“The Spirit of the Fountain Never Dies”
Carolyn’s Journal, November 17, 2020
A Week before Thanksgiving
Photo by Mintr/iStock / Getty Images
As Brian’s terminal Lewy-body disease progresses, sometimes I feel as if caring for him is so heavy, a life sentence. Most of my life and even sometimes now, I have thought, “If I can get through this hard time, there will be some lasting reward in the future,” a happy ending that never-ends a movie.
Now I am coming to know not just in my head but deep in my body that there is no happy ending not only to Brian’s condition, but to my life after Brian is gone. There are only happy moments that punctuate a day like periods at the ends of sentences. I experience this profound realization in flashes that plummet from my head through my heart through my gut to my pubis—a pulse of despair that dashes my hopes and simultaneously relieves me, surpassing any deep-sigh, any insight about life I have ever had.
Did the movies I grew up with—tales of travail followed by couples kissing and ending with the italicized words The End—underscore this false notion of happiness as a forever state? Did this false notion begin earlier?
Was the source of this erroneous belief Catholicism with its dogma of never-ending bliss in heaven or never-ending torment in hell? Can I really ever know?
Or is wanting once-and-for-all happiness after hardship an entitlement encoded in the hard drive of being human—like feeling I deserve a box of chocolate chip cookies after losing files on my laptop.
This insight that neither happiness nor hardship is permanent mires me in mindfulness even as mindfulness—staying in the present moment—clarifies and unglues me from the mud, the muddle, the worry of what is to come. No, Virginia, there is no eternal Santa clause, no laws granting permanent happy endings at the close of struggle, but neither is there never-ending pain.
Forever giving up the eternal paradise/eternal hell paradigm is a death in itself. Of course, I have always known rationally that my life on earth will never be paradise. But my whole being has only recently truly given up on the hope for life on earth to turn into paradise if only I am good enough or work hard enough—and then only in moments of clarity. This hope must lie deep in the DNA of my psyche where the Adam and Eve story lives with its false “if only’s—if only the snake hadn’t tempted Eve and if only she hadn’t led Adam to sin, we would still be living in paradise. Perhaps, that is one reason I have been preoccupied with this tale for many months. As I have said elsewhere on this blog, blaming the loss of paradise on Eve was a true sin—neither she nor Adam were to blame—but that human beings must forego eternal paradise on earth when they are born is true; however, they also leave behind eternal hell.
I am standing in the kitchen slicing artichoke hearts. The afternoon sun is beaming on my cutting board. It is chilly outside. Suddenly I am back in 1980, and my dad and stepmother are coming to stay for Thanksgiving weekend. I am returning to my car in the Chestnut Hill Mall parking lot. I have been in overheated Crate and Barrel for over an hour choosing and then buying Polish crystal wine goblets, tumblers, and round glass salad bowls. The late sun streams on my windshield, and the cold breeze is refreshing, not a harsh wind cutting into my bones. This chill feels seasonal, makes me anticipate Thanksgiving in a greeting card kind of way as I imagine my family around my dining room table, my glassware sparkling in the sun.
Photo by Foxys_forest_manufacture/iStock / Getty Images
Amidst this fantasy, I slump, suddenly bushed. I want a nap right now, but home is a 35-minute drive away.“Well, thank God that’s done!” I quiver inside with both relief and excitement, “I can’t wait to set the table!” as if all is set in place once and for all—a feeling that buoys me up and keeps me going until I can arrive home to rest.
Back in the kitchen now, cutting each canned artichoke heart on the cutting board, squeezing out the water, I am so rough with them. They are crocus-waxy flowers, petals folded tightly like my arms around myself when I am sad. Until now, I never noticed how I bash the hearts as if getting them sliced and reclined on the bread along with mayo, butter lettuce, avocado and cheese is a mad dash for the finish line instead of just the next thing in my day.
Why not luxuriate in the ochre of the hearts, the sun streaming on them from the window? Caretaking amid COVID, I have nowhere to go, can go into slow-mo, watch my fingers caress and tenderly squeeze each heart, tease each leaf open gently until all the folds climax, flat out on the cutting-board bed.
Why do I find it so hard to enjoy the wow of this slow-motion dance? Am I craving the other wow—the big, Biden-won wow—the exciting news that I think will change my life once and for all instead of my nightly, convent-plodding ritual: wash the dinner tray where he dribbled, set out the cups for tomorrow, fill the cereal bowl with toasted almond flakes, shake out crumbs from the placemat, put an empty glass on his tray with a straw, fill the espresso pot with water and coffee, screw on the top tight, tight. I recite this litany like a nun disrobing—sometimes hating my humdrum clothes and sometimes reverently kissing each garment in my habit before bed.
Unlike the nun I once wanted to be, I know now that never-ending heaven and never-ending hell do not exist. Caring for Brian I am not in pain, sadness, and anger every minute of every day. Nor will I be after he goes. Sometimes I feel as content as the soothing sound of a waterfall, one moment flowing into another.
This is the flow, the well of truth I try to run away from that never runs dry. Interestingly, Lao Tzu calls the entrance to this well of flowing from one moment to the next the “mysterious feminine.”
More than 30 years ago, I drew the theme of my first short video from this same well. This video The Spirit of the Fountain Never Dies was shot in the same cemetery where I may one day bury Brian.
The spirit of the fountain never dies.
It is called the mysterious feminine.
The entrance to the mysterious feminine
Is the root of all heaven and earth.
Frail, frail it is, hardly existing.
But touch it; it will never run dry.
--Lao Tzu,Tao Teh Ching
