New Reality

it's a new reality. Right now. Instant. For me, it's an unwelcome dawn of conditions that have left me bewildered and feeling unprepared to meet these events. But of course there's no choice to this matter and little to do but meet each moment as its given. So I do. Sometimes I manage a bit of grace and find myself at ease in difficult situation. Often I'm near panic even as I appear calm to ease concern for others. A lifetime of meditation practice and what might be called spiritual pursuit hasn't prepared for the role of caregiver for me elderly father. Especially right now as he suffers with acute heart failure. 

a week ago he was much stronger. This last stay in the hospital, a a first in several years, seems to have taken a toll, weakened him to the point of a difficult recovery. There is much he can no longer do and more care for me to offer. That's the new reality, almost full time I need to be available, an adjustment for us both as he loses strength and mobility and I provide what's needed. He's on oxygen for an undetermined length. Maybe always. It's scary for us both. 

yes, meditation does help me, so does yoga and mindful breathing. Techniques are helpful to find a small sense of peace. But those are for me. My father faces this all with only the courage of a struggled breath and a weakened heart. Just a moment at a time. He's bounced back a lot through recent years and there's a possibility of regaining some strength, reducing the need for supplemental oxygen, and living more at ease. He's done so before. But  for now it's simply about a single breath followed by another. For however long he's able. 

it's about the reality of this moment, right now. 

as it is for me - I am not with preparation for this role. I've nursed my father before and tended to my mother as she dies from complication with Alzheimer's. I've been devastated by divorce and loss of friends through disease, suicide and trauma. Many of us have and most will one day face similar sorrow. I'm sorry for us all. Yet my own brokenness has left me with an appreciation for space that truly makes me whole. I'm allowed to suffer, to be afraid and unsure of my strength to meet these conditions. I don't need a technique or teaching to bring to this point of letting go. I'm already here, as prepared and ready as life allows. I meet each moment with all that's available and I have no idea what that will be. This new reality confronts me fresh with every turn. Of course I'm uncertain, scared, and that doesn't need to be any different than it is. Neither do I. 

nor my dad.

we share this new reality together, each moment finding courage, fear, a loneliness of dying and the loneliness too of surviving. These moments are often sharp, painful in their contrast to just days ago when a more certain strength was found. Sometimes we can't help but to compare now to better days. It just seems to be what some moments hold. There's no need to push these thoughts away, to deny anything the access it demands. Everything belongs by virtue of presence and they will pass when their time is due. Nothing need be forced and indeed there is no true way to bring a sense of peace to whatever's found right now. That's the role of grace and it's arrival is completely free of  my concerns and demands. It happens always on its own and yet more often now as I give myself permission to simply be present to all that occurs without bias to their better options.

it's faith, but only in the sense that life has brought me here, my father to this point, because that's what life does - it brings us to another moment, a new reality with every turn, and right now this is where we find ourselves. It can't be anything other than it is. My faith is that brokenness survives within the whole, that healing takes place in the very moment a wound occurs and it's not for me to judge any of this by its appearance. My true and only role is to tend to my fathers needs to the best I'm able, providing presence, care, love. 

with this, I bring the same to my own doubts, fear and concerns. Tending to each moment that feels broken, allowing all that's uncertain. 

it's my true and only role. 

~

Peace, Eric