First published on Facebook, September 4.2021
***

My calendar for the next month has filled up quickly. Nearly every day is already spoken for with friends visiting, zoom chats with family, nurse appointments, hair washes from my CNA, massages with the hospice volunteer, or the occasional days I’ve blocked out for John alone. And then I scroll down to October 3rd, and suddenly there’s a bunch of white space. No wonder i have that anxious, excitable feeling like I’ve been strapped into a rollercoaster and it’s starting to click up the tracks. 

Meanwhile, I’ve been engaging in a power trip with the customer service reps who should be helping honor my warranty for a broken patio umbrella. Before any of you kindly suggest that I should no longer have to deal with such mundane crap, please know 1) you’re likely right, and 2) I’m still not ready to fully surrender this hokey pokey between Earth and spirit. The human experience these days is filled with bureaucratic annoyance and I only have about 29 days or so left to enjoy it. There’s only so much relaxing and love-and-joy accepting I can metabolize each day, and getting a wee salty with email reps seems to be a fine way to use up nervous energy. 

In other news, a friend wrote last week to say what struck her about my October plan is that it sounds like I have no fear of death. Since then I’ve wondered if this is true,. It feels true, but I also know the forces of repression, bypassing, and dissociation are strong and sneaky, and I’m just as susceptible as any other Jane.. Might my cranky exchange with the umbrella warranty people be a sideways expression of terror? Or maybe it’s grief talking? Or would all reasonable people get upset when corresponding with an insurance provider who appears incapable of opening an attachment!? 

I think it’s understandable to be afraid of death, and skeptical of those who say they aren’t. Fear of death is normal. Who wouldn’t be afraid of leaving the light of the known world for the great dark mystery? On this side of the veil all we “see” of death while still living---if we physically see it at all in this death-hushed culture---is a dead body. There’s no animating force left. Someone is there, and then they’re not.  You used to have conversations, and now you can’t.. And if you try to keep having conversations with the deceased, and feel you actually are getting answers, you best be careful who you confess it to; there’s still judgment aplenty out there for cross-corporeal communication. 

In any case I’ve noticed most people who claim they don’t fear death are still very much alive. You Scorpios out there---I see you---are known for waxing romantic about the beauty of death, but I’ve noticed few have jumped on my suggestions to honor that attraction by volunteering for hospice. Why is that? I’m not here to start astro-rivalries though, many, many people speak with bravado about death while still holding her at a safe distance. 

Yet there's a subset of people who genuinely have little fear of the transition---and indeed, call it a transition instead of merely an ending--- because they’ve had an exhilarating near-death experience or they’ve had undeniable contact with those who’ve passed. In the majority of cases these experiences simply can’t be written off as wishful thinking---they are often life changing.  And those of us who prefer the easier, softer way,  may have ingested enough entheogens (or other psychedelics) to claim embodied knowledge that consciousness itself cannot be destroyed. (My current best understanding is that the aperture surrounding it simply changes based on conditions of “light.”) If you try to argue with those of us who’ve witnessed as much, you won’t get far. It’s like we’ve had our own religious conversion, and materialist logic is a flimsy adversary to what we know in our bones. 

But here’s the thing. Despite my trust that consciousness will survive the death of my body, it’s not as if I know where I’m going in the white space of my calendar. There’s no Fodor’s Travel Guide to the other side, and the glut of pastel-covered books in the spirituality/metaphysics sections, while sometimes compelling, are heavy in anecdote by necessity and often conflict wildly in message. Perhaps the other side of the veil is meant to be a mystery, it’s part of the design. If we could define and measure everything about Source /God/dess/HP/The Universe, I’m thinking it wouldn’t actually be very divine. 

So I want permission to fear death. I want permission to feel everything and anything at the end of my life, without trying to hold myself to inhuman expectations. Grief, joy, heartbreak, tenderness, rage, lust, loneliness, despair, confusion, contentment.. The whole human shebang. Artists want access to the full color palette to express the nuance of their visions. Shouldn’t the dying/living be given the same freedom and dignity in their emotional lives? God save me from having to be “positive” all the time, because doing so only expresses terror and contempt for “negativity.” And it’s hard to be around someone unfailingly chipper. Like those who claim they never get annoyed with customer service reps. It’s suspicious. 

Even if I know the roller coaster is safe, my stomach is still gonna drop during the fall. My loved ones can walk me straight to the edge of my calendar, and even if I trust there’s loved ones waiting on the other side of the blank space to catch me, i need to be willing to leap from one grasp to another. There’ll be a moment suspended in air, right? How could there not be? Sarah, my beloved nurse friend who’s coming to stay with us in October, tells me she’s never once seen a hospice patient dying who didn’t have a smile on their face or a profound air of peace surrounding them. Maybe it’s even easier than I think. 

In either case, I’m sure the next few weeks will uncover much more. I’m trying to remember Ii have permission to feel everything. Everything! Until I’m no longer in human form, I want to welcome the full human experience, as messy as it can be, sans judgment. Annoyance at Allstate included. Nervous excitement included. Big love, big tears, and hopefully big laughter every day. Thanks so much friends for coming alongside for the ride---you all have really been showing up, and I’m so grateful for the good company. 

​
Photo of woman leaping by Sammie Chaffin via Unsplash

​

Yesterday I started fantasizing about creating some grandiose post about how it’s so very un-woke for anyone to ever complain about turning forty, especially when it’s actually a huge accomplishment for some of us, and some people never get the privilege. But then I remembered competitive gratitude makes for tired tropes, and I’m sick of acting like a (cranky) inspiration mascot just because I’ve endured a wicked illness for longer than anyone expected, including me. 

It doesn’t help that I’ve written a book that attempts to dismantle spiritual bypassing while also making a case for “gifts” coming out of illness. I’ll admit it’s been a tough needle to thread and most days I suspect I’ve failed miserably at pulling it off. Poor John suffers my mood shifts.

Today I cried, hard, because I want a haircut so bad. My mom took a picture of me and my pandemic hair and it’s a real catastrophe. I’m still struggling to accept that my mouth is so weak that I’m drooling in an increasing number of moments. The West is burning and it’s still a question for some whether or not Black lives fucking matter. JK Rowling has taken a swan dive into hate and Trump flags actually exist and people actually fly them. Days ago my friend’s kitten ran into the street and met a quick death, and she and her wife had to bury the little furry loveball in their yard, and sometimes I struggle to find any meaning in any of it and it sucks that no one, absolutely no one, has any satisfying answers.

In some moments I wish my powerchair had a super charged red eject button which could just pitch me into space beyond the gravity barrier so I can finally get some perspective, and float, and exhale.

But after the big feelings break through and I weep freely for America and kittens and John and my hair, it’s time for a sponge bath. And since I can’t take any more news because it’s 2020 we play good music and I get reminded that somehow, some pockets of life on Earth are still okay. After all these years Ani DiFranco still manages to name it like it is with a bebop to boot. Our space heater still makes the bathroom cozy and my exhausted husband still finds the energy to hum and smile at me while soaping up my limp arms. I can see the cottonwood leaves fluttering and yellow through the bathroom window and they are so beautiful and fleeting it hurts. And I already got to vote.
​​
So I'll say if anyone else out there is feeling conflicted about the existential threat of turning forty when all currently available data hints you will likely live to eighty, sans paralysis, that’s okay. I’ll forgive you. Forty is an accomplishment, as is eighty, as is twelve, in this world at least, especially now. This shit isn’t for the faint of heart. I haven’t actually figured much of anything out about life but I think It’s fair to feel heartbroken and afraid even if things are generally working out personally, whatever that means---because we all know if things aren’t coming together they’re falling apart. Maybe if on some days we can only see the light reflected in tiny slivers in the world around us, that’s good enough.

It seems many among my circle of contacts have noticed some demographics--mostly the young and sometimes the old--are failing to heed the urgent pleas to social distance as much as reasonably possible, and are understandably annoyed at the risks they take which threaten the rest of us and our shared healthcare system in direct or indirect ways. I get it. It is annoying, maybe even careless and selfish and blissfully unaware. But more than just those who can’t resist gathering with friends because they assume they won’t get sick, I’m seeing a more insidious and purposeful form of magical thinking sprouting up at the edges of the alternative health and metaphysical communities which has its own flavor of privilege and disassociation. It sounds like this: “germs are only real if you believe they are. You’re only susceptible to illness if your thinking is unhealthy and ‘low vibration’. Infection is not a real, objective phenomenon unless you buy into media/collective hysteria. Everyone should just relax, trust their bodies, and we’ll have no problem.”

Yes, research now suggests being in a chronic state of fear or worry can lower our immunity. Panic can cause us to lose our good judgment. Certainly, getting in a hair-pulling fight with strangers in the toilet paper aisle has its risks. Whenever possible and reasonable and appropriate to the situation, it is absolutely healthy to relax.

But what’s being missed in these “there is nothing to fear” scenarios is that fear still has a rightful role in the human organism. Animals have scales or fangs or claws, and humans have legs or wheels to distance ourselves from threats. These tools are self-protective, meaning they are designed to help us live for as long as reasonably possible among our herds or habitats. And, if we have paid any attention at all to the media reports of what is happening in other countries with this virus and what is beginning to happen in hospitals here, it’s glaringly obvious that a certain measure of fear, vigilance and self-protection is a healthy, life-giving response for ourselves and our communities.

Yesterday a friend shared a video by celebrity psychiatrist Kelly Brogan, who brands herself as “holistic”. I’ve respected this doctor in the past for her willingness to think outside the box of standard psychiatry to redefine the causes of mental health and illness. But during this video--which she created after being supremely annoyed her dance class was canceled due to Covid--she went on to say a number of things. One, she no longer believes in the reality of germs, contagion, or infection as an objective reality. Two, believing that it’s healthy to distance ourselves from others to slow a pandemic is a “childish” narrative, and three, we all are being asked to ”evolve” our ideas to see fear as the real threat to humanity, (Except for 5G, which for some reason was unique to pass the purity test of being fear worthy.) And that’s the point I turned off her video.

Having spent my share of time in communities of people hoping to radically heal chronic or terminal illness, I’ve heard this type of argument before. Common themes, often informed by a weird mashup of Ayn Rand-type extreme self-determinism and the purportedly channeled messages of ascended masters have these common features: “everything good or bad that happens to you is the result of your own (usually, psychospiritual or mental) state“, “there are no collective or systemic realities beyond what you give power to through your attention,” and, “you are actually in control of everything, and you simply have to use your mind as the all-powerful tool that it is to create your preferred reality." Well, with all due respect to the dreamers out there, barf.

Let’s put aside for a moment that most of these arguments come from people with a lot of privilege, who are usually white, relatively wealthy, and have grown up in western countries with decent infrastructure and public resources and opportunity. I can’t help but wonder how these theories would land with people in poor countries whose children are dying because of parasites and poo and whatever else in their drinking water, who would do anything for the “superstitious” hygiene protections and resources Western nations have--or who live even today in Flint, Michigan for that matter, or on under-resourced Native American reservations. Do they know how insulting it can be to have more white saviors lecture others on the need to outgrow “childish” concerns about health, to “evolve” into realizing their illnesses and pandemics have nothing to do with systemic or structural realities and actual germs or toxins, but instead they have “believed the toxins into being”?

If you’re so mentally or spiritually evolved that you no longer need to wash your hands and are exempt from pandemic, congratulations! But please keep your distance from my loved ones, and please don’t go spreading the virus of victim-blaming toward those who get sick by being a part of this big, wild, beautiful, tragic, interconnected planet. We no longer have the luxury to discard each other because we’d rather spend our time manifesting for our personal desires than paying attention to collective realities which are actually all too real for people, animals, and land. If you’re going to speak a good game of compassion and spiritual maturity; please live it. You’re not the only one here.