Diary 9/25/18

It is coming to the end of September, the start of fall weather, which to me, is always good news. Hot humid climates are that much harder for most people with MS. Everybody feels draggy in such conditions because wet heat slows down the transmission of electrical messages from neurons in the brain to muscle receptors. (Think relaxing in a hot bath.) My neurology already has slowed communications due to the road blocks or scars (sclerosis) of the disease, so sticky summer weather can be additionally crippling for me.

The Kendal Kabaret was a great success. My surprise was that after an absence of performing for almost 30 years, I saw how my wounded neurology was very challenged by the the nervous energy of being on stage again. The inevitable gearing up with the frisson of fear that accompanies performing was almost more than my fragile nervous system could handle. It didn’t automatically convert into the charge of projecting my voice as it used to do in the past. I was very fortunate to have a calm professional stand up bass player to accompany me. He kept me from being too pitchy (going sharp or flat) and kept my tempo nice and steady. He was like a grounding rod, and now he is a new friend among the residents.

In addition, my family was here all together for the first time since my husband’s death. We adjusted to the loss of the brother/father/husband/father-in-law at the same time. It was like watching a slow shifting of gears as they slowly turned, quietly locking into place. It felt natural and easy and fun to be with one another. That they got to see me in the Kabaret was icing on the delicious birthday cake (not a confection) of their presence.

My daughter from NY stayed with me at Kendal for two full days, meeting my new friends, swimming in the wonderful pool here, hanging with a friend who happens to own three gorgeous Borzoi dogs- and taking photos of them which she hopes to use on the back cover of her soon-to-be published novella. She watched the dress rehearsal for the Kabaret and enjoyed the finished program that much more after seeing what went into putting it altogether. It was delicious to simply be in my room with her in our down time, playing word games, reading in silence, and talking, talking, talking, about the past and her dreams for the future. My heart feels full up until I see her when she comes back by train for Thanksgiving. My older daughter and my son-in-law graciously hosted us all in their new home.

Today I am grateful that my old skills are being put into use in a new environment. I think of my little girl self, dancing to my mother’s songs. I imbibed music in my household though I never studied music properly. I remember my mother sitting me down at the piano a few times and saying, “Judi, this is a triad, and that makes a chord…” and me running away from her. My brother was a serious musician who wrote orchestral music, played both piano and oboe, and later went to to Yale graduate school for music. He had a Fulbright scholarship to study choral conducting in Munich. I felt it was too much pressure for me to compete with them and turned to dance instead. My other brother was also a musician and played both drums and guitar throughout his life. I took to writing songs when I was a teenager and played guitar just well enough to provide a musical structure for my melodies. But I played ‘by ear’ alone, still refusing to learn the basics.

To be known for singing now is amusing to me. I don’t have a great voice but I do know how to perform and since I don’t score my own music, if I don’t sing my songs, nobody else will. I am touched that my new community loved my efforts and enthusiastically joined in the chorus I taught them. Somehow, my music is being drawn forth after a long dormancy and I am very grateful to have something to share with my new larger family as well as my own family, of Bachrach+Stojakovic.

Diary 9/9/18

Richard is present in me in new ways. It keeps shifting, this relationship with his ghost and then simply my internalization of his human impact on my life. It is such an interesting path to walk, this grieving, this waking up, this longing, this fulfillment, this gift of mortality and loss. I feel like I only now begin to understand what it is to be human. I am immersed in a sea of loving mortality at Kendal.

A woman died this week who I barely knew. Her husband was a famous set designer and she was a Medieval art historian. He and I had lunch once when she was in our care center before she died. Then she moved back into their apartment together for a month or so, with hired help, even though she was pretty deep in dementia. Two weeks ago, I was saying good bye to him one night when I had been invited to have dinner with others in the large dining hall.  I was standing behind her chair while talking to him and put my hand on her shoulder spontaneously as I was leaving. She did not know who he was talking to nor could she see my face, but she reached her hand across her shoulder and took hold of my hand. She squeezed it gently with such tenderness I almost wept right then. I said.”good bye, Helen”, and she squeezed it softly again before I walked away. Love simply Is, whether we are in the waiting room of death or not.

My dear friend and colleague, David, died yesterday in the early morning. I wrote this poem for him a month ago and feel free to post it now. For those of you who have sung Dayenu at Passover, you know the melody. Our family celebrated this holiday together with David’s. You traditionally leave the door open for the prophet Elijah to enter and you pour a glass of blessed wine for him to drink. Richard and David would take turns surreptitiously sipping Elijah’s wine and point out at the end of the meal that Elijah had been here because, “Look- the glass is empty!” As the girls got older they knew what was afoot and always tried to catch their fathers doing this. When they were thirteen, they secretly folded a piece of scotch tape to the bottom of the glass and triumphantly caught their fathers when their resulting inability to take a sip lifted up the whole table cloth along with the glass. After the children found the hidden afikomen (Matzoh) we all sang Dayenu for one another, choosing one good trait for each person. Dayenu means ‘that would be enough’.

Dayenu for David

Judi Bachrach 7/28/18

Richard, one day

when it is his time

David will join you

I know you will be there

to let him know

astonished as you were

how loved he is

how he is Love Itself

how many individual lights

gather him into their One embrace

and hold him forever

always have

always will

the long dream of forgetting

lost in Always

our dear human selves

at rest in Awareness

the brief separation of

God knowing God

Elijah comes through the door

raises his own glass on high

(he thanks you for the years you and Richard did it for him)

drinks down with a laugh

and softly sings:

If David knew how much he’s loved

If David knew how much he’s loved

If David knew how much he’s loved

That would be enough

Day, Day-enu,

Day, Day-enu,

Day, Day-enu,

Dayenu, Dayenu!

Diary 8/20/18

Going Straight

Woke up early for the bathroom, fell back to sleep and got woken up again by the piccolo of birds directly outside my open window “Twee!!! Diddleee,dum dum Twee!, immediately followed by the raucous bass honking of geese. Time to rise, though not quite ready to shine. Breakfast is relaxed, chatty with whomever my dining companions are each morning. Then we all slowly and carefully rise up from the table to greet our days, shuffling off with our walkers. I saw the daughter of one woman there with whom I have had an extended conversation in the past about meditation and the effects on stress.

She is here because her mother is clearly in a decline and wasn’t even attending meals for a while. I saw her at breakfast twice this past week but at other meals her husband of 68 years was eating alone looking rather grim. When I joined him, he spoke to me of his wife saying to him, “When I’m dead…” and what she implied by that at the time and how deeply it shakes him. He quite honestly said life without her (he is nearly 92, she just turned 90) seems impossible and he only can see a looming huge dark void. Add 20 more years to my life with Richard and then snatch him away again- well. I cannot imagine that either. My own dark void seems to be filling in with new activities and friendships as observed by my surprised and still grieving self.

A shocking loss to hear about this morning was the death of a friend’s son. Richard and I once babysat for him when he was two years old. He was an irrepressible bundle of energy and creativity as a child and grew into a successful professional photographer and a loving family man. He has left his wife and two young children behind. His mother, who gave me a massage after Richard’s death, is holding a lot already. Her husband recently made it through stage 4 lung cancer, and is now in his 80’s. Her mother is still going strong in her 90’s. My friend also has a sister who has always needed extra support, and her daughter has twins that she helps with in many ways. It is hard to imagine laying another burden upon her. I just found out it was suicide that felled her son. She is a deeply spiritual and compassionate woman and I can only send her love beams to light her own Source as she enters into this new unexpected grief. Last night I heard that yet another friend just lost her brother quite unexpectedly.

Blessings on the sorrows and equal blessings on the joys is hard to summon, though they cover both ends of our human experience. The entire spectrum of emotional reactions lie in between. We migrate towards pleasure and away from displeasure. The swinging of the pendulum dictates so much of our lives. “Make straight in the desert a highway for our God,” (Source of your choice) requires an inner objectivity and strength of heart to achieve. I take a few steps on the highway and then wander far off-road before remembering that the choice to temper my highs and lows is available to me, and a preferable dynamic for my life.

Dropping below the powerful currents in the air, the oceans, the political climates, the emotional responses to being repeatedly swept up and let down, only happens for me when I get very quiet. I feel both larger and unimportant in the silence where I land. The details of me recede and the knowing of my existence as paradoxically temporal and infinite is nourishing. A taste is enough to help me re-enter daily happenings. I am very engaged in having a total human experience, pleasures and displeasures riding on every wave.

8/13/18

Our Sky

by Judi Bachrach

Astonished

Last night was the height

of the Pleides meteor shower.

How did it get to be almost fall?

By nine o’clock

Darkness covers the courtyard

Remember

we used to camp out

on the southeast side of the mountain

waking each other up to see

Handfuls of arcing lights

a breath

one, then more and more

on good years,

more than our spent wishes could follow.

We are so small

Our planet so large

Our planet so small

the cosmos so large

The vast unlimited Mind of God

Unfathomable

Morning geese are

tracking their way

back through our sky

Diary 8/7/18

Tomorrow would have been our 48^th wedding anniversary. We always added on to the anniversary date the extra year and a half of our actual partnership, making it 49 ½ years in September. I was sure we would make it at least to our 60^th, having been married so young. ‘Twas not to be. I do not consciously seek out memories that only trigger sorrow. Rather tears arise in more occasional gusts of memories that can be touched off by anything at all- someone’s kind touch on my arm, a smell of certain foods, a song, a story told by another- anything that summons memories of almost 50 years of living together.

The acute pain of the loss of my best friend/lover/creative muse/business partner/father of our children actually fades over time, like a photograph left too long in the sun. I cherish my old friends who knew us as a couple and as individuals. I also am slowly making new friends who have no idea of who he was or how we evolved over time. They only are coming to know me as the woman who has been so shaped by Richard’s former presence in my life.

In Kronos or chronological time, I have all of those years as a reference point for my loss. I am a widow, a title that indicates the history of a lost husband. In Kairos time, or the eternal Now, I have glimpses of being neither a woman, single or otherwise, or of any gender or age, or even having a specific body. I only taste quiet unperturbed knowing. It is a comfort to just Be. There is not the slightest straining to move towards anything. When I come back to body awareness, either after meditation or upon my first morning awakening, I notice a familiar tension behind my eyes settle into place. It is as if I am always looking forward to the next thing- always just past this moment. It isn’t enough to ‘relax my eyes’ muscularly. What is required is noticing where it is that I place my attention; whether it is on that spacious reality or on deciding to get entrained by ‘what’s next’.

I believe there is a way to efficiently accomplish things right here in everyday Time and Space without losing that deep background of Being. It is still very much in my mind to reinforce the habits of a life time that insist on ‘doing Judi-ness’ at all times. The revelation of becoming more aware of Being is as imperceptible as saying, “There! Now it is officially dawn.” using only your eyes to demarcate the shift of light. It is that slow and subtle and quietly entrancing.

People ask me if I am ‘settling in’ here at Kendal. I heard myself answer to someone yesterday, “Without noticing, this is becoming my home. I am still learning my way around the physical plant, still learning how the systems work, still searching out the right people for the right information. But at the end of a day, I say to myself, now it’s time to go home- meaning my room.” When I haven’t been looking out for ways to make myself at home, it is happening anyway.

The gradual transformation of grieving also silently transforms my entire emotional being. My heart is softer. I am less volatile My body is still greatly affected and is a more visceral reminder of all that my recent history entails. Kronos and Kairos, time/no time, go hand in hand in my experience. Happy 48^th wedding anniversary to that couple, that dear couple that was.

Diary 7/15/18

Every community has its rules, written and unwritten. Beginning with the first and deepest imprint of our family, we then extend group participation as part of schools, jobs, places of worship, art collectives, performance groups, hobbies, sports teams, political parties, and country. We learn to read the signs of how the group works. It is a mammalian trait to find our place and fit into the flock or herd because our lives depend upon it. If we flaunt those rules, we become outsiders either forming a default alternative group or learn to function alone. Even if you are a hermit living off the grid, it is in relationship to a rejected community.

I am now living in an intentional community, a CCRC, (learning new acronyms is a necessary part of becoming a member). Kendal is a Continuing Care Retirement Community, and a particularly good one at that. Because it indeed provides care throughout the life and death of a member, this includes skilled nursing once you have reached the stage of losing your independence due to the ensuing physical complications of your aging body. There are state rules and inspections, mountains of paperwork for the staff, and laws that must be followed.

Moving into the designated assisted living area of Kendal, I am within one of the smallest groups. The majority live here independently in cottages or apartments. There is another small group of those living down my hall in a dementia unit or in another wing for those who are physically unable to care for themselves. Being compromised by MS, I need the support of having my meals provided and my linens changed, but can fully determine my own daily acitivities. Now that I have use of a scooter, I can get to them and back to my room on my own throughout this large campus.

I am different because I am a good 20 to 30+ years younger than the majority of the residents. I have met many who can literally run rings around me. They are busy all day every day with committees that serve both Kendal and interface with the town and the academic community of Oberlin college. They are a group of political, creative, savvy folks. Kendal was founded on Quaker ideals so there is a strong culture of enacting social justice with solid underlying moral values and spiritual concern for all. This begins as an individual and flows out to Kendal and the larger world.

As a newcomer I am still in observation mode though not for long. I am willingly being called forth to offer my skills as someone who loves music, singing, dance and spiritual pursuits. I am co-leading a small group that meets every other Sunday for Lectio Divina (Divine Reading) with a Presbyterian minister who wanted to retire from offering a Sunday service at age 85. Instead I was asked as my role as an interfaith minister to assist him when he agreed to offer readings from scripture for contemplation. I sing a hymn to start and finish the hour and am offering suggestions in how to approach silent contemplation which was a new practice for him. Of the handful that attend, two or three can interact with us, others are simply present within their non-verbal beings.

More opportunities for song and initiating a meditation group are in the making. I have even had a meeting with the admirable powerhouse women who organize such things about creating a dance for the ‘Spring Fling’ in April. I visualize choreographing a piece performed by people from my end of the more compromised Kendal world. I had a vision of each of us moving as we can with canes, walkers, wheelchairs and scooters in patterns and designs across the auditorium floor. I haven’t got a theme or the music yet but I was granted 5-8 minutes in a 16×30 foot space in the middle of the auditorium floor to contribute to the annual celebration.

I have blundered my way into the writing crowd and will see if any of my pieces will be accepted for a fine literary magazine published at Kendal three times a year. Clever little mammal that I am I have sought out the right people to find a way in to use my talents. There are the right ways and means to become part of this community and I have committed several faux pas already as the new actual ‘kid’ on the block. Committee leaders see me as fresh blood though I need to be upfront that though I am younger than their own children and I look younger than that (genes, I assure you) my body is older than theirs, and I have little endurance for long hours of doing anything.

As to unwritten rules, for one, I find that you don’t take your cell phone with you. The very occasional ring during a meeting or activity is actually frowned upon by all faces present. Unless you have an urgent call coming in, phones do not appear anywhere at mealtimes. Granted, as it is an elder community there are many who don’t relate to the world of internet. On the other hand, there is also the official ‘geek squad” of volunteers who help you if you have trouble with the technology here. Some of these are folks who worked on original early IBM mainframe computers and who kept up with all the rapid changes that have endlessly multiplied in their lifetimes.

Rules help to create healthy boundaries in all communities. I am both amused by and humbly grateful for learning them as Kendal becomes my final home community.

Diary 7/7/18

I took my loaned scooter off road to the edge of a pond. I picked some wildflowers to bring back for my room. That was a small act of independence, remembrance, and ownership all in one. I was a little scared the scooter couldn’t get back up the slight incline on slippery grass or jump back over the lip onto the paved path. I did have to push it a bit like a non motorized scooter with one leg until the wheels gained traction and then off I zipped back home.

It felt like a remembered activity from years of living in the countryside with a busy dining table to host a floral collection. These flowers sit alone in a vase on my bureau, and Richard smiles at me from the photo hanging on the wall above. I have the occasional visitor and flowers are always inviting and decorative. “This room is my room….” Woody Guthrie’s song “This Land is My Land”, is well known at Kendal, a kind of progressive patriotic anthem sung at weekly sing alongs and traditionally with the whole community on the fourth of July.

Diary 7/8/18

In your picture you are forever smiling, a little bit squinted, looking into the sun there on top of Mt. Blanc. This photo holds the forceful focus of your personality, it shows the eyes that held others firmly in their gaze. Those eyes reflect the intensity of your famous hugs, where you didn’t let go until you felt it was received.

It was what one daughter said she missed the most about you and everyone who had ever been hugged by you, concurred. People knew they had been truly embraced, every single time your arms went around them. Your hugs were never invasive, just insistently loving until the hug-ee surrendered to the inevitability of taking it in.

Lord, I miss the physicality of you, Richard. That physicality includes sex, of course, but just the smell of your soap, the touch of your face with or without your beard, the sounds of you making your way through your day in and out of the house and office, the taste of vitality you radiated from your strong body and devotion to hard work- the vibrant masculine sweetness you effortlessly inhabited from the day you were born. There is no one like you anywhere on this earth and I am not looking for you here. My memories are static like the photo I am speaking to. But Love is fluid and waves of Love are omni-directional. They are dynamic and infill me with painful searching and momentary islands of rest as I find and lose the ache of your bodily presence in my life.

Many MS people complain of the “MS hug.” This an unpleasant sensation of banding around the midriff- for me it is caused by a lesion or sclerosis at T6, on the thoracic spine. It can feel merely irritating to acutely hot and inflamed, radiating to muscle spasticity when I am tired. It is not a nice hug, it is rather a misplaced tug of an angry rope or an electrical shock wrapping round and round my ribs. Sometimes I take a NSAID (non steroidal anti inflammatory like Tylenol or Ibuprofen) to tamp it down but it is always there. My neurology also insists on being accepted, on not letting go until I surrender. Learning to feel this as Love is an ongoing challenge. Since I have rediscovered that my body is inside of Me, I do love it as best I can. Sensation means I am alive.

To summon the solid loss of you, Richard, is painful. Exiling memories of you is also painful and no solution. Living through recall and release, sorrow and acceptance, over and over is the only way forward. Within each release and moment of acceptance lies the seeds of new love everywhere. Not your particular brand of Richard’s love, but Love in a vast of garden of beings. The Hug of God is to be received until we surrender. Richard, one of the official Ambassadors of the Hug, may be gone, but the Children of Love are us and we are everywhere.