On Life & Death
Returning home for work, late and exhausted, I retrieved a package from my front door without opening it. It was Wednesday, and I was already drained from the work week. I brought it inside, and decided I would open it later.
Later was in two days. Opening the box, I found a beautiful live plant with instructions on how to care for it and a narrative that felt a little like I was adopting a pet. I will have a relationship with this plant. It was life in a box.
The plant was a thank you gift from a friend. I spent the previous Saturday working with her husband. Upon unpackaging the plant, I vowed I keep this plant alive and healthy, and it would live longer than her husband. I would honor them both with this one, small commitment.
He came to me for a facilitated psychedelic session. I am generally quiet about my work. My social media is sparse and infrequent. I update the blog on my website when I think of it, without notification. The Tao provides. But word gets around. I went to a salon once and the young, eager stylist said “Oh, you’re the m*shroom lady!”
This man had an existing relationship with psychedelic medicine and was an enthusiastic Dead Head. His was an end-of-life diagnosis, no one survives ALS. The life he and his wife built was lovely. They are a human family with trials and tribulations of raising children to adulthood. They are attractive, successful, and gracious. They both had impressive careers and a wide circle of friends. They love and are loved. Death doesn’t care. It comes for everyone. Even an athletic man in his 50s.
We spent some time settling in before he ingested the medicine. He needed assistance unwrapping the medicine for self-administration. His manual dexterity had deteriorated to that point. Three weeks ago, he walked into to my space unaided.
That experience belongs to this man. It is not my story to tell, and I will hold it silently and reverently.
Three months after doing the session with him, I had a dream that he and I were singing the song “Ripple” together. I’m not a Dead Head and have never been to a Grateful Dead concert. I have a casual relationship to the music. I don’t really know what Ripple is about, but it seems like it’s about being here but not here. About always having enough. About a ripple in the water with no apparent cause. A path you take alone. It fit.
This gracious man died five months after our session. He was at peace and surrounded with love. His funeral honored him beautifully. The homily included, like most funerals, aspirational talk of eternal love. A love that survives the earthly life. Most of the time, though comforting, that talk has an “I hope so” quality to it. This didn’t. It had a certainty to it.
Back to the plant that I now have care, custody, and control of. When it arrived, it took two days for me to have the vitality to open the package. Energetically, providing a container for and witnessing the fierce potential of the human spirit to transcend the physical space is a huge endeavor. As much as it fed me, it depleted me. It’s very rare that we get to see such a profound and moving experiences. The contrast of extraordinary beauty and love in the face of so much loss is almost too big to hold. Yet we did, tearfully.
When I’ve cried about this, it’s not that it’s so sad, although it is. It’s that it’s so beautiful. It’s so vast. It’s a human life. That human’s life. When a baby is born, the medical staff handles the experience with professional efficiency, but I wonder if it’s something like that. Are they ever overwhelmed with the enormity of what just happened?
At end of life, it felt even more poignant. This man grew to adulthood. He formed relationships, married the love of his life and they created three remarkable humans. He was not, like an infant, a blank slate of potential. He was potential realized and lost.
I also cry in frustration at my limits. Sure, I can facilitate something for this family. Anecdotal evidence suggested that a positive end of life psychedelic experience not only benefits the person taking the medicine, but their loved ones. Yet, I did not create that experience, his consciousness and the medicine did that. I could provide a safe container and a reflective canvas for him to behold his own enduring, loving consciousness. I could not lengthen his life nor lessen the loss.
And this plant. My attachment to the plant is wrapped up in his life. When the naughty puppy munched on the leaves, I was distressed. When the leaves grew back but became slightly brown around the edges, I felt a helpless sense of urgency. The plant does not have ALS. In the absence of terminal illness, I can keep this plant alive with water and light. Can’t I?
Please, plant. Please grow. Please thrive. The plant connects me to something I don’t want to lose. The gift of the plant is a token gift to me. It represents the gift of bearing witness. The gift of being trusted. The gift of being invited into something so sacred. My attachment to it is outsized. I need it to live.