I am still alive but why
silvery grass that withers
at the touch of the snow
I’m in a village called Oughterard, 40 minutes or so outside Galway, and the weather is the opposite of Tucson–it’s in the low 60s every day, usually cloudy and very often raining or drizzling.
I hung a load of laundry on the line yesterday afternoon and it poured in the night. So you bring the clothes in and put them on this item called a hot press…it’s all very different from our Southern California and Southwest ways! But I at least escaped the extreme heat warning with which poor Tucson has been saddled for weeks now. I guess they got a monsoon earlier in the week, though, I heard from a friend. I kind of miss it. Whatever else, the weather there is dramatic (though it is here, too, in its way).
Anyway, I’m house-sitting for friends here who sold their house in the Hollywood Hills just before COVID hit and moved here–they’ve gone back to America, as the Irish call the States, to care for the guy’s elderly mother.
Apparently the peonies will be out here in a bit! Hydrangeas are huge–my friend Jamie has three or four different colors, and there are lilies, roses, a butterfly bush, a smoke tree, some iris and assorted wildflowers. Massively tall trees, including bay, horse chestnut and sweet chestnut. They have an orchard with lots of apple trees and a plum tree on which the fruit should be ripe next month. Blackberries abound on the “verges”…the area on either side of the lane that’s filled with ferns, bracken, and wildflowers. So all that rain gets put to good use.
The Church of the Immaculate Conception with Father Michael is right around the corner. 10 am Mass on Tuesdays and Fridays with Adoration after, and other Rosaries and night-time Masses and of course the Saturday Vigil and Sundays 8:30 and 11.
Sullivan’s, the greengrocer up the street, has delicious bread and pastries, plus cheese, farm produce, coffee etc. I was with my hosts, Jamie and Karl, for a week but they left Monday. I have a cat, Phinn, to keep my company, and the donkeys Bernie and Barry in the meadow down the lane.
I plan to do a lot of sitting and looking out the window.
Last week we were out to dinner with friends of my hosts and the guy, who has worked as a spiritual advisor and therapist, said that one of the questions he asks is, “How would I tell from the way you live that you know you’re going to die?”
Interesting, right?
Without even thinking, I said, “Maybe you wouldn’t travel at all any more, for one thing, but would just sit and look out the window.”
The punchline to the question, of course, no matter how you answer, is: “Then why aren’t you doing that now?”
So I thought of that later. Why am I not just sitting more and looking out the window? One answer is that I did spend about a week before I left for Ireland propped up in bed and gazing out the French door that leads from my Tucson bedroom to the mesquite-and-agave-shaded front yard. Gazing, pondering, not thinking of much of anything, praising.
But that’s the thing with life. There’s no formula. Would you blow all your money, for example, or conserve it in case you lingered on for many years BEFORE you died? Would you spend more time with people, because human connection is good and life-enriching; or would you spend more time alone, because some of us are meant for silence and solitude?
Would I spend more time writing, because my hope is that my writing is an offering to the world; or would I spend more time resting and rejuvenating, because I’m no good to anyone if I’m tired and wrung out?
Would I keep moving, or stay still?
The way someone would know from my life that I know I’m going to die, if they knew at all, would be from my inner life. My secret thoughts. No-one can really, tell–maybe we can hardly tell ourselves–what the guiding force is that drives us. Because I know I’m going to die I go to Mass. Because I know I’m going to die I pray. Because I know I’m going to die I weep.
Because I know I’m going to die I stay very close to Christ.
After 70, I find, you live with a kind of permanent sob in the throat. I don’t mean you’re always depressed. But there’s a shadow that is simply not there, is not meant to be there, when you’re young. No outward action can do one tiny thing to alleviate the knowledge that we’re going to die.
I like this reflection from John Henry Newman:
‘If you ask me what you are to do in order to be perfect, I say, first – Do not lie in bed beyond the due time of rising; give your first thoughts to God; make a good visit to the Blessed Sacrament; say the Angelus devoutly; eat and drink to God’s glory; say the Rosary well; be recollected; keep out bad thoughts; make your evening meditation well; examine yourself daily; go to bed in good time, and you are already perfect.’
Nothing heroic, but everything ordered. You can adhere to that order even if exhausted, upset, sorrowful, anxious.
Keeping out the bad thoughts is to my mind by far the most challenging part.
When I arrived in Ireland last week, I was just about dead. (What’s nice is that I’ve also met Dermot, the local undertaker). A lot of travel this year, a lot of doctor and dentist visits, a lot of mental and emotional energy expended. A lot of planning to be away from home for almost three months.
I feel my strength returning, though. Last night I went to bed early, woke at 12:30 am, and spent four hours lying in bed planning a trip the first two weeks of September to Edinburgh, Glasgow, Prague, and Budapest.
Who knows if it will come to pass but one way I show my knowledge that I’ll die is by trying fully to live (that’s the real question: what does “living” mean to each of us?) BEFORE I die.
a cicada shell
it sang itself
utterly away
—Bashō
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