.
1) Life means suffering. Tess agreed with the first of the Four Noble Truths. She had suffered over the years, although she was the first to admit that much of her suffering had been self-induced.
2) The origin of suffering is attachment. Craving and clinging. It was this concept that had frightened her first as a young child and then angered her as a teenager. She had felt scared not to be attached to her mother—who then would she be attached to? She had wanted her mother to cling to her as the other mothers clung to their daughters—to worry where she was going, what she was doing and with whom, what she ate. She hated the freedom her mother imposed on her. The constant discussions in which her mother would tell her that nothing was permanent. It had made Tess paranoid: each night she would go outside to make sure the sky was still there and the stars and each day on her way home from school she would pray that her house would still be there, that her mother would still be there. After all, her father had proven his impermanence. Tess had been guilty of craving and clinging for as long as she could remember, whether it had been another person, her independence, herself. She had clung to the version of reality that she believed was the right one. In retrospect, it had always been attachment that had caused Tess to suffer.
3) The cessation of suffering is attainable. It was through nirodha, or the unmaking of sensual craving and conceptual attachment, that one could end one’s suffering. One needed to use a fire extinguisher on clinging and attachment. That’s how her mother had explained this noble truth. Tess hadn’t wanted to cut out her attachments.
4) The path to the cessation of suffering. This path could extend over many lifetimes, through many rebirths. It was only as one made progress on the path that delusions and ignorance and cravings would disappear. Tess used to imagine herself suffering for years on end and then dying and coming back to life and suffering some more. What she wondered, was the point of life if it was full of so much suffering?
