Dealing with death

[OkieTao]

Re: Dealing with death

One of my sisters has been shot and killed by a home invader. Instant death. I felt many emotions then and many over the years and what I learned was feel what I feel when I'm feeling it. Not to fight it or try to change it or wish it away or do much else than feel it.I talk about it with folks I can trust if I feel moved to.That it will pass and also it will return.I am a recovering addict so I had some training already through my experience in a twelve step program. What the 12 step experience has taught me mostly to let go and accept reality on it's own terms.That it is o.k. to be powerless. To do what is humanly possible and to accept what is not.
Twelve calendar years have passed and it is a scar rather than a wound and anymore It is easier and easier to let it go, like the thoughts one watches arrive and depart while sitting. It wasn't my first brush with death and mortality -- I witnessed a bloody gunshot murder when I was six, my best buddy from high school died in a wreck twenty something years ago, couple of friends and acquaintances have committed suicide, one guy I know murdered another guy I knew, mom died of cancer (actually starvation after I disconnected her feeding tube. literally) plus various others. Recently a buddy in Texas died from an overdose of heroin.
I've had three real good dogs that were as much my friends as human ever was die of aging and disease over the last few years. One just recently ... but Cynthia getting shot down was the toughest.

For the second time in as many weeks, someone close to me has died. The first was a friend and colleague who I'd known for a dozen years. We were both freelancers, and we worked together many times, and were often in touch just to chat, even though she lived far from me (in Paris; I'm in southern France). She died giving birth, which is something rare these days, but there was a complication that was known about before she delivered, and things just went bad. She leaves behind three kids and an unemployed dad.

Today, I found out that a physical therapist who I saw twice a week for several years - and who was also a friend, and leader of a kids' ski club near where I live - was killed in Morocco during a carjacking/robbery. He had moved from France to Morocco on retirement, having recently married a French/Moroccan woman.

I've never had people close to me - even though these were not really close friends - die so suddenly, and two so close together. Especially the second case, I've never know anyone to suffer violence, even being mugged or injured (and I grew up in NYC).

I find this hard to accept, even though I want to try and accept it. Grieving is natural, but it's not something I've ever been good at (such as when people in my family died).

I know there's nothing I can do, and what is past is past, but it makes me sad.

I'm not even sure why I posted this, but I have a feeling that in this forum many people have suffered similar losses, and I'm reminded of the story where the Buddha told a woman to fetch a mustard seed from a house where no one has ever died...

Where is the healthy line to draw between acceptance and outrage? I know that as physicians can never completely defeat death and disease, neither can we completely rid social life of crime and violence. But just as physicians never give up fighting death and disease, should we abandon the struggle to fight social injustice?

If we find ourselves outraged at some of the cruelties of life, especially those committed by our fellow human beings, is it worth facing those cruelties and doing our best to fight them? Is too strong of a passive acceptance merely an aversion to trying to rectify the bad things in the world? I can definitely see being consumed by the quest for social justice as a harmful attachment, but I wonder if passively accepting injustice might not also be a harmful aversion.

If a Buddha had some food and found a hungry man in the streets, would he give him food?

I'm sorry to hear about your loss. I understand how difficult it is. I lost many family members before the age of eighteen to death - and many times death from easily preventable causes.

[Jundo]

Re: Dealing with death

Hi Okie,

Where is the healthy line to draw between acceptance and outrage? I know that as physicians can never completely defeat death and disease, neither can we completely rid social life of crime and violence. But just as physicians never give up fighting death and disease, should we abandon the struggle to fight social injustice?

Engaged Buddhism has, as one aspect, something that could be termed "acceptance without acceptance" or "resisting while dropping all resistance", both at once (not two ... like two faces of a single coin). That is part of what we practice in this practice ...

http://blog.beliefnet.com/treeleafzen/2 ... tance.html

Gassho, J

[AlanLa]

Re: Dealing with death

Kirk, I have lost more friends to disability related issues than I care to count. I no longer cry when I hear the news. I no longer get drunk on their behalf. I no longer say prayers or send blessings or do anything at all ceremonial for them. But I still grieve. Every time I remember any one of them I grieve, and this happens a lot, almost daily. It's happening right now as I write this. It's all injustice, and it's all beyond my comprehension, so I let it go, or at least I try to. it just IS.

About a year ago I had a long talk with my mom about this topic. I was afraid that I was not dealing with death in a constructive way, that I never really faced it despite its surrounding me throughout my life, although always at some distance. Despite all the people I have known that have died I have never attended a funeral, and somehow I felt that this kept me from truly meeting those deaths. I know now that this was all just some preconceived notion about how I was supposed to behave around death, in other words it was a delusion. Every time I think of someone I have lost I deal with death, and then after that I deal with life: my life, my death. I no longer see them as separate: death is part of life just as much as life is part of death.

But none of this really makes it any easier.

Many bows for your loss..........