The Will To Live

Yesterday a friend I had not seen in along time knocked on my door. I was surprised to see him. He sat down and told my about a friend of his named Brad. Brad is dying in hospice, literally a five minute walk from my home. He told me how he had taken him under his wing when he met him and he was homeless. Brad also has a mild form of schizophrenia. He had lived for years by the river in Broad Ripple in a lean to, with a couple of tavern owners helping shelter him in winter and feed him. He has no family. Just a couple of good friends. Never been married. Never got to have children.

Brads lungs are failing and he is staying in a hospice that takes people who are indigent. It runs purely on donations. My friend ask me if I would be willing to visit Brad as my friend felt he can’t be there as much as he wants. He took me over to introduce me, thinking Brad would be awake as he was a couple of days ago. Brad had gotten sicker. He barely knew we were there but we spoke to him anyway.

My friend said he was going over in the evening last night and watch the baseball game with him, so I met him as well. The staff said Brad was transitioning (read close to death now) I sat by this man’s bed, not knowing him, I felt such love and compassion and I just held his hand. (at one point I had to excuse myself and go to restroom and cry and splash water on my face)

I stroked his forehead. I wore perfume so he could smell something lovely and my friend said it’s good for him to hear a woman’s voice. I was given a chance by God to help someone facing death and it humbled me. Inside I was very emotional. How vulnerable we are at birth and then at death. Brad never had a chance in life. Having severe mental illness, no spouse or children and then living a homeless life. I felt God must be taking him because he has suffered so and I’m so blessed to be asked to be with him at this time.

I woke up this morning, getting ready to go see him and broke into tears. We need to remember what is really important. Our healthy bodies our friends and family and looking out for those that can’t help themselves…. And if you know someone who is suffering go to them. Ask what you can do. We are all connected.

I’m blessed for this situation but I can’t keep Brad from dying but I can pray his passing is peaceful and full of love. I ask my friends to also say a prayer for Brad to pass peacefully.

Life, Death, Life

Yesterday I took a walk along the mountain pass. The tall dense grass that lined the road all summer and fall have lain down under the frost, leaving space between the white line and the valley below to hike.

Vistas have opened up, and the peaks are dusted with snow like powdered sugar on a gingerbread cake.

Trumpeter Swans fill the empty corn fields, eagles and hawks glide in circles above the valley in the cold, gray breeze.

The howling winter winds have cleared the trees of dead branches which line the road and litter the hills with sticks for the tiny creatures to make nests for the winter.

The mountain is quiet and still, resting but not asleep.

Off to the side of the road overlooking the valley, I see an impression in what was a patch of tall grass. I move closer and see the skeleton of a small deer, who curled up as if to take a nap, dropping its body in this beautiful place.

No scavengers ripped the flesh from its body, carrying off meat and scattering it’s bones, no hunter collected hoofs or skull for trophy. I see no sign of trauma, nothing broken in the tiny skeleton, only clean bones laced with sun leathered skin, one small hoof still intact with fur, feet and head curled under in a perfect oval.

I imagine the grass growing up and around in a stretch of sunny late summer days and nights, Mother earth wrapping its arms around the creature as it slowly brings it into her bosom and tears come from deep inside me, from the place of knowing the suffering that comes with the natural cycle of birth and death.

I feel something sacred moving within me as I witness a once living being offering its body to the seasons in the inevitable dance with Samsara.

I experience fully the terrible beauty of our impermanence.

Written

by

Debra Greenfield

 

Dying To Be A Sequoia: My Living Will

If you think in terms of a year, plant a seed; if in terms of ten years, plant trees; if in terms of 100 years, teach the people.

Confucius

Today I learned about a solution for our fear of death.

Green Burials

My love of trees is profound.

I lived in the pacific northwest for over a decade and during that time I’ve hugged many trees.

I’ve camped in Olympic National Park in mossy forests.

Woke up many mornings to Sun rays streaming through forests that will blow your mind.

I had to leave the pacific northwest and my heart has been missing my giant, green, mossy friends of all kinds.

An evergreen love that can’t be quenched ever, unless I’m under it’s branches all day.

I dream of living in a tree house.

I dream of dying and becoming a tree.

It’s a movement that’s moving quickly.

It’s called Green Burials and upon learning about it the fear of death has grown into a dream of becoming a tree.

To become any tree, anything that lives on after me and gives oxygen to the Earth.

I can die and still make a difference on this planet…

AND SO CAN YOU TOO!

 

If I could choose any tree I think I would like a sequoia the most.

I would have the best view.

I would be as fat and tall as I can bee.

I’ll be so big, that no one can take a photograph of me in one shot.

My trunk is so large that you can’t wrap your mind or arms around it.

I am so tall and proud because a human gave it’s body to nourish me as I grow.

Her name was Deborah.

She wanted to give herself back to the Earth as humanity has done for thousands of years.

Like the Indians knew…painting the landscape humans walk now.

Where do you think my friends food came from?

 

She could not imagine being put in a coffin.

In a steel vault with embalming fluid in her body.

Fear of death is often because of the choices we have had.

She did not want to be burned in an oven.

 

There is nothing green about steel vaults, embalming fluids and ovens.

….hey Jay, (that’s my tree friend) what the heck is embalming fluid?

“I have no idea but can you see those stars tonight?”

….so say we all.

 

She was anointed  with sacred oils by her loved ones.

She was buried with flowers and loving letters from friends.

There were tears, but there was happiness and hope on many levels.

We are so glad the Lorax inspired her and so happy she is here with us now.

Not to mention how much she loves Julia Butterfly Hill for her TWO YEAR tree sit to save old growth trees.

Remember Luna?

Who doesn’t says Jay.

http://www.juliabutterfly.com/about-luna.html

 

 

Deep down in the Earth her body nourished my tiny seedling roots.

I became stronger.

Her spirit soared.

She will always be apart of me.

Even if I may fall, my wood is her and so as I lay my life down in forest, she will continue….

…so we can all continue.

 

She learned that if you are spiritual, how can you not want to go out of life beautifully and helpfully.

It’s like a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down.

And her loved ones were left in greater peace as they can now visit her in a forest.

Not in a cemetery lawn.

She was so green and now her color is in me.

 

…a tree house, is out of the question, but then again it is no longer a dream, but a reality.

Forests always welcome more friends.

The more, the better!

This is my Living Will.

Please, please…. learn more about Green Burials:

Resources:

http://www.awillforthewoods.com/

http://www.greenburialcouncil.org/

http://www.treehugger.com/culture/egg-shaped-burial-pods-fertilize-forest.html

http://www.capsulamundi.it/

http://respectgb.co.uk/

http://www.greenburials.org/

“Capsula Mundi saves the life of  a tree and proposes to plant one more. By planting different kinds of trees next to each other it creates a forest. A place where children will be able to learn all about trees. It’s also a place for a beautiful walk and a reminder of our loved ones.”

 Capsula Mundi

Thank You Clark Wang! 

xoxoxoxoxo

This message is 100% recycled and free of trees!

Thank God! 

x

Standing Inside Emery Blagdon’s Healing Machine

Dear Emery,

Today, as almost everyday, I woke up to great psychic pain, depression, hopelessness of the feeling of impending doom. I did not know what to do with myself. There are no forests to walk through. There is no family that comes calling. There are only haunted thoughts of the illness of depression and mistreatment by psychiatrists for ten years. My brain feels like it has been hypnotized into believing I’m insane. The drugs I took for over a decade have damaged me in ways that I can’t describe. A nightmare of the heart and mind because there is no where to go now to seek help from the horrors, the trauma and the abandonment of family and friends. It seems that sleep is the only escape. Upon awakening, my heart begins to beat fast, I feel as if I’m going to die, because each day in this lifeless home I live, feels like repeat of the day before. I have been praying to God to show me the way, every moment. I can’t write anymore because all that comes out is sick and sad thoughts.

I forced myself out of my bed, the only place of comfort and paced around this dingy apartment that has an evil smell I can’t seem to remove. The fragrance of loneliness, lost of peace, loss of creativity and hope that my life will always be this way. Alone and in poverty with no real family to bring chicken soup. The feeling of the voice of God said to turn on TV. I watched a preacher I like talk about how my brain is a super computer and that the pain I feel is a virus that has been put there by a less than happy upbringing, true love that never came, losing everything I loved because of a bad pill a doctor forced upon me..all these things the preacher said can be deleted. Just push the delete button. Let no one tell you that you are worthless. Let no one tell you that you can never heal. Delete these thoughts. Delete. Delete. Delete. But it left me a bit cold. How does on delete past trauma. Has does one delete the moment when my grandson’s mother took my grandchild away because of the stigma of mental illness. I can’t delete the love I got  from that baby that I took such great care of? The preachers message was helpful, but does not change that no one calls me.  No one cares about my psychic pain and that the city I once lived in that offered me Orcas and tress and festivals, has also been  poisoned by institutions and abuse.

I lay on my couch, in the dead fragrance of the room that no incense nor sage will take away. What do  I do now? It’s Saturday. Many people are out enjoying the summer. I can’t. The heat is too much to bear and I can’t breath in this mid western weather, nor is there any art at all  to look at. I see myself in the mirror and there is art there. The portrait of a flower that is slowly losing it’s petals. The image of a ghost of a woman I once was. The bright talented woman who tried everything she could to get out of this dead end town, only to end up back here for what seems a long and lonely death. Something has stripped me of all my tools. My only friends are imaginary now. I feel like I’m aging backwards. But my body is disintegrating.

By sheer will to watch empowering stories, I recorded a program on PBS about your healing machine. Something in my heart, that loved me said, “watch this program.” Something inside, something loving, made me turn to the program about you and your healing machine. I held my body pillow with a child’s pillowcase on it, embroidered with the words “sweet dreams.” The moment the tale of your life began to unfold, I felt you were an angel sent from God. You suffered great pain in your life. Losing all those you love to cancer. You became an anomaly. You endured your loneliness and non normal ways by building this incredible machine in your barn. You found things that no one else wanted, like old TV’s, wires, appliances. Anything that was not wanted anymore. I feel a connection to you as I believe inanimate objects have feelings too.

What was most amazing was that you had cancer for ten years. You refused to see a doctor as they never helped your  family. You didn’t bath. You lived unconventionally and with great purpose as you built this amazing machine with lights and metals and elements. Even using discarded containers from your pharmacist friend. I found that very poignant being that pharmacies nowadays can vend poison to people. You never cared if you were unwashed. You never cared what the townsfolk thought of you. You had your healing machine. People would come and feel the magnetic energy in the great work of art that no one had ever dreamed of. Beautiful rainbows of lights reflecting off all kinds of metals, even old pull tabs from soda cans. You incorporated beads from my childhood, colored sand, and works of art that you stacked upon one another as a kind of battery for the machine. The people who loved you could feel the cool air raising from the Earth under the machine even though it was very hot outside. There was something true and mystical coming from you that made the healing that was coming from the machine.

You died of cancer in 1986, leaving no will for what you had left. You true friend, the pharmacist, went to bid on your machine and he saved it. Thank God for that man, because now it resides in a gallery and has been lovingly preserved for the world to see. The art community came in droves to witness your genius. Your invention to cure your own psychic and physical pain. How wonderful for the world to have left such a piece of outsider art for like minded souls to gaze upon. But how sad to me that you never lived to see what that machine means to many now. I knew I Ioved it when I saw you had used the old fashioned Christmas lights that I remembered shone hot on extremely fragrant Christmas trees as a child.

Today Mr. Blagdon, you are a new hero to me and even though I can’t stand under or witness your art in person, the reflection of your alternative and quite radical machine and views of healing, will stay with me forever. Thank you for leaving behind something so odd, so strange that it can’t be ignored. And thank you for taking all the unwanted things,like wires and lights and junk and color and turning them into etherial art. The thought of you heals me today. I was sad when the program was over, as the only thing to do was to write about it. Much better to write of your gifts than to constantly have to tell my own stories of pain. If my apartment were big enough, I would start my own, as my Father was an electrician and maybe could provide a psychic blue print of my own healing machine.

I always wondered why I would pick up trash and sticks from the yard as a child. Now I know, they have energy to give and nothing has to be wasted. If someone, like a psychiatrist would see me build this unbelievable work of art, today I would be hospitalized. Thank God, you didn’t live in that time where someone could come take you away for being unique. Maybe someday I will get to see your machine. Until then, I will keep the half broken strings of lights in my bedroom window to remind me of you.

OMG! Moment…

Later in the night after I wrote this while speaking to an angel friend,  those half broken Christmas lights popped back on!

Emery, you must be a very funny angel! xo

God bless you Emery Blagdon.

Now this essay is over, and I’m sad it is because I need friends like you.

xo

A Poem From A Vietnam Veteran

Died August 10th, 2013

I attended a full military funeral for my Uncle today.  He lived his last years without a leg, money and a companion. He was angry, bitter and so very sad and alone. My cousin read this poem during the service. It was heart breaking. It had been written by my Uncle to his Father while in Vietnam.

I got a copy of the letter and his penmanship was exquisite. Can you imagine in that state of mind to have such beautiful handwriting?

When the gun’s fired the memorial salute, I could hear the blasts that must have kept on exploding in his ears after returning from war.

God Bless You Uncle William and your beautiful words that should never be forgotten.

 

April 25, 1968

“Living and Dying”

Take a man and put him alone.

Put him thousands of miles away from home,

Empty his heart of all but blood,

Make him live and sweat in mud,

This is the life that I must live,

And why my soul to the devil I give,

And you “Peace Boys” pent from your easy chairs,

For you don’t know what it’s like over here,

You have your fun without near trying,

While over here the men are dying,

You use your drugs and have your fun,

And then refuse to use your gun,

You burn your draft cards and march at dawn,

You plant your flags on the White House lawn,

There’s nothing else for you to do,

And I’m suppose to die for you,

I’ll hate you till the day I die,

You made me hear my buddy cry

I saw his arm a bloody shred,

I heard them say “this one’s dead.”

It’s a large price he had to pay,

Not to live another day,

He had the guts to fight and die,

He paid the price, but what did he buy?

He bought your life by giving his,

But who gives a dam what a soldier gives?