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Dancing with Life and Death

3/10/20

Politics and the coronavirus are doing the tango. Nothing grabs control of our emotions like a renewed threat of mortality (it is always there). For a while, the raging political scene fueled by America’s primary season was subsumed by Covid19. Inevitably, they are now entangled. Who will calm our fears? There are many of our fellow planetary citizens for whom science has supposedly taken a backseat to denial. Current leaders are aiming to control the outcomes of an unknown and unpredictable entity. As that is not yet possible, they are at least aiming to control public opinion and the economies that are being manipulated by fear. Reality will win this contest as it always does. Some countries have done better than others to react in a practical and timely manner. A strong urge towards denial may or may not be shattered as factual evidence of people you personally know are affected.

Oberlin College has just declared it is going to remote teaching as have a number of other schools. Kendal has Oberlin students volunteering here- getting partial scholarships in return for their support in various areas. This action from the college will have an immediate impact on the whole town of Oberlin as many people are employed there. Except for overseas students, the rest of the student body will return home, which will create different family dynamics. I think of seniors graduating, final concerts canceled at the Conservatory, friendships disrupted, and teachers adjusting to an entirely different way of preparation and teaching. I am not clear whether this is for the rest of the spring term or not, but it sounds as if it is.

I have both friends and family already impacted in terms of their current and future travel decisions for work and play. Because I live in a densely populated senior retirement facility, we are all aware of what might happen should the virus migrate to us from the three cases found in the neighboring county of northeast Ohio. Kendal has protocols already in place to prevent importation of the disease via staff, residents and visitors. We are in close contact with the state and local county health systems and hospitals. Kendal even has a (single) negative pressure room where the air does not circulate throughout the facility for quarantine purposes. I am told there was a bad flu season at Kendal a few years ago. It was also a rigorous handwashing, no touching, staff face mask/glove wearing, quarantine time for many residents, especially for those who were living in the Care Center as I now do. Most of this population already has compromised immune systems and it houses the most elderly among us.

Am I fearful of this virus? Well, I am less concerned for my family because they are young and basically healthy, though my friends and I are all in the same vulnerable age bracket. Max, my three-month old grandson, recently had a random fever for a few days. His parents were planning a trip to Texas which they would have abandoned if necessary. His fever was gone in time, and in fact, his immune system is stronger than ever with brand new antibodies. They flew to Austin to visit family and close friends. After hearing about the near proximity of the virus in Ohio, they are now concerned about me and thinking of what it would be like for me to live at Kendal in an emergency situation.

May it not come to that. May an early and continuing warmer than usual spring season help to slow down the progress of the viral transmission everywhere. Death and life are forever tango partners. For myself, I see that I am always dancing with death though my deliberate emphasis is on the living well side. I could envision scenarios of “what if” but do not spend much energy dwelling on them. I am slowly learning that I am able to focus my attention on loving what is right in front of me. Sometimes I remind myself when I am hard at work daydreaming, that I need to be here, wherever Here is at that moment. I am using the word “need” to focus. I need to not fall, to pay attention to what someone else is saying, to slow down and chew my food, to read the book more carefully- whatever I am doing needs me to pay attention. If I am not truly needed, perhaps I might better turn my attention to something else.

I do not know how I might react to a dire circumstance because fortunately, I am not yet facing one. Dancing with life and death needs me to be here because this is where I am.

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Decay and Renewal

Diary 2/19/20

I finished reading Richard Power’s The Overstory and was stunned when I put it down. It is a long novel, but not a single word is superfluous or misplaced. It is essentially about trees and their place on our planet and subsequently our place in relationship to them. The book itself is written as organically as a growing organism, as seed by seed, sapling by sapling is planted in our minds and hearts, by a large diversity of human characters who interact with trees in their branching and sometimes intersecting lives. The evolution of our human existence becomes inseparable from those trees and forests that Powers so eloquently describes. His devotion to our education is based on sound science but is taught to us through sheer poetry. It resonates as only Truth and Beauty can and continues long after I closed the book. I cannot wait to read it again, though like any book of wisdom, I need some time to integrate what I have been touched by so deeply.

Given the arc of both still surviving long-lived trees today and their entire species’ impact on our own appearance on this planet, the novel’s view of human beings is given a tender but painfully realistic treatment. Our ignorance is evident historically and the impending crisis of willful denial is neither sugar coated nor used to punish us for our participation in the slaughter of our planet and vital interconnections with all living things. Powers gathers the latest research about the adaptability, intelligence and communication systems that trees use in an entire ecosystem. It is a delightful and amazing experience to discover that what we may have intuited while walking in the depths of the woods, has been confirmed to be true. We are being shaped by trees as much as we have historically endeavored to shape them solely to our own purposes.

I am not able to walk in the woods of my old home. But I can still close my eyes and summon sitting in the silence of the sixty acres we once stewarded: the smells, the sounds of birds and stream and rustle of small creatures, and the uplifting sense of awe of life being lived through a New York Catskill mountain forest. It was filled with decay and renewal at every turn. Further down the same road from my adult home, I remember as a child, spending hours next to a rotten log, fascinated by the tiny new sprouting “trees” of moss, one-inch lakes filled with tiny wriggling creatures, and the discovery of an orange salamander like a full-sized dragon stilling under my gaze. This is embedded as part of my every breath, my gift of being a planetary citizen.

Translating wisdom into action is difficult for humanity. We are terrible at embracing the many changes we have wrought, at guiding them with regard to our future legacy. Hope is in our preparing the soil for the next generations. It seems to me that irrepressible Life will be lived, whether or not we insist on being the center of it all- decay and renewal at every turn.

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Valentine’s Day

I sang this song last night at our Song Swap gathering and had everyone join in the repeated chorus. It hit the right note amidst all the other love songs, silly and serious, that we vocalized together.

My February Song            1/22/20 Judi Bachrach

February is the month you had to leave me

When my heart is held within the hand of memories

Then March lions chase the cold

New lambs cry in the fold

Chorus:

Every year, Every year,

Every year creates new seasons for my life

April drenches me with pouring rain and sun

May flowers born of hope rise up in everyone

June, July and August

Summer blesses each of us

Chorus:

September burns to colors of the molting Earth

October catches leaves for her great rebirth

November calls me home,

giving thanks for everyone

Chorus:

December takes me into the darkest night

January starts a new year in returning light

February comes again,

with a day for love and then

Chorus:

And so it is the eve of February 14th and tomorrow is the anniversary of Richard’s death. I will go to my older daughter’s home with her husband and the baby to eat sushi and chocolate chip mint ice cream in his honor. We will communicate via cyberspace with my younger daughter and touch our hearts and minds together. Feels just right. Tonight I open to dreams all unknown, trusting in the love we share in or out of the body.

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February

Diary 2/2/20 February

We have transitioned to the second month of the year. Today it was sunny all day, a wonderful rarity, and the temperature got up to fifty-four degrees. I do not object to the effect, only that I surmise the cause for this unseasonable warmth is not good news. I went out to Buttonbush pond to see that the green grasses of fall are way underwater though only the very center of the pond remains covered in ice. Bulbs in their beds are confused about whether to keep sending out shoots or not. Mostly the early bright sprouts are in a kind of suspended animation. There was a strong breeze sweeping in this warm front and by mid-week, it is supposed to drop back to thirty degrees again. I whisper to the gardens as I pass them outside, “Pull up the covers and go back to sleep.” I hope they can hear me.

I have been working with a sentence that was read to us in a small gathering of Quakers on New Year’s Eve. It went, “In our meetings, we gather in silence to sit at the edge of Everything.”

This phrase entered in like such a sharp knife, I barely noticed it had lodged in my heart. My mind tumbled the words around until it felt comfortable. All of my thoughts, my beliefs, my perceptions, and experiences will fall into everything. That feels right. But, then everyone’s thoughts, beliefs, perceptions and experiences fall in as well. All of Ohio’s, the country’s, the world’s, the entire manifest universe- all of it is Everything. So is Nothing part of Everything.

Then my mind is finally stopped. My mind cannot possibly comprehend Everything. That is when the seed planted in the heart of silence took root. In the Silence beyond my mind I taste limitless, spacious unbound Everything. For my mind this is terrifying and there is simultaneously a sense of intense freedom. The edge of Everything is neither comfortable nor uncomfortable. Those sweet tastes radiate from the moment of knowing through to my dense everyday self and brightens the corners where I like to hide. The corners are habitual obfuscation where I imagine that I am other than I am, which is thoroughly human and fallible.

I long for the sharp edges when I am complacent and yet, I am learning to embrace unconditional joy more often as it arises. I am less invested in doing my practice. I am given to and shaken and taken to new places more than I could ever assume that I was responsible for manifesting by myself. Listening in a meeting, sitting with others in silence, purposely sitting on my own or lying down at the interstitial moment between wakefulness and sleep- Everything is itself and I am also Everything.

This was written as a response to the prompt. “If I could”, that I was given in one of my writing groups.

If I Could in an Unraveling World/ 1/14/2020

If I could still happily skip everywhere

like I did as a little girl

despite my dysfunctional family

If I could still climb

two thirds of the way up Mt. Katahdin

as I did on my honeymoon

despite the invisible creep of MS

If I could still split open with joy

at the birth of my two daughters

despite illness closing down my body

If I could relive the moment my husband’s body

was taken from the silence

when I ran into our empty bedroom

laughing AND crying to the only one

who could’ve understood,

“Richard, you’ll never guess what just happened.

You died!”

If my heart could still bear

those dualities

I might better remember how

to hold both

unfettered delight in loving my new grandson

and my utter grief

for his apparently unraveling world

P.S. My grandson is two months old today. In twelve days, Richard will be gone for two years

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Light Therapy

Diary 1/20/20 Light Therapy

Over the weekend we finally experienced wintry weather. We didn’t have a lot of snow and the few inches we had were immediately drenched with rain. But overnight the temperature dropped hard and fast, and what snow is left remains frozen. It felt like this matched my inner weather for the last few weeks which has been still, with a quiet blank, white slate. After the busyness of the holidays and the excitement of my grandbaby arriving safely into the world, I felt very quiet. I am still very much in a physical healing mode with days when I feel more active and mobile and days when I am reading a lot lying down with my very weak and tired back. I am certainly in much less pain and in that sense I feel the surgery was quite successful. How my nervous system will ultimately respond in furthering communication with neuronal firing to my muscles is very much a work in progress. I still have a few weeks to go before the surgeon’s declaration of my post-operative muscular healing is official. The nervous system is on its own schedule altogether.

I am currently trying LED red light therapy, which is known to penetrate deep into the cells, affecting the mitochondria which I think of as little engines for cellular activity. There is chemical interaction involved but I am not that informed to be more specific. In less than a week of ten-minute sessions two-three times a day, I believe I see a glimpse of something new- a steadier accrual of both sensation and strength in my low back and into my legs. It is early days yet, so I remain open and observant. I shine the light directly on the affected areas of my first operation in my neck and in my lumbar region. Yes, I am “shining light into dark places”.

I have also taken to shining it on my face and I have to say, given the lack of sunshine in general in northwest Ohio, it feels like I am immediately relaxing on a beach somewhere. I do not think I am someone affected by SAD (a lack of full spectrum light that causes depression in some folks) but that jolt of green after images behind my closed eyelids as the red light bathes me, has been a lovely experience that makes me happy every time. Today I was inspired to walk outside on cleared asphalt paths to stand in the last 20 minutes of light from the actual setting sun in a nearly clear sky. That in itself is something I have not been inspired to do in a long time. It was a balmy 27 degrees and the fresh crisp air was delicious.

I have also been aware of holding the unfettered joy of loving 7-week-old (today!) Max, and the grief of an ever-unraveling political scene in our country and around the world. I sense the need to open my heart wider and wider to embrace it all. My small life, my sense of loss for the planet’s woes, and the fear-generated violence and greed as we further disconnect from cause and effect on the worldwide stage, makes me feel very vulnerable. Staying open-hearted is the only way I know to keep shining the light of all spectrums into dark places.

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New Year

Whatever your plans or non plans for this liminal space between the out breath of 2019 and the in breath of 2020, I hope this transition brings new hope and blessings for you. Personally I am amazed to find I have had two major surgeries this year and am in recovery as a grandmother with a marvelous grandson. Further, I am continuing to find love and healing in this unique community of Kendal at Oberlin and have so much gratitude for this unexpected life gift.

(The poem ends with a quote from Julian of Norwich, 1342- c. 1416)

Year’s End

                        Judi Bachrach

Solar radiation lights up

the comet’s streaming tail

an arc of ice and dust

a year strewn with

garbage and creation

wounds and healing

grief and joy

fragility and strength

to paint the world around

with exquisite experience

embracing our humanity

enduring life to shine light

no matter the source

we are called to celebrate

what was, what is, and what will be in equal measure

may your year bear fruition

of all your yet unknown dreams

“…and all manner of things shall be well.”

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Joyful Inspirations

Diary 12/9/19

Today is my grandson Max’s one-week birthday. Already he has accomplished so much; he is learning how to take in nourishment and to digest, survive the (so far) extreme displeasure of being gently bathed, to experience the undifferentiated onslaught of smell, taste, hearing, sound and touch, with only the foggiest of visual input. At 8-12 inches away, babies can only see in black, white and grays to being with. They may come to recognize their caregiver’s faces from that distance as early as two weeks. By two months, their eyes muscles can hold a steady focus. By three to four months they can begin to discern colors on small objects. Max’s eyes are wide open from time to time, but it is hard for me to imagine what it is he is actually perceiving.

I remember the weight of holding my babies very well, but I cannot actually remember them ever being this tiny and light. The wisp of a fingernail, the slightest dimple of a finger knuckle, and the cupid bow of tiny lips are amazing to behold. It is no wonder I cannot remember this stage accurately. Babies change so much, so fast, and new mothers are as overwhelmed in their own way as their small charges the first month or so. I do remember well the piercing cry of infant distress- mothers are directly targeted by that particular wailing. I have on occasion heard that same cry from an adult therapy client during a session when they tapped into their previously unconscious early mother losses. That sound goes directly to the heart and demands immediate action on the baby’s behalf. Not all babes are as lucky as my grandchild in having a warm and safe nurturing environment for their entrance into this world.

I watch my daughter and son-in-law surrender to the full-on care, delight, and exhaustion of their son’s presence and I am glad to be the grandmother. I empathize and resonate with their adventure and am happy (need) to receive daily picture by picture updates (how did distant grandparents handle life before cyber communication?). I am also clear it is their life and am so glad to see their active network of other young parents and friends they have to support them. What a gift it is to love and participate in my new role.

While I write, I am listening to sacred music of medieval Spain. I discovered this site when I was still going through rehab and was so touched by the rhythmic joyful expressions of love of the Divine Maria. I was plugged into my earphones so as not to disturb my neighbors and felt that much more inspired to move through my post-operative pain and get moving. I highly recommend a listen if you’d like to hear a superb professional young choral performance with wonderful genuine medieval instrumental accompaniment. For all the darkness we associate with the Spanish Church of this period, here is a counterpoint of vibrant celebration. I love some of the pieces so much that I keep thinking I will directly swipe one of the melodies and rhythms to create a songful celebration of my own. “Imitation is the highest form of flattery…” Oscar Wilde

May we all find our own joyful inspirations in this turbulent period of our country and our world.

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Grandma Judi

Diary 12/5/19

I am a grandmother to Max Atlas Stojakovic (Stow-yahk-oh-vitch), all 7.4 lbs. and 19 inches of him as of 10:11 on 12/2/19. Since he has developed chipmunk nursing cheeks, he may weigh more already. He is, of course, perfect, and he is truly a cute one, grandmother prejudice aside. It was a normal first birth in terms of length and hard work, but my daughter was a super athlete, as birthing moms are, and her husband a loving, stalwart, and supportive partner all through the long night and into the next morning. They just spent their first night in their own home as a family and my heart is full of what all grandparents say is that particular quality of love as your children become parents of the next generation. It is an everyday miracle.

I am grateful that my surgery occurred when it did so that I could get to the birthing center and walk into my daughter and son-in-law’s room to hold my grandbaby 7 hours after his birth. I was given a ride there by friends at Kendal who made it happen to support this momentous event in my life. I have joined the club of grandparents who were happy to help. I am so delighted to be a new member, and to rejoice at every step of this new family’s adventure.

Some of my new Kendal friends have never married nor wanted to, traveling the world, working hard in one profession or another, some have recently celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary, some are skyping with their great grandchildren- I am content with how my path unfurled before me as I took each step. I have been on the lookout for sorrow that Richard is not here to witness his grandson. The man he was would have been thrilled to love another male child in his family. Truthfully, he is here, ubiquitous in the steady warmth of his love, like the ever-present sun, even behind the gray winter clouds of Ohio. His presence is not only in his DNA, but simply here. I am sure I may know pangs of recognition and loss as Max becomes his own person without his grandfather. But for now, I experience that all is just as it should be.

I wish you much love and light inspired by this new star in my firmament to shine for you now and throughout the New Year.

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Gratitude

Diary 11/25/19

I can hardly believe it is Thanksgiving week. Of course, I have been in surgery and recovery mode which took a chunk out of the days passing as anything but usual. Now that my head is emerging above the water, I shake the drops out of my eyes and look around to see it is fully late November. Warmish days, sunny days, cold, gray days, snow piles from the plow melting in the corners of the parking lots- all of it speaks of November. Outside my windows, the grounds people here have been busy planting new shrubs and trees to fill around the skimpy garden I tried to start last spring. This spring, Kendal will provide more perennials that I helped to choose, and my small patch will blend in with this whole side of the building that holds our six-year-old wing of assisted living. It was never properly landscaped before this and now I will be able to observe it come to fullness along with my own growth.

I am delighted to be back in my own room. Being inside my room makes it clear that I have a way to go to undertake the hundreds of small activities I did more easily before. I can stand up without holding on for a minute at a time before I get a still unhealed nerve zing that weakens my leg muscle and have to reach out to hold on. First thing in the morning I am at my strongest. The other day I got up and took an unaided normal step or two before I noticed and quickly had to grab the handles of my rollator. If I have to walk more than twenty feet, I wear my sturdy new back brace and my old foot/ankle orthotic from the time MS had caused bad foot drop on my left side. That condition has returned due to my disrupted nervous system. I work on that every day on my own and I am back to twice-a-week PT sessions now that I am out of rehab when I worked with PT and an OT every day.

My weak back can just handle sitting up for an hour for my meditation groups and the Sunday Quaker meetings, and I hope to get back to my committee meetings and writing groups after this week. Of course, I am mostly focused on the coming grandchild. My lovely waddling daughter is a happily expectant mom, still teaching her classes on the Oberlin campus last week and this. There were indications that her babe may arrive earlier than the December 20th due date, but now it is up to the mysteries to decide when another particular human being will appear in our turbulent world. After this week he is considered full term. As my younger daughter is taking the train here and back from NY state for Thanksgiving, we can hope he waits until after all the plans are fulfilled, a family meal and reunion is concluded, and the activity runway is cleared for his safe and healthy landing. May your own Thanksgiving be full of less obligations and full of more opportunities for gratitude.

This is a love poem for my pregnant daughter and her babe.

Message

You are swimming

in the dark belly of the mothership

the ocean that bore us all

silently awaiting cell by cell

powerful waves of mystery

wave after wave after wave

will launch you towards our bright shore

Love to love

and you will inhale

your First Breath alone

your latest message from Home

will touch many hearts

all the years of your life

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“Gather all the Kindling”

When the light around lessens
And your thoughts darken until
Your body feels fear turn
Cold as a stone inside,


When you find yourself bereft
Of any belief in yourself
And all you unknowingly
Leaned on has fallen,

When one voice commands
Your whole heart,
And it is raven dark,

Steady yourself and see
That it is your own thinking
That darkens your world.

Search and you will find
A diamond-thought of light,

Know that you are not alone,
And that this darkness has purpose;
Gradually it will school your eyes,
To find the one gift your life requires
Hidden within this night-corner.

Invoke the learning
Of every suffering
You have suffered.

Close your eyes.
Gather all the kindling
About your heart
To create one spark
That is all you need
To nourish the flame
That will cleanse the dark
Of its weight of festered fear.

A new confidence will come alive
To urge you towards higher ground
Where your imagination
will learn to engage difficulty
As its most rewarding threshold!

                                    John O’Donohue

John O’Donohue says it best. What schools my eyes today is the innate resilience of my body that has been lurking under chronic pain for so long. I am slowly healing. Through this healing time, I am in less and less nerve pain, and the pain from the surgery itself is not hard to handle. Connecting nerves to muscles is an ongoing lesson plan. With the help of a wonderful back brace and my old left foot/ankle orthotic from when my MS was much worse, I am walking longer and farther every day. I must be very careful because sudden nerve spasms can fell me if I am not holding on carefully to my rollator. I cannot twist around my low back and can lean forward only with great care. Otherwise I am becoming more self-sufficient and expect I will be able to leave the rehab area of the Care Center and return to my own room next Thursday. I look forward to having my own space and no longer having to be checked for levels of various body functions at all times of the day as is necessary for skilled nursing care.

To be on a healing path with the obstacles removed and my spine revamped is a true joy. Boredom, fatigue, and irritation are small passing squalls that do not temper the underlying momentum of healing that my beleaguered body has shown during my days here. I know I will be stronger after I recover, and I will return to my life with renewed gratitude.

“A new confidence will come alive
To urge you towards higher ground
Where your imagination
will learn to engage difficulty
As its most rewarding threshold!”