grief out of left field

It seems only yesterday that my sister (in-law) was moving around the care home — a flower in her hair — randomly greeting people. Since then she’s been diagnosed Stage 7 of 7 on the dementia scale: Very severe cognitive decline. In this stage a person “begins to lose speech and may just have guttural sounds; toileting and feeding require assistance, the ability to walk begins to decline. There is a marked disconnect between the body and the brain, and the individual exhibits a general rigidity.”[1]

A cousin phoned, in tears after finding my sister in a wheelchair, unable to walk, incoherent, dressed in nothing but a diaper. Soon afterwards, an email to say that she had a fall overnight, was taken to intensive care with suspected frontal-lobe seizure and/or cerebral hemorrhage.

♥

Barely comprehending, I sit still, turn inwards. How does heart-mind-body respond to all this?

My face feels as if made of steel, jays wired shut, lips glued together. Bringing awareness to the breath: shallow and hasty. Remembering to “welcome everything”, I let awareness sink deeper into the chest. Simultaneously, pain arises in the brain, near the front.

(The frontal lobe deals with Movement of the body, Personality, Concentration, planning, problem solving, Meaning of words, Emotional reactions, Speech, Smell.[2] Home of Alzheimer’s, monkey-mind chimes in.)

Visualizing brain and heart as one, the face begins to melt at the edges. Stiff neck begins to release like bubbles up the side of a champagne flute. A faint thawing in the belly, into the legs. Breathing in, breathing out.

Suddenly the alarm rings to announce time for meditation on zoom. Put aside personal matters. A dear Irish friend is already waiting, sitting outside, the evening sun sinking behind the hills at his back. “Mourne Mountains they’re called, County Down”, he tells me. Of course they are.

Others join and we sit in silence. Muscles of steel melt into tears. May my sister be free from suffering. 

♥

“The human body is fragile and vulnerable, our life hangs by a breath. / Holding this thought in mind, I attend to each inhalation and each exhalation.” (One of “Nine contemplations of death” by Atiśa, Indian Buddhist scholar, 982 – 1054 CE.) [3]

[1] The Global Deterioration Scale: Reisberg Alzheimer’s Stages.  [2] Brain regions: Ask a biologist.  [3] This version.

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