Tending to Endings

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Tending to Ending (fifty-seven)

I found myself sneaking around, arranging Zoom meetings while my husband was at tennis. Even I didn’t know what to make of this behavior! I tend to be–as my friend Debbie calls it–an external processor, talking my way through any major decision.

I was pretty sure my hesitancy had little to do with John. In the twenty years we’ve been together, John has been supportive of so many of my endeavors: to become a freelance writer, to take on a leadership position at a college, to leave that job of ten years (health insurance and all) to be with my mom at the end of her life.

Sure, I support John’s passions too, but first I worry about how these changes might affect me. Only eventually do I remember that I love John and I want him to be happy and things always seem to work out well when we follow the nudging of our hearts.

For John, this process of jumping aboard with me seems to collapse into a millisecond if he has to go through it at all. When I tell him I’m writing a book or going to river guide school, he meets me with genuine enthusiasm. All this to say, I am very lucky.

John and I have been in love for twenty years and celebrated 15 years of marriage on summer solstice.

Yet, here I was during the two weeks John and I had together in Hawaii, hiding my journal beneath a stack of books, stepping out of the condo to take phone calls, being very intentional in not mentioning that I was researching graduate schools.

Seminaries to be more specific. Not telling most of my friends, either, as I visited virtual classes, talked with admissions counselors and current students, and contemplated signing on for a second post-graduate degree–this one a Master’s in Divinity with a focus in inter-religious chaplaincy.

Maybe I was waiting because I wasn’t sure and this thing I was considering is time consuming (I’m fifty-six!) and illogical (I don’t belong to a church!). But, I kind of specialize in impractical, time-intensive pursuits—I’ve been a triathlete, high school English teacher, mother of twins!

No, deep down I knew. The reason I wasn’t saying anything was because I probably was going to follow through with this particular endeavor and that would mean change.

One blog post is not enough for me to do justice to why I’m at this juncture right now–planning to attend classes (online) in fall at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities. I’m not sure where this education will ultimately lead. But of course my interest is at least in part informed by the same questions that prompted me to start writing Tending to Endings, and so I wanted to write something about it here.

Being with the dying is many, many things–heartrending, confusing, transformative, messy, emotional, stressful, beautiful, strange. Also, sacred. Sacred the way being present to welcome a baby into the world is sacred.

The last days I spent with my friends Susan and Ellen, and the months I spent with my mom during her decline, revealed how hard it can be to make room for relationships during the final stage of life. Also, those experiences showed me that making a even a little room for relational, the communal, the spiritual, could bring a reprieve and even meaning to seemingly unbearable conditions.

After my mom’s long bleak trek through surgeries and treatments and waiting rooms and visits to the ER, my main question for the hospice intake counselor was simple: How do we get more life into the end of Mom’s life?

Hospice was incredibly helpful in making that possible. It still was not easy: caregiving continued to take the bulk of our time and energy. But there were also Scrabble games and songs sung together and Jane’s Big-Head book, which I now know from my doula training is called a legacy project. My family and I found opportunities to each say what was on our hearts. And there were stretches of time for staring out over the ocean together and noticing, suddenly, that the shadows in the reef below were turtles swimming.

I don’t often write about my own spiritual journey directly. For one thing, it’s hard! Even Virginia Woolf thought so:

As for the soul… the truth is, one can’t write directly about the soul. Looked at, it vanishes; but look at the ceiling, at Grizzle [the dog], at the cheaper beasts in the Zoo which are exposed to walkers in Regent’s Park, and the soul slips in.

Plus my religious education is a bit all over the map: a Lutheran Sunday school when I was very young; a Presbyterian church with a friend in grade school; at one time, I even joined the Catholic church for a relationship that lasted about two years.

My spiritual practice began in earnest, though, when I was still a teenager and alcoholism led me to a recovery community where I found an openness to all spiritual paths. Since then, prayer and meditation have been part of my everyday life, and I have found spiritual sustenance many places: meetings in church basements and yoga class and poetry books. On walks with friends, and around the campfire with family, and kayaking through a river canyon with John.

Recently, when I sat in on seminary classes while researching schools, I quickly learned my experience is not all that rare. I heard terms like “previously unchurched,” or “denominationally challenged,” which made me feel right at home! I still have many, many questions, and about all I know for sure about this next step is that I’m very excited to learn.

John’s church

My secret from John did not last long. On the seventh day of our time in Hawaii, we sat on the lanai watching for sea turtles. There were an abundance of them near shore on this trip, as though the turtles had grown accustomed to having the beaches to themselves during the pandemic. Finally, I took a deep breath and told John I was looking into graduate schools, explaining that after doula training, which I loved, I knew I wanted to learn more.

“So what would the actual degree be?”

“A Master of Divinity.”

“Wow, that’s cool! Sounds like you should get a purple robe and wand when you graduate!”

“Probably not. But if I did the whole program, I’d be an interfaith chaplain, maybe a hospice chaplain.”

“You’d be good at that.”

Have I mentioned, I’m very lucky?

More Resources

Turns out there are many authors who are good at writing about the soul and so I thought I’d include some of my library in the resource section of this post. These are books I’ve turned to over the last few years. Some, old favorites like Mary Oliver and Parker Palmer. Others I’ve found recently: Linda Hogan, Henri Nouwen, Christian Wiman , and Robin Wall Kimmerer.

Many have been included in other posts, but they all feel like friends so I wanted to include them again. I have pulled one gem from each, which is not nearly enough to do them justice, but at least will give you a taste in case you want explore more.

Healing the Heart of Democracy: The Courage to Create a Politics Worthy of the Human Spirit, Parker J. Palmer

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love.

Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Marie Rilke (also, Book of Hours: Love Poems to God edited by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy)

…I would like to beg you, dear sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom, John O’Donohue (Also, Eternal Echoes)

As you begin to befriend your inner silence, one of the first things you will notice is the superficial chatter on the surface level of your mind, Once you recognize this, the silence deepens. A distinction begins to emerge between the images that you have of yourself and your own deeper nature.

When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times, Pema Chodron

If we really knew how unhappy it was making the whole planet that we all try to avoid pain and seek pleasure–how that was making us so miserable and cutting us off from our basic heart and our basic intelligence–then we would practice meditation as if our hair was on fire.

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, Robin Wall Kimmerer

What I mean of course is that our human relationship with strawberries is transformed by our choice of perspective. It is human perception that makes the world a gift. When we view the world this way, strawberries and humans alike are transformed. The relationship of gratitude and reciprocity thus developed can increase the evolutionary fitness of both plant and animal. A species and a culture that treat the natural world with respect and reciprocity will surely pass on genes to ensuing generations with a higher frequency than the people who destroy it. The stories we choose to shape our behaviors have adaptive consequences.

Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl

To be sure, a human being is a finite thing, and his freedom is restricted. It is not freedom from conditions. As I once put it: ‘As a professor in two fields, neurology and psychiatry, I am fully aware of the extent to which man is subject to biological, psychological and sociological conditions. But in addition to being a professor in two fields I an a survivor of four camps–concentration camps, that is–and as such I also bear witness to the unexpected extent to which man is capable of defying and braving even the worst conditions conceivable.’

The Selected Works of Audre Lorde, Edited by Roxane Gay

And I remind myself all the time now that if I were to have been born mute, or had maintained an oath of silence my whole life long for safety, I would still have suffered, and I would still die. It is very good for establishing perspective. (The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action)

The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin

We are capable of bearing a great burden, once we discover that the burden is reality and arrive where reality is.

My Bright Abyss, Christian Wiman

All too often the task to which we are called is to simply show kindness to the irritating person in the cubical next to us, say, or to touch the face of a spouse from whom we ourselves have been long absent, letting grace wake love from our intense, self-enclosed sleep.

Upstream, Mary Oliver (also, Long Life; Owls and Other Fantasies; and New and Selected Poems)

But first and foremost, I learned from Whitman that the poem is a temple–or a green field–a place to enter, and in which to feel. Only in a secondary way is it an intellectual thing–an artifact, a moment of seemly and robust wordiness–wonderful as that part of it is. I learned that the poem was made not just to exist, but to speak–to be company. (My Friend Walt Whitman)

Callings: Finding and Following an Authentic Life, Greg Levoy

The particle chamber is a container for making the invisible visible. So are the compass, microscope, telescope, radio and television; so are scientists, psychologists, and artists; so is conscious attention.

The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society, Henri J. M. Nouwen (also, The Way of the Heart)

What does hospitality require? It requires first of all that the host feel at home in his own house, and secondly that he create a free and fearless place for the unexpected traveler.

Jesus and the Disinherited, Howard Thurman

The first step toward love is a common sharing of a sense of mutual worth and value. This cannot be discovered in a vacuum or in a series of artificial or hypothetical relationships. It has to be in a real situation, natural, free.

The Spirituality of Imperfection: Storytelling and the Search for Meaning, Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham

Feelings are fine, but they are also transient and ephemeral; gratitude is not a feeling but an ongoing vision of thank-full-ness that recognizes the gifts constantly being received. A feeling is fleeting, and emotion for the moment; gratitude is a mindset, a way of seeing and thinking that is rooted in remembrance–the remembrance of being without the gift.

Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World, Linda Hogan

We have forgotten that this land and every life form is a piece of God, in divine community with the same forces of creation in plants as in people. All the lives around us are lives of gods. The long history of creation that has shaped plankton, and shaped horseshoe crabs has shaped our human being. Everything is Maker; mangroves, termites, all are resources of one creation or another. Without respect and reverence for it, there is an absence of holiness, of any God.(Creations)

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Touching Grief

Tending to Endings (fifty-six)

I almost missed the iris this year! I made it home from Hawai’i at the end of May to catch the tail end of their bloom. I’ve always loved the curvy shape and deep color of an iris. And these days, more than anything else, they make my think of my friend Teresa and her story about her mom (which she shared in more detail in a post last spring).

Teresa moved back to Boise in 2016 after a particularly difficult time in her life. One of the many things she mourned leaving were the iris bulbs from her mother’s garden that she had transplanted into her Montana yard. She had moved in winter when the ground was frozen, and so she could not dig them up.

Teresa began to rebuild her life in Boise and was able to buy a beautiful cottage that called to her. The first spring when flowers began to bloom, Teresa discovered her new home was surrounded by irises. She knew she was in the right place. Or as Teresa put it, “God is fancy.”

I am so grateful to know that story. I love feeling that leap of love–that connection to my dear friend and her mom–when I see an iris.

It has been a gift to gather these photo stories for our virtual memorial. Thank you for sharing your heart and honoring your loved ones here.

Artifacts of Loss and Love

This elephant pin cushion belonged to my granny.  I remember as a very young child (probably around 6) that my granny would pull this down off the shelf for me to have something to play with when I’d visit.  I would pull the pins out and redesign the pattern of the elephant.  Now that it is so old it has faded to the pattern it is now so there is no redesigning it anymore.  I imagine I was the last one to place the pins where they are now.  Funny to think this is the toy a 6 year old would play with but I sure did love it and am so grateful I have it now. Patty Marks  

These shadow puppets belonged to my close friend, Alberta Dooley. They hung in her therapy office, her college office, after retirement in her living room, and after her death on my wall. We shared our lives, our families, and our confidences for forty years, but there were bits of herself she always kept in the shadows. Mary Ellen McMurtrie
My sister-in-law Cheryl made the urn out of my brothers’ ashes, after they both died within a month of each other in 2016.  I think of Cheryl’s hands shaping this, pressing the lip into place, brushing the blue-green glaze, her favorite combination of colors.  She used her tears as slip for the clay.  Now Cheryl is gone, too, and her fingerprints are all that I have left of a friendship that started even before she met my older brother, over 40 years ago. When I pick up the vase, I imagine my hands over hers as we both hug these men, each in our own time. Ana Halland
I was living in Yuma and my brother Miles was living in Tucson and we would meet to go hunting. These were some of the best times I spent with Miles before things got too bad. We were by the campfire one night and he told me how much I meant to him and he gave me this buckle. It was made by a favorite artist of his in Tucson, and I knew it was hard for him to give it to me and that he gave it to me because he loved me. To tell you the truth, I never wanted to remind Miles that he gave me his buckle because he might want it back. So I never brought it up. The whole thing meant so much to me, I wasn’t taking any chances. John Westover
Growing up, I spent a lot of time at my Grandma’s, whether it was after school or over the weekend when my parents were on an adult trip. My Grandma always had a cup of coffee, some type of homemade sweet on the counter, and she was always cold. Whenever I said I was cold, she would always ask, “would you like a robe?” My grandma had many robes over the years, enough to cultivate the perfect idea of comfort when looking for a robe based on season, weather, and time of day. 

My Grandma passed away in late November of 2020. Upon bringing home one of her robes, there were moments that I would just pick it up, hold it close to my face and smell the comfortable scent of my grandma standing in the kitchen drinking a cup of coffee and nibbling on a cookie. With each day the scent of my grandma has lingered farther and farther away from the fibers themselves, but each time I put the robe on, I am able to be comforted and warmed up by my grandma one more time. Ali Smith
Grandma Frances wore this watch the years of the later part of her life. I remember her drumming her fingers while she thought about something I had said or something she was thinking about doing. I also remember it flashing while she played her organ and sang “The Green Green Grass of Home.” Now I wear it most days while I teach and it reminds me how much she loved me, and would have been cheering for me to be myself. Lori Messenger
Jane Stavoe was my wife, mother to our daughters, and friend to many. Jane passed away April 2019. We bought our home in 1964 and that began Jane’s love of gardening. Jane would gather with neighbors and friends and share her joy from playing in the earth. She decided that young people needed a better understanding of where their food came from and invited 60 fourth-grade children to plant vegetables.  The school garden went on for seventeen years until we sold our home of forty-nine years and moved to a condo. 

Each year when I start planting our terrace garden and see the “Friends Rock” which was given to Jane by one of the fourth-grade classes, it makes me think of the many friends with whom Jane had shared her garden. Ron Stavoe
My mother, Jean Ingles Bedingfield, was born in 1910 and so even though this is just a broken plate of what was once a beautiful set, it has “lived” for at least a hundred years.  The set was precious to my mother and each time I look up at my shelf and see the piece I , of course, think of her with love and smile. I picture my mother smiling, too. The set was precious, but my mother was a realist and had a wonderful sense of humor.  She would love that I kept the piece and that I display it. Our connection is not broken.  Our relationship endures. Carol Buick
This plaque hung in my grandmother’s kitchen and I would sit and read it every time I visited. It made me laugh as it read with a Norwegian accent telling how to make “scandihuvian” lefsa. Besides the fact that my grandmother was an amazing cook and taught me how to make lefsa, this plaque depicted a side of my grandmother that I loved. She had a hard life growing up on the plains of North Dakota and Wisconsin. But despite the hardships my grandmother had a fun and silly side. One winter when I was 9 or 10, we made Christmas ornaments out of felt. And my grandmother said ‘that sure was some funny feeling felt’. I replied ‘I never felt any felt like that felt before’. We bantered back and forth making funnier ‘felt’ sayings and phrases for our description of felt. We thought we were extremely funny, laughing uncontrollably and nearly driving my poor mother crazy. From then on that was our running inside joke – that funny feeling felt, that we had never felt any felt like that felt before. So whenever I look at this plaque that is now in my kitchen, I warmly remember the fun loving side of my grandmother. Cam Victoria
Every time I see Rudy the Rooster, I think of my friend Susan Gardner.  She loved to go to Jim’s Diner, Rudy’s former home, for breakfast on her birthday.  Theresa Madrid
My mom was an incredible artist and left a treasure of her art work for her loved ones! I have many in my home! This particular one brings me closer to her each day! We share a love for flowers especially purple iris! Sometimes I stare at one of her paintings and realize how incredible it is to look at her brush strokes and feel connected! Grateful for the gift she left for us! Teresa McDonald
While cleaning the house in order to put our house on the market, this is one of the few old objects that made the “keep” pile. My grandma made this magic square for my 15th birthday. I can feel the love and care that she put into each stitch. It helps me remember the many blessings of the time spent with grandparents. Sandy Blethen
My mom died in her sleep ten years ago this summer. This is my stepdad who I call Papa. When I am with him I feel closest to my mom because they think and react the same – with big love. Lorelei McDermott
This glass monkey was given to me as a keepsake from my close friend Allie, who passed away. She purchased it to remind her “Not my Monkeys!” It reminds my of Allie’s gentle soul and struggle with co-dependency. I laugh when I see it because it’s just like her to get all fancy about the props she uses as reminders. Roxanne Abramowitz
The object in the foreground is a lava lamp which belonged to my grandfather, Victor L. Bedingfield.  Possibly fearing a probate battle among his grandchildren for this treasured, incongruous item, he gifted it to me on my thirty-fourth birthday, approximately six months before he died.  The faded labels on the base include a line that he spoke to me over the phone probably three weeks before his passing:  “I think about you every day.”  This shocked me.  My grandpa had many things, and many people in his life to think about.  But in a world where we often receive the message that we are NOT special, or unique, or cared about, here was a deep voice of authority countermanding that message and reminding me that I was being thought of.  The clarity of that message was startling and palpable and life changing.  And I realized that, indeed, I thought about HIM every day.  And so many others (as I know that I am not the only person that my Grandfather thought about each day).  There is room in our hearts for all.  So every morning, as the connection is made and the electricity surges through the filaments in the bulb, which then heat the orange globules producing the same strange shapes my siblings and cousins and I marveled at in our grandparents old fashioned house—I think, I remember, and I rejoice. Kevin Buick
Those of us who are able-bodied are sometimes referred to by the disabled community as “the temporarily able-bodied.”  It does put “the em-PHA-sis on the right syl-A-ble” as Mr Ellfeldt, my beloved childhood music teacher used to say at choir practice.

My husband Gordon went from able-bodied to quadriplegic in the time it took for a tire to blow out. This mouthstick was a tool of his trade. It was more comfortable and easier to use than the earlier ones with just two prongs. This one has a mouthpiece molded to his bite which was easily held and manipulated. The remaining marks from Gordon’s teeth are a surprisingly intimate and lovely reminder of him.
 
He used it for turning pages on his lapboard (a lapboard I am using right now to get the trackball down within reach after shoulder surgery) as he read aloud to me as I cooked or folded laundry. He had always read to me, though now there were pauses as he picked up the mouthstick out of the docking station on his wheelchair, turned the page, replaced the mouthstick, and continued on.
 
When he was first learning to turn pages in rehab, I couldn’t see how it would ever work at all. He used it even more constantly on his keyboard at the especially designed desk which came up to his chest. In time, his neck grew strong. In fact, his shirt collar increased two sizes.

The mouthstick was a godsend and yet it was slow and laborious to use. As I sit here with one arm in a sling, I’m amazed he wasn’t more frustrated than he was. He had helped to develop speech synthesis in the years I first knew him and here he was editing the monthly church newsletter one keystroke at time.
 
Gordon died nineteen years after his accident. There’s so much I didn’t keep, but this I have still.  I’m sorry I didn’t keep the plate-guards – they’d come in handy for me now. Louise Buck
As John and I built our life together, I became more aware of what I lost in never having had the chance to meet his mom who died in 1999, three years before we got together.

I came to know Grandma Dean through stories John’s daughters told and from John telling me how much she would enjoy my sons. Soon after we met he told me how his mom said when he was a teenager, “You better learn to speak better because someday you’re going to meet a cute English teacher, and you’ll open your mouth and it’ll be all over!” (She was wrong about that last part. :))

Some of the objects Dean loved grace our home. We have a few prints on the wall, an antique hutch with a marble top, three plates from Portugal decorated with peaches. And we have a drawerful of the chunky jewelry she wore that never fit my style or frame. John recently pulled this turquoise and silver cross from his nightstand and said, “This is sooo my mom!”

With the weight of it in my palm, I think about the objects and the places and the people Dean loved. I think especially about how close she and John were and how I know and love this man more with each passing year. It is possible, I now see, to grow a relationship, to grieve a relationship, with someone I never met. Laura Stavoe

More Resources

This American Life ran a show titled Good Grief last week that is right up our alley! Here are the episode notes:

So many of us, we don’t want to think about death. We avoid grieving when we lose someone, distract ourselves, look away. In this episode, at a moment when so many families are mourning, we have stories of people figuring out how they’ll grieve, and doing a pretty good job of it.

A new podcast related to end-of-life matters is 70 over 70 in which one of my favorite interviewers Max Linsky talks with seventy people who are over seventy years old. I found recent episodes with Norman Lear and Sister Helen Prejean particularly touching.

If you are inspired by these photo stories and want to read more about expressing grief through creativity, Heart Art is a Tending to Endings post from last summer that includes an essay on the topic and some resources.

To read Teresa’s story in her own words (and see the cottage surrounded by irises!) and other stories from readers, go to April 2020’s post: Your Words .

And if you like Tending to Endings, please become a subscriber by leaving your email below. Each installment will arrive in your inbox the first Friday of the month. Tending to Endings is cost-free and ad-free. You can also reach me at laura@laurastavoe.com or in the comments box below. I would love to stay in touch!

Laura

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Telling and Retelling

Note: If you don’t have time to read the entire post, please do scroll to the Call for Photo Stories section under “Artifacts of Grief.” I’d love for you to join in!

Tending to Endings (fifty-five)

“Does that make you think of Mom?” my dad asks.

I’m folding clothes on my parents’ bed because post-vaccine, I’m visiting my Dad in Maui, and the washer and dryer is in their bedroom suite.

“I think of Mom every day! Especially here!” I tell him.

“Yes, but when I fold laundry I think of how she liked to fold towels.”

And I do know. There were times after the Alzheimer’s advanced that I would pull clean towels from the shelf and throw them in the dryer to tumble a bit so Mom could refold them. It gave her a span of time where she knew what she was doing, which brought her a sense of purpose and thus peace. She particularly liked folding the towels and napkins because she could get them into a shape that was even and that pleased her.

It’s strange that this memory makes me smile now. The whole activity was out of character for both of us. I was being sneaky and my mom was keeping house.

Before her illness, I was the family member who pointed out the elephant in the room rather than hiding it under a pile of warm towels. And my mom, for most of her life, saw domestic chores as something that got in the way of her real work which was attending peace vigils, and writing letters to the editor, and teaching kids to garden or to read, and holding study groups in our living room about her newest passion.

The island holds many stories for my family. Mom considered Maui paradise and her second home ever since she first visited in 1976. While dad and I walk along the coastal trail, I pull my camera out to take a photo. My dad says, “Your mom would’ve taken a photo of those same blue flowers.” At lunch, a bird sits on our table and we talk about how mom would scoot her plate over and say, “All our welcome here.”

Even memories about difficult times spill out easily. The towels for instance remind me of once when mom was up in the middle of the night. I retell the story to my dad.

Her wounds from the cancer were bleeding and I had gotten her to the shower and washed off and somewhat calmed down, but she was still out of breath and hurting and I didn’t think I could get her dressed and back to bed. I said, “Let’s lie down here for a few moments.”

I threw towels on the floor and brought pillows and a blanket from her bed and we lay facing each other on the bathroom tile.

She looked at me and said, “I’m so sorry. You shouldn’t have to take care of your mother.”

“You don’t have to be sorry, Mom. Remember how many times you stayed up with me when I had the stomach flu?”

“You were a lot smaller.”

“We need help at different times. That’s what family is for.”

“True.”

“I might need help again someday. You would help me if I was sick, right?”

There is a pause and then she says, “Well, I might decide to hire a nurse.”

My dad laughs and says, “She really said that?”

He knows she did. I told it to him after it happened and during other visits and I have even written about it before in a story he has read. But we tell it again. It is a reminder of my mother’s wit and strength. It is evidence of her essence, her Jane-ness, even with Alzheimer’s, even on one of her hardest nights. Mom still had a talent for one-liners that were both funny and true.

Jane, Ron, Laura 2017

One of the things I learned INELDA’s Doula School—and I learned so many things!–is how helpful it can be to retell the story after a death of a loved one. The story of the dying, and the time leading up to the death as well, particularly for those involved in caregiving.

I had already provided this opportunity to myself after experiencing a series of deaths in recent years. I wrote a book and began a blog. I held grief writing workshops. I went to death cafés. I made friends with people who wanted to share their losses too. I see now that I found and created places where it felt appropriate to share those stories.

Like many of us, I have been steeped in a culture where talking about death is at best awkward and at worst taboo. I have traces of my old worries. Am I grieving too long? Making too much of all this? Will I get stuck here?

But it does not feel that way. And I do not see it in my father either. Not talking about my mom would seem strange; sharing stories feels natural, a relief.

With each telling the angle of the light is different and I see things at the edges that I might have missed. In so doing, the ache lightens and the smiles grow. Telling stories seem to be a way forward that helps me connect past to present to something I don’t yet know.

More Resources

INELDA: International End-of-Life Doula Association

Many people are interested in the role of doula: what it is, whether they need one, whether they should become one. The INELDA introductory doula class answered those questions and outlined many tools for providing emotional and spiritual support for those who are dying and their families. The class was delivered online, the atmosphere was warm, inviting, and communal. I was moved by how many participants already dedicated their days to end-of-life work as chaplains, hospice nurses, and other heath-care professionals.

I’m sure I’ll include other things I learned in future posts. But, in short, I’d recommend INELDA’s training for anyone interested in learning ways of offering support to the dying and their families. The coursework involves deep reflection and active participation. Be prepared to dive into small group exercises on emotional topics such as planning your own death vigil or imagining you have a terminal illness and talking about a regret.

Doula certification from INELDA requires additional steps including hours of supervised practice and an exam. I plan to continue towards certification, but even if I was not, I would consider what I learned extremely valuable to me as a mortal being who loves other mortal beings.

You can find more information about the course, the role of a doula, and a list of doulas who are INELDA certified on the INELDA website.

Doorway into Light

After hearing about it for years, I finally drove to Haiku, a tiny town not far from Paia and visited the Doorway to Light, which is a storefront full of resources about death and dying. The center was founded by Ram Dass, Reverend Bodhi Be, and Leili Be.

And speaking of storytelling! My favorite experience at the center was when Reverend Michelle Renee, co-director at the center, suggested I select figurines from the shelf full of tiny characters to place in a sand tray. “Whatever ones you’re attracted to,” she said.

I quickly pulled a robin, some alphabet blocks, two lovebirds in a boat, a table with a rather table set for a festive tea.

Michelle and I sat in a little nook in the store below a sign that read “Grieving Allowed,” with the circular sand table between us. After I had set up character asked, “Will you tell me the story?”

This made me nervous. I hadn’t really been thinking about a story and was just trying to be a good sport. I worried I’d let her down, fail to have the cathartic experience that the sand table and grief nook clearly intended. But I figured, I could make something up.

“These are my parents in this boat,” I told Michelle. “One of the biggest gifts from my caregiving experience with my mom was seeing how in love my parents were after fifty-six years of marriage.” Well, that was all true, and Michelle was listening. “I knew they loved each other, but I learned in the months I lived with them that they were still truly in love. They had all these little special jokes! They delighted in each other!”

And suddenly Michelle and I were both getting teary.

By the end of my scene I had discovered who each of those people were at my tea party including the strong woman who decided to invite death to the party. “This is powerful medicine this sand toy thing,” I said.

“It sure is,” Michelle said, her eyes wide.

Doorway into Light has a humble storefront and a big mission. It aims, among other things, to transform our culture by transforming attitudes and relationships with aging dying and death. Also, to reclaim the care of the dying and the dead as village-building work and sacred service. Not to mention, to provide low-cost and free counseling, support and burial to those in need and insure that no one need die alone!

Bodhi also began an end-of-life doula Doula Training and a Certification program in 2017. It is now offered in partnership with The Esalen Institute. Certification requires additional hours of work in the field.

Psychosocial Aspects of Dying and Death (PSYC 211) at CWI

This fall, I am excited to be teaching a course at my old stomping ground in the fall, College of Western Idaho. This is a three credit course that has both in person and online required components. The in-person meeting is on Thursdays at 1:00-2:15 pm at the Ada County CWI campus off of Overland Road. The course number is PSYC 211-01H.

This class is appropriate for anyone interested in learning more about death and dying, and there are no prerequisites. You can find more information on how to enroll at the college website or feel free to reach out to me by email at Laura@laurastavoe.com.

Call for Photo Stories

Artifacts of Grief

The sand tray at Doorway into Light reminded me of a photo feature in The New York Times last month by Dani Blume and Jaspal Riyait: What Loss Looks Like. The editors asked readers to share photos of objects that remind the of those who died over the last year and created a digital memorial. The premise was that during that time where funerals and in-person memorials have been curtailed, people are looking for ways to share losses with their communities.

Objects seem especially potent. They offer tactile evidence of those we can no longer physically touch. I remember my husband John talking about how wearing his dad’s jacket made him feel a little like he was hugging his dad the winter after he died.

I’d love to create a similar memorial of objects that honor people we (readers of Tending to Endings) have lost. I’ll include the collection in next month’s post, and I of course will need your help! To participate, please send one photo of an object that helps you remember someone you have lost and a few sentences about the story to Laura@Laurastavoe.com. 

These can honor recent losses or someone who died many years ago, whomever you would like to remember in this way. 

Also, you don’t have to be a subscriber to send a photo. If you found your way to this blog and would like to remember someone with others, please join in. All are welcome here!

You may want to click on images in the Times article for ideas, and here is one I will contribute as an example:

Pat Lambert was a spiritual advisor and soul friend to me for many years before she died in 2015 from pancreatic cancer. This charm from a necklace is something I carry in my backpack wherever I travel. Pat was the kind of person who never forgot a friend’s birthday, and even though she lived on a modest income and had tons of friends, she gave me a thoughtful gift every year. The charm reminds me of her spiritual energy which was full of pure, natural joy.

I would love to have a photo from you. No need to format the text and no need for perfection!  I can help with editing and will send you out a link before the email goes out to make sure you like how it turns out. Our digital memorial will be less polished, more homespun than The NY Times version as I have little photo editing experience. But it will be made with care.

Send the sentences in an email and attach a photo in jpeg format to Laura@Laurastavoe.com. Feel free to reach out if you have questions. Please send your photo story by May 21.

You can read or leave comments on this post at laurastavoe.com. Thank you! 

Much love, Laura

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Library of Love

Tending to Endings (fifty-four)

When my sisters and I left home, my mom turned our childhood bedroom into what she called the Resource Room. She wanted a place to keep books and videos she liked to loan out to people, usually about gardening or other cultures or parenting or world peace.

The shelves included titles by her favorite authors Aldo Leopold, Parker Palmer, Annie Dillard, and Marian Wright Edelman. A case within kid reach held books by Mem Fox, Shel Silverstein, and Beverly Cleary. She had the full series of the Little House books and her own childhood favorites about Betsy, Tacy and Tib.

Kids could also find bags of blocks and bins full of Legos in the Resource Room, or an African sun harp, a ukulele, and a shoebox full of kazoos. There were fresh magic markers, piles of paper, and sometimes even finger paint.

After the grandchildren had grown, neighbor kids came over and could almost always talk my mom into sitting on the floor with them to build a tower.

The Resource Room and Mom’s other love, her garden!
PSA: Remember to take photos of the family photographer

More than a resource room, mom had an enthusiasm room. Sometimes we talk about teachers as people motivated by self-sacrifice, but I don’t think my mom saw it that way. She shared knowledge because it spilled out from her and needed somewhere to go. She wanted you to have the same opportunities for epiphanies and creativity she did. Shared learning was her favorite way to connect. In today’s lingo, learning was my mom’s love language.

The grandchildren learned many things from Mom’s example.

Last weekend my son Dylan came by to install a late birthday present and an early Mother’s Day gift, surprising me with the little library we had talked about last fall. I thought it would be fun to put one on the trail behind our backyard where people often hike past to enter the trail system.

Dylan built it in the colors and fashion of our old Elkhaven house in the mountains we lived in during the boys grade school years. I loved the idea of it surprising people on their hike, though it puts some faith in people’s willingness to carry a book a short ways down the hill!

Our first visitors Olivia and Rob brought some books to share

I have certainly inherited my mom’s enthusiasm for sharing whatever I’m learning at the exact moment I’m learning it. It’s one of the reasons writing this blog has been rewarding for me. And I expect I will soon have more learning to share, as next week I’m beginning a class towards certification as an end-of-life doula through INELDA (The International End-of-Life Doula Association).

I don’t know if doula is the role I’m after, exactly. But I am open and excited to learn. I’m also grateful to each of you for reading along. I have missed writing a post weekly, and I think of things to tell you all month long! It turns out, shared learning is my love language, too. Well, that and really good coffee.

More Resources

Someday when I decide how to organize it, I will resurrect my resource page on the website. In the meantime, here are a few new finds on the theme of endings.

A Tale for The Time Being. A Novel by Ruth Ozeki.

Photo from the author’s website.

It’s not often that I read a book twice because there is just so much to read! But recently I’ve returned to two books that I have wanted to continue to carry with me. One was Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer, which I wrote about last summer.

A Tale for the Time Being, the second, is fiction told through multiple characters and voices. It offers meditations on the meaning of life and death across cultures and generations; on climate change and technology and bullying; on losing a parent or a child; on the wisdom and the blind spots of elders, and the wisdom and blind spots of the young; on suicide and endangered species and trees. On the power of words to transcend time and place. 

I’m not sure how Ozeki fit so much thought into a book. or how she did so in a way that is artful and engaging even when the topics are disturbing or complicated. I found the book ultimately hopeful, creative, and reassuring.  Ozeki’s site has a short video about the book.

When Women Were Birds: Fifty-Four Variations on Voice. A Memoir by Terry Tempest Williams

I taught a workshop and took a writing workshop last month and in both courses someone recommended Terry Tempest William’s book published in 2013, which I took as a sign.

When Williams’ mom was dying of cancer, she asked her to take her journals home with her, but to not read them until she was gone. There were three shelves full of journals, and Williams did as her mother asked. After her mother’s death, Williams opened each of the journals and discovered every page of every book was blank.

The fifty-four short chapters that follow are reflections born of those empty pages. It is a beautiful, poignant book, and it especially spoke to me now as I have become aware of the blank spaces that are inevitable after any loss. Mom and I were close, and still there are so many stories she never told me, so many questions I never thought to ask. Williams book is about loss, but also, it is about different ways of knowing, and different forms of strength. It is about how sometimes silence can be a powerful choice.

Dick Johnson is Dead. A Film by Kirstin Johnson.

Link to Trailer

When I was only a third of the way into the documentary Dick Johnson Is Dead, I was already reaching out to my sisters and friends over text asking—Have you seen this yet? They all came back, No, should I? And I answered, Not sure yet.

Now I’m sure. This film is in turns, creative, heart-hurting, funny, weird, sad, ethically complicated, beautiful, and so very true to the experience of Alzheimer’s. Or at least, for me, the experience of being a daughter watching a parent (in my case my mother) affected by Alzheimer’s.

There are many moments when Johnson was filming her dad and I saw something so very familiar. Probably most poignant was watching how Dick Johnson maintained his wit and charm, long after he lost the ability to understand or feel that joy behind it. He was charming by rote, by habit. The fact that this happened to another besides my mom seemed both a sadness and a salve.

If you aren’t sure about this one, you may want to start with an interview with Kirsten Johnson on Fresh Air in which she speaks to the challenges including ethical questions around the making the film.

Departures. A Film Directed by Yojiro Takita.

My cousin, Kevin recommended the film Departures after following my posts, and I’m so glad he did! It is a film that won an Academy Award best foreign language film in 2009, and there are many things that make it an excellent film: the music, the filming, the engaging story that took unexpected turns. But I think what it brought into focus for me most was how rituals and traditions around tending to the body of a loved one after death, can help us through all the other more nebulous parts of loss–the grief, the unanswered questions, the denial, the fear.

Saving a Language You’re Learning to Speak. Interview with Larry Kimura

Pu’uhonua o Hōnaunau Refuge and Kīlauea Crater on the Big Island (2018)

As soon as I listened to this episode of Code Switch, I sent it to all of my family members, and I wished I could share it with my mom. Hawai’i is sacred ground for my mom, and she considered it a privilege to spend time on the islands and to work with students at the grade school in Lahaina each week. She would’ve loved this hopeful story born of one man’s passion to keep the Hawaiian language and culture alive.

He Mele Aloha No Ka Niu. A Poem by Brandy Nālani McDougall

He Mele Aloha no ka Niu is one of many beautiful poems included in When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry, edited by Joy Harjo. This poet first caught my eye because she is from Kula in Maui’s upcountry, another place my mom loved. Like Kimura’s work, McDougall’s poems also speak to the theme of language and culture, lost and sometimes found.

Eagle Poem by Joy Harjo

And then I’ll leave you with one more short poem by Joy Harjo that felt like a gift this morning when I happened upon it. You can read or listen to Eagle Poem at The Poetry Foundation.

If you are interested in receiving Tending to Endings each month, please leave your name an email below. It is cost free, ad free, and I do not share your info.

I love hearing from you! Please feel free to leave comments (if you don’t see a comment box below click here and scroll to the end).

You can also reach me by email laura@laurastavoe.com.

Mahalo,

Laura

Jane Stavoe in her element with Bailey, Gabe, and Jeff.

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Granaries of Grief

Tending to Endings (fifty-three)

When I make cowboy coffee cake at Christmas, I still feel the warmth of my grandma’s presence. When I think of her brushing my bangs out of my eyes and pulling me towards her, I still feel loved. And when I think sometimes of my grandmother’s struggles with addiction, and what I suspect was body image issues and shame, I still feel sadness and grief.

When my grandma died in 1983, I was 18 years old, and just beginning to address similar struggles of my own. I grieved over the loss of her and the chance to open up to her. I would have liked to have had more opportunity to let her know I understood. I am still sad she didn’t have the chance to experience a world that was more supportive and realistic and welcoming to women. I would have loved to have more time to tell her how deeply she was loved.

There have been times in my life where I thought progressing through grief meant that I would no longer feel those kinds of losses. There would come a day when I would only remember the good. I would not have regrets. But that has not been the case. And today, it is no longer what I even want.

Of course I cherish the warm memories of my grandma, but remembering her pain helps me to connect to her adult self as I’ve gotten older. I feel even closer to her today than I did as a child, and this is true though she has not brushed bangs from my eyes for at least four decades. And that soft pain of regret over what was left unsaid is something valuable that nudges me towards openness and vulnerability with those I love.

Vic, Jean, Jane (my mom, with the braids!), and Carol circa 1945; My Grandma Jean when I knew her.

I’ve been rereading Viktor E. Frankl’s Man’s Search For Meaning, a book that begins with the recounting of the years he spent in Nazi death camps and moves into a beautiful, wise theory for living in any conditions. I was especially struck by this passage which I hadn’t remembered:

In the past, nothing is irrevocably lost, but rather, on the contrary, everything is irrevocably stored and treasured. To be sure, people tend to see only the stubble fields of transitoriness but overlook and forget the full granaries of the past into which they have brought the harvest of their lives: the deeds done, the ones loved, and last but not least, the sufferings they have gone through with courage and dignity. From this one may see that there is no reason to pity old people. Instead young people should envy them.

This speaks to one of the things I was surprised by after my mother’s death as well. I thought I would only want to remember the good times we had before her illness. The time of her illness was so difficult and so heartbreaking. And it is what we say, isn’t it, I want to remember her when she was well.

But my mother’s hard ending also is a window into her strength. It is a mystery to me how she remained so much herself even when she no longer could express that self easily due to weakness and Alzheimer’s. It is something I never want to forget. I want to remember all of her.

The passage from Frankl’s book prompted me to begin a list of things I have done during this pandemic year, which has also been a time of change and loss in a different way. I have often felt unfocused and wondered where the days have gone. Have I lost them?

My list included everything from caring for my husband post surgery to writing every morning (finally) to holding yoga practice with friends in my front yard. I quickly realized, this wasn’t a list accomplishments, but rather a list of experiences. I had so many valuable memories that I quickly ran out of room on the page.

We tend to honor forward momentum in our culture, and I think in in doing so, I have often missed treasures.

Will they ever forget the year mom made them eat Christmas breakfast outside?

Upcoming Workshops

I will be teaching another workshop with the McCall Arts and Humanities Council tomorrow, Saturday March 6 from 10-1 on Zoom. Beyond the Obituary will explore end-of-life writing projects. We will engage in a variety of writing exercises that can lead to legacy projects, family memoirs, letter collections, or online journals. If you would like to join us, we can still squeeze in about two more!

The course is funded by the Idaho Humanities Council at no cost to participants. Donations to the McCall Arts and Humanities Council are appreciated. Thank you to Kerri Stebbins at MAHC for all of your support!

I also encourage you to visit the page for Cub McCall’s series, Looking Ahead: Conversations about Aging and Dying. The online events I attended have been excellent, and it looks like there is an upcoming panel on Advance Directive Health Planning. The page also includes a list of links to resources on end-of-life matters. Thank you to Renée Silvus for organizing this excellent series and for inviting me to be a part of it.

Three Films and More Please

I’ve been receiving so many excellent recommendations for books, films, courses, and other resources about end-of-life. I had originally planned to focus this post on sharing them with you, but then I began thinking of my grandma and longterm grief and went that direction.

But this gives me a chance to put a call out for more. If you have a book or podcast or film that you have found helpful related to caregiving or death or grief, I’d love to hear about it! Email me at laura@laurastavoe or leave comments below.

And since it’s movie season, I do want to mention three films that speak beautifully to end-of-life themes. I will write more about each next month, but I didn’t want you to have to wait! They are very different from each other but each is brilliant and creative and moving. The first I’m sure you’ve heard of is Nomadland, directed by Chloé Zhao. The other two are not nearly as well known or new, but are equally stunning: Departures, directed by Yojiro Takita and Dick Johnson is Dead, directed by Kirsten Johnson.

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