Meera

I had this odd experience today as I drove home from burying Meera.  In retrospect, I guess it’s probably something most people who have a trauma like this hit their lives feel, but I wasn’t prepared for it and it set off a string of reactions.  I heard these two women talking about whether they should get a salad or a sandwich for lunch and I found myself thinking, “How can you possibly stand there and worry about what to have for lunch?  It’s completely irrelevant in the face of death and loss, and Meera’s gone and…” you can imagine the rest.  This same string of thoughts came up again and again…”how can you stand there with a leaf blower - who frickin’ cares where those leaves sit?” and “so your kid dropped the ice cream cone…does it really matter?” right on up to “enough already with the ‘Israel’s right to exist’ squabbling – it’s just imaginary lines on an imaginary map.”

Suffice it to say, it was a good time to reexamine the fundamental principles by which I’m living.  So I’m asking questions like these:

• What do I love?

• What do I do as a means to an end?

• What is that end and is it reasonable?   Will it make me happy?

• When I’m 80, will I consider this time well used?

• Am I treading water…being too careful, too willing to accept delay?

So, is it a midlife crisis brought on by a close personal reminder of my own mortality?  I don’t know.  I don’t think so.  I haven’t been considering my own mortality all that much during this time.  I already have a convertible and a motorcycle and I’m not feeling the need to get in the market for a twenty-two year old girlfriend.  But maybe the cliché midlife crisis isn’t the only kind, and maybe it doesn’t always have to come from the crisis part.  I’ll try to explain this developing theory.

Meera was such an important part of my life.  She was there through some pretty crazy times, and as I’ve said, there were days when the only reason I got out of bed was because I needed to take her for a walk.  She was the only one who was there when I was on a couple of nasty brinks.  She was also part of some of the best days of my life (so far).  She was a constant.

As I’ve had to come to grips with her leaving my life, I’ve realized that one thing I really have going for me was this…I didn’t feel guilt.  I know two things:  that I did every single thing I possibly could to try and save her from this awful cancer and more importantly that throughout her life, I never, ever took her for granted.  I’m not sure I can say that for a lot of the important people in my life, and it’s an interesting lesson.  I literally do not feel even the remotest pang of guilt about how I spent my time with her and I’m very surprised by how liberating that is.  I’m finding that it allows me to move much faster than I expected from dwelling exclusively on the loss of someone I loved, to finding gratitude for her presence. 

So my midlife crisis is sort of around this topic.  It’s not career or money or cars or supermodels.  It’s people, and yoga, and this house, and all the things I care most about.  It’s about knocking down a few more of those emotion = weakness filters, those fears of embarrassment, those “they must know that they’re important to me” assumptions. 

Meera and I have both been blessed with some amazing people in our lives.  Jenn, of course who sat through every second of this even as her own heart was breaking.  Christina, who drove like a maniac to be there when it was at its worst even under the most unimaginable circumstances.   And then literally dozens of other people, some of whom only knew Meera for the briefest of times, who called and sent emails and cards of condolence.  My Sunday night class sent a huge basket of really good cookies which have turned out to be an excellent incentive to get back into class tomorrow.  I always make a point to thank you for coming to class and sharing your energy, but thank you for being a true sangha, a supportive, spiritually awake community.  Your cards and calls have been like a life line to the best part of my world these past days.  I’ve heard from dear friends across the country and across the world that I haven’t done a good enough job of staying in touch with for my own liking.

I wrote a little talk for a workshop I gave a few years ago in which I said that to me, the best mental states you can be in are “inspired” and “grateful”.  Inspired because the energy of that state will drive you to express the very best of yourself, and grateful because it’s the most engaged, open-hearted way you can be.  And then I tortured them for two hours with backbends and balance poses, but that’s beside the point.  As I revisited that concept tonight, I’m realizing that my (capital Y) Yoga practice for a while needs to be about these two things.  It’s the best way I can imagine to honor what Meera gave to me, and I’m seeing that my own stupid filters of embarrassment, fear, assumption, are what can keep me from feeling the same sense of time well-used when my own time comes.  I think it will start with 7:00 a.m. class.