{"id":6286,"date":"2019-09-04T11:49:53","date_gmt":"2019-09-04T15:49:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=6286"},"modified":"2019-09-04T11:49:53","modified_gmt":"2019-09-04T15:49:53","slug":"looking-straight-at-the-ending-of-my-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=6286","title":{"rendered":"Looking Straight at the Ending of my Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

My friend Elizabeth sent me a link to a talk by Stephen Jenkinson.\u00a0 <\/span>It didn\u2019t do much for me, so I didn\u2019t follow it up.\u00a0 <\/span>More recently she sent me a link to a short film about Nights of Grief and Mystery, a performance Jenkinson is doing with a singer named Gregory Hoskins.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s called Lost Nation Road<\/a>. \u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s the limit that gives you the opportunity to practice being human.\u201d<\/p>\n

After I watched the video, I had such a sense of validation of my feeling of walking into the desert when I hear the Magpie song about the Wolf: \u00a0“follow you into the North…” \u00a0I saw that my wish to do as much as I can with what I have left is what he’s talking about. \u00a0The exact phrase is a quote from Yitzhak Perlman<\/a>: \u201c\u2018You know, sometimes it is the artist\u2019s task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left.’\u201d \u00a0I am not afraid of dying. \u00a0For a lot of my life I was often suicidal, and even now death looks like a relief. \u00a0I can lay down the job.<\/p>\n

After I watched the video, I signed up for a ticket to the performance of Night of Grief and Mystery in Portland Maine.<\/a><\/p>\n

Still trying to verbalize what this means to me, but maybe it’s not important or necessary. \u00a0Maybe songs and images are better. \u00a0I think of the grief rituals and death rituals of traditional cultures. \u00a0Singing and dancing are more appropriate.<\/p>\n

3rd cup.\u00a0 <\/span>I want to write about Stephen Jenkinson and my feeling of validation for my wish to understand what it is that I am supposed to do? by whom? \u2014 I want to do?\u00a0 <\/span>I\u2019m not sure it\u2019s a question of wanting \u2014\u2014 Oh, it\u2019s a question of being called<\/span> \u2014 what am I called to do with the time and energy I have left.\u00a0 <\/span>Stephen \u2014 he really should have a different name, a shamanic name \u2014 says it\u2019s only when you accept that your life will end that you get to be human.\u00a0 <\/span>I think that has something to do with living in the present, and with living humbly.\u00a0 <\/span>Maybe I want too much to have meaning, joy, beauty in each moment.\u00a0 <\/span>But what I feel now is an ache in my heart for all the diversity, beauty, and health that\u2019s been lost.\u00a0 <\/span>That\u2019s being truly present too.\u00a0 <\/span>I know that it\u2019s possible, when everything around you is awful \u2014 I remember Rose Marie playing with a dog while we waited for something official having to do with Michael\u2019s body \u2014 to still find something to enjoy, but I am not able [typo: about<\/em>] to do it and I have no idea why.\u00a0 <\/span>Possibly the wanting to have it be different is what I have to let go of.\u00a0 <\/span>Do I want to be happy or true?\u00a0 <\/span>Do I want to be happy or whole?\u00a0 <\/span>If that\u2019s the choice, I choose to be true and whole.\u00a0 <\/span>I suppose that trying to find my way through these conflicts and desires may be what this last chapter of my life is about.\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cYou are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The typo \u2014 I wrote “I am not able to…” but I typed \u00a0“I am not about to.. still find something to enjoy when things are really bad.” making it a choice I’m making. \u00a0I don’t know if that’s true.<\/p>\n

The quote is from the Talmud.<\/p>\n

I have been able to experience warmth and satisfaction while doing ordinary daily tasks: watering plants, hanging up clothes, washing dishes, etc.\u00a0 <\/span>If I could live like that all the time, I would take it.\u00a0 <\/span>But mostly it feels like a chore.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I remember a time I was terrified \u2014 it was the summer from Hell<\/a> \u2014 and I was watering plants. \u00a0I remember watching how the water spiraled as it came out of the spout of the watering can, I held onto it for dear life, but I can’t say it was beautiful.<\/p>\n

I think about my idea\/feeling that the gift of life came to me smashed, and my anger and resentment.\u00a0 <\/span>What if it was smashed so I could put it back together creatively?\u00a0 <\/span>What if my experience of trauma was intended to be an initiation, and its purpose was to keep me searching for truth and meaning, to keep me from settling for a conventional life?\u00a0 <\/span>There certainly have been times when I have felt that PTSD was a gift.\u00a0 <\/span>In fact I\u2019ve been letting go of the resentment, and accepting that it\u2019s a task that I\u2019ve chosen to take on.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Stephen Jenkinson is described in a post from Daily Good<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“With\u00a0a master\u2019s degree in theology from Harvard University and a master\u2019s in social work from the University of Toronto, Stephen Jenkinson was the director of counselling services in the\u00a0palliative care department at a major Canadian hospital \u00a0in \u00a0Toronto for several years, where he encountered the deep ‘death phobia’ and ‘grief illiteracy’ that most of his patients and their loved ones brought to their deathbeds. This work motivated Jenkinson to encourage people to prepare for their death well before its arrival so that they might be free to ‘participate emotionally in their deaths as they participate in other major life events.’<\/p>\n

“In 2010, Jenkinson founded the\u00a0Orphan Wisdom School<\/a>, at his farm in the Ottawa Valley in Ontario, Canada. The school provides experiential learning in the skills of ‘deep living and making human culture.’ Jenkinson believes that what modern people ‘suffer from most is culture failure: amnesia of ancestry and deep family story, phantom or sham rites of passage, no instruction on how to live with each other or with the world around us, or with our dead, or with our history.’<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My friend Elizabeth sent me a link to a talk by Stephen Jenkinson.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t do much for me, so I didn\u2019t follow it up.\u00a0 More recently she sent me a link to a short film about Nights of Grief … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,9,11,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interesting-link","category-journal","category-present-day","category-trauma"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6286\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}