Part of my ongoing journey includes long periods of insomnia. Since the last prolonged period, a couple of weeks ago, I am finding a bit more rest, or have been able to find a deeper sleep for a few hours at a time.
Mom died in April 2013. For those who don’t know, following all of my heart related trauma and becoming disabled, I had been her companion/caregiver for the last 2.5 years of her life. The two of us lived alone in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, halfway between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe, as her dementia worsened.
I miss her so much. I often joke that my sister (who was Mom’s legal guardian) was practically our dad in a dress. I, therefore, was Mom. Yes, we sere very alike.
So two weeks ago I couldn’t sleep for almost 3 days. I remember saying to myself over and over again ” If only I could hold Mom’s hand again, then I might be able to sleep.”
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Hey bay, well golly this is another strange parallel we have. I’m also ripped up on a daily basis over the painful death of someone I loved, someone who kept me going. What do we do when we, already predisposed to sinking, lose our greatest life preserver? How can we turn back time and fix everything?
That’s not rhetorical btw, I want an answer now damn it. And a time machine. But I sense in you that you’re on the path to reconciliation, far ahead of me it would seem, and I’m learning and watching you like a hawk my friend. That is, when I’m not searching for singing skies and dancing waters.
Hey Salt….in monastic life, there is the custom of the Culpa (root of the word culpability), which is making public acknowledgement of faults or infractions against the Rule of the order. It was believed that failing to keep the Rule weakened the entire community, much in the way that overeating weakens the body…self indulgence.
When a fault was admitted, the monk or nun would be given a penance to perform, often some form of community service to ones fellows (scrubbing floors or peeling mounds of potatoes). On occasion it would be additional hours of prayer or readings that focused on the root of the fault (pride, greed, laziness).
This custom could be seen as a sort of life preserver for those who seemed to lack one. An anchor. It taught reliance on others for when ones spiritual life was in difficulty. And of course it taught that God, while appearing silent, was actually working through others to help you achieve the balance needed to live as a whole and unfractured human. Personally, I believe that is a lofty goal, unachievable for a human. In the good times, I consider myself cracked but not broken.
You ask how do we keep going when the person who meant the most to us is taken? How can we turn back time and fix everything? I think the answer lies in penance, in making amends. But not for something we have done to someone else, but to ourselves, for the violence we inflict on our own souls and spirits. The intent is to make amends with myself.
For someone like me who suffers from a combination of medially induced (medicinal side effects) and situational (isolation/deep loneliness/disabled) depression, there is a tendency to look inward and hunt for the faults that I feel have damaged or weakened the life of the Order (my own mind). And then to obsess on them.
The penances I set for myself, the ones that liberate, are the ones that are of service to others. The opportunities for that service are few and far between because of my physical limitations.
Such service does, in a way, lead to reconciliation. This is when I get into trouble.
One very important thing I have come to understand about doing penance: It is not meant to achieve a victory, but a surrender. Which is, actually, much more freeing than having to maintain that victory mode of existence.
I will pay for your ticket on the Time Machine. There is nothing I would like more than to be able to send you to a time when your were whole and unfractured…..that would be a penance useful to both of us.
Wow thanks for that very thoughtful & illuminating answer. I need to read it a few more times and digest what it means to me and how I can apply it to myself, because I think you’ve really hit on something. And monks are never wrong.
My instinct is to resist for 1 point: with me, due to the way I’m (faultily) wired up, I derive the greatest strength and motivation from punishment… and I don’t mean healthy, cathartic punishment like it seems the monks seek, but I’m talking about a very brutal, negative, violent and downright corrosive rage. Trust me, I’ve learned that this is the only thing that really helps me win my battles when it’s down to the wire. I hate that I’m built this way; I wish I could find a more peaceful means of finding strength and inspiration, and lead a long productive life, but in my heart I know I’m more like a 1-trick-pony with 1 awesome, self-destructive trick.
I see the parallel here. The method of the Culpa is solid in both cases. But I’ve found in myself (and maybe with many monks, though they don’t realize it) is that a productive purging may benefit the individual’s soul in terms of “pain relief”, but sometimes pain should not be relieved. Pain, terror and the dark elements are what give the prey that supernatural burst of muscle power to outrun the predator. Or the war-weary soldier the guts to get up and finish the bloody battle.
Whether or not that’s really my situation, I guess nobody can know objectively (least of all me). But I can only go on empirical data of what has worked or not worked in the past. Self-persecution works. But after reading what you wrote I’m going to make a very strong effort to ease up on myself… the “overeating” or “self-indulgent” aspect of admitting & punishing my faults. Thank you so much for this.
My condelence goes to you:(
i’m pretty sure your mom is watching over you and want you to become better and move on with your life:)
I hope things will eventually get better for you:)xx