Why I Meditate
and why it won’t work
Relieved to finally see a familiar face through the windscreen I almost jump out of the car.
Looking back, I don’t know what I was lunging at. What was I hoping for? A hug, an arm around the shoulder? Maybe just eye contact so my soul could see it hadn’t been abandoned…not again David.
“Nice parking!” my friend chuckled at me.
I look back at the car and see a vehicle that’s been more abandoned than parked. One wheel on the pavement three on the road. A diagonal protest. A juxtaposition to England’s straight lines carefully managed borders and endless rules.
I took the joke at face value, put on a brave face, but something inside had been dropped.
And this is why I meditate.
Because the opportunities to be truly vulnerable in society are few and far between. Every time I’ve been presented with one of those rare moments someone somewhere has dropped me.
Guard down, raw human frailty and not a safe pair of hands in sight.
Of course, my friend didn’t know the backstory to why I felt so fragile that day… but that’s kind of my point. We never know what people are going through on any given day
If he’d been ‘present’ with me that day he’d have seen the version of me that was standing there right in front of him, not the version he holds in his head (as we all do).
He’d have seen a person standing forlorn in the street with a barely parked car and the cusp of a tear formed in my heart, if not yet my eyes.
You see I’d just come from the train station.
I’d dropped Claire off for her final visit to Lancaster, her Grandad’s home town. Except he was no longer at home. He was in the hospital.
Not long before that, we’d seen him together as a family. Sat up and a storytelling in an armchair with a view of the gardens in the catholic nursing home run by nuns.
He was on the final stretch of his journey out of this world. Vascular dementia had tormented him long enough.
I was upset because I had had to leave my wife at the train station with the knowledge she was setting out alone for one of the most difficult journeys of her life.
Saying goodbye to the only reliable father figure she’d ever known. The man who’d been present longer than any other male figure in her life.
A man that, because of the dementia, no longer recognised who she was.
Hoping beyond hope to be able to say goodbye in beauty. To have a flicker of recognition but it wasn’t to be.
The goodbye was more darkness than Claire could handle and upon crying herself to sleep she woke for a September sunrise at the beach to feel something other than broken-hearted.
This end-of-life phase is one we’re currently revisiting with my own father. Although thankfully he’s been spared dementia.
You don’t know exactly when they’re off, but you know their time has come…even if they themselves don’t fully realise it
Each visit is laced with, ‘the last’.
The last time you’ll see him change the channel on the TV
The last time he’ll hold your hand
The last time he’ll see your children
The last…
The last
The la
And that’s it. Gone.
So that’s why I meditate.
Losing someone dear to you is heart-achingly beautiful.
In that no-more-ness is where you will truly find them.
Theres no more searching for their essence. Once they’re gone it’s very clear who they were and what they stood for.
Strangely, the things you remember most fondly and laugh about the most when they’re dead are the things that actually pissed you off about them when they were alive. The curious and annoying quirks they had. All their eccentricities. Adding up to the fullness of who they were.
So that’s why I meditate
I meditate to hold myself when others can’t, but mainly I meditate because I know my story isn’t my story at all. It’s the human story, and I don’t want to be that person who drops someone when they’ve been turned inside out and feel utterly raw and confused.
Will meditation prevent me from dropping someone?
I doubt it.
But the Grace is in the trying
✨😵💫🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰😭
🥲 beautiful 🥰😘😘