Sunday Blog 159 – 17th November 2024
It’s been a bumpy, busy old two weeks since I returned from Rishikesh. And almost every one of those 14 nights, I’ve dreamed of India. Unusually active dreams with colours, sounds, sights of India. And lots of animals.
Because I’ve been dreaming of India, does that mean I’ve been celebrating, not appropriating Indian culture?
While in Rishikesh, I often thought of Ram Dass, born Richard Alpert. Back in the 1960s when Richard or Ram Dass had tired of using LSD to enlarge his mind, he travelled to India. Spent months in ashrams, meditating, learning yoga, weaning himself of hallucinogens. He wanted mind expansion that didn’t finish when the trip wore off. He was one of the people responsible for bringing yoga to the west, and for that I am very grateful.
Then, he turned his attention to end of life care. He essentially became a death doula, although that phrase wasn’t used then. He educated others to do support dying people– Elizabeth Kubler Ross was one of his students. I’ve been re-reading his last memoir, Being Ram Dass, finished just before his death in 2019 at age 88 where he “escaped the confines of his increasingly painful frame.” By then he’d lived with the after-effects of a stroke for 22 years, and being in his body was generally not a lot of fun.
This week, I had a two-night work trip to Sydney and while there, saw a post about a friend’s ex, where she let us know he was in his last hours or days. He’d been confined to an aged care facility for the last decade, decimated by early onset dementia. The day before, I’d seen someone walking the streets of Sydney, just out of the corner of my eye. I knew it couldn’t be John, but it looked like John. Bustling along with a vigorous stride, how he was when I knew him best, twenty years ago. Her next post confirmed he had died.
That night in Sydney I met up with an old friend who also lost his mother this year and we swapped tales of our parents’ deaths, all of them in their different ways were a knock-down, drag out fight to the end. Like it was for John. For Ram Dass too. We agreed we want something different for ourselves when that (far-off, we hope) time comes.
Tonight, back home again, I walked around the block, savoured the sounds and smells of my suburban home paradise. Saw a plane in the sky and was grateful I wasn’t on it. Grateful for all the things.