Exploring Life's List: 5. Experience

[Exploring Life] A Journey Into Memory: It has now been nearly two months since my father passed away, and five months since my mother passed away. I am learning more and more about the nature and power of memory; the ways in which I interpret and explore my own memories are changing in response to the experience of losing both parents. While I have always understood that memory is more than a mere recollection of facts or a mental romp through past events, I am quite surprised at the vast perceptual landscape that memory embraces. Memory can reveal itself through powerful imagery that envelope our senses is the essence of an experience. Memory can be an echo originating in the resonance of a sound that is retrieved from the past. Memory can simply be a feeling that has no clear reference to either visual image or sound; memory can be a sensation of touch deep within the body. In this post I will share the memory of the immediate aftermath of my parents' death in order to explore the deeper workings of memory.

[Exploring Life] As We Get Older: Macleans Magazine has published an important article entitled Don't Seniors Deserve Better? in which Ken McQueen explores the reality of how the elderly are treated in our hospital system. In the years leading up to their deaths, part of the care I provided for my parents was to help navigate them through the hospital system first as their son, then as their son and Power of Attorney. The points Ken McQueen raises in his article resonate with me as being strikingly true. Though criticism is often all too easy an approach to take, my intent here is to in fact take a critical look at my parents experiences in the hospital (nursing homes are just as challenging but will not be discussed here), and to relate those experiences to the issues raised in Don't Seniors Deserve Better?

"Though you have left us
Your presence echoes within the landscape of our souls;
Tears caress the beauty of your memory
And we know you have been released from darkness and suffering."

"[Exploring Life] The Feeling of Death: It seems to me that death leaves an echo within those that survive their loved ones. It is as if a vibration of remembrance stirs within the heart and reverberates feelings of that which can no longer be. The loss of a presence does not result in silence, nor does it create emptiness. To the contrary, the absence of a loved one is at times strikingly vibrant. There is an energy in death that persists throughout life; a music of impermanence whose meaning can only be felt when death whispers near by. Is this a grieving process? Grief, I can state unconditionally, is a formidable experience - an experience that literally and figuratively takes us to our knees and wipes away all of our pedestrian routines and desires to place us firmly in the presence of life. But I now sense there is more to experience than grief, there is more to experience than the intense sorrow and desolate landscape of loss. It occurs to me that there may in fact be a music of absence, a kind of soundscape of loss, that remains within and speaks to us on a primal level."

"[Exploring Life] A Matter of Dying: When we lose a person of significance in our lives what is it that remains of their existence? Even though we must inevitably die, each of us also leaves a sense of our presence in those that we had a bond with in life. It is as if presence in the midst of death had an echo; a resonance of a person's identity and sensibilities that remains alive in the world around us. I believe this is an dimension of memory that brings that which was into the present moment in a manner that is more than merely remembering. This kind of memory invites conversation with the very identity of the departed. Not a conversation, of course, in the literal sense, but a conversation of spirit and in spirit with the essence of identity and the essence of presence itself."

"[Exploring Life] The Landscape of Loss: Both of my parents lived what would be considered a long life. My mother died at age ninety and my father at age ninety-two. They lived independently in Sandy Cove Acres for all except the last year or so. Though it can be traced back further in time, I see the sudden and shocking change from living independently to being dependent as the beginning of the end of days. We could trace the beginnings of the decline of independence further back in time as more and more family and professional support had to be brought into the home in order for them to live. This included the formal support of CCAC as well as more support from both my sister and I. "

"[Exploring Life] In the Presence of Death: Within a span of four months both of my parents passed away. My mother was first to die on September 22, 2010 just four days short of her 91st birthday. My father died on January 7, 2011 approximately one month before his 93rd birthday. The length of their lives allowed them to forge a deep and close bond with their two children, myself and my sister, as well as their grandchildren and friends. They both outlived most everyone in their generation and many of their younger friends as well. In a sense, they were the last of an era to pass away. "