“Hi Dad. It’s your daughter Bethleigh.”

“I remember” he said.

Dad seemed to be having a good day. His nurse told me that she and Ross had slow danced during exercise class that morning. THAT was very good news. I tried to remember the last time I slow danced. Something to look forward to when I get there I guess.

As dad got himself up I noticed that the “Comfort Bird” that I had gotten for him in Patagonia was sitting on his bedside table. This little bird was made of rose wood I think. It was soft and fits just into the palm of a hand. It seems to live up to it’s title. I reminded him he could always hold it if he was lonely.

After our journey out into the wide world, we went with our Rita’s water ice, to sit out in the garden at the home. It is a beautiful little place filled with big sunflowers and those giant goldfish in a little pond. Ross became more relaxed than I had seem him for a long time. “Thank-you.” he said. “Thank-you.” He closed his eyes and swayed a bit as he does sometimes. Every now and then opening them to say “Thank-you” I walked over to the garden and picked some lavender, crushed it up for him to sniff. “Wow.” he said softly. I continued to pick herbs and crush them for him to sniff and he continued to exclaim “wow!” I felt happy that the herbs and I could provide such a simple pleasure. We both agreed that Thyme had the nicest fragrance of all.

The Vast Distance of Space.

It was dark. I could hear two voices above me,talking excitedly, a man and a woman.  I could not understand them. I was a little frightened but mostly I felt a warmth and comfort in their voices. Then IT happened. The space. I suddenly felt it slipping over me, around me, like an endless cocoon. Unfamiliar, vast, space.

This experience repeated itself many times in my childhood as I lay quietly in bed before falling asleep. Until one day, as a teenager, in a counseling session, thinking about this experience, feeling it and wondering what it was all about, I realized that of course it was me being born. I never had the experience again.

It’s interesting, isn’t it about space? We sort of take it for granted, never really thinking about it until it is not there, and then it seems it is more about our sense of entitlement to it. But what about the other kind of space? what about never having felt space before? Sort of coming from closed quarters so to speak and then suddenly having more of it than you know what to do with? Or even just completely not understanding space at all. In that case it makes sense that it should be experienced with the awe and trepidation natural to all things new and exploratory.

And maybe that is what it is like when we leave too. When we move from this world to a different one. maybe it is back to space, moving from one space to the next. Space is all relative to be sure and perhaps this time we move from a  different sort of confined space, the space that is familiar. the space we call our world, our bodies and our thoughts. maybe we move from this familiarity into a vastness unimaginable. Maybe it is scary too or perhaps the fear mixes with intrigue and curiosity as we transition into a new relative space.

This morning, once again, I became aware of space. This new space was light and conscious, and again almost unfamiliar. Previously it had been filled, seemingly every molecule with my fathers psyche  and the tensions between that and our own needs. We were residing it seemed in a cocoon of caretaking.

Walking through the house today puttering and doing chores, our space seems vast and rather empty but of course as the cliché goes, full of possibility. A lot like being born. And maybe too a little bit like dying.

Sometimes I am so amazed at what dad is saying that I can’t remember it later. Today as I was leaving he said “It is great that you can glow, in the rain, in the night. Maybe he meant “Go” I realize now and that makes me very sad. But he said it again, the part about, it is good that I can go away for awhile and do things that are good for me. I am not so sure about that. I am not so sure this is the right place for dad. But I suppose that probably I will go and do my usual camping trip and see how he is when I get back.  I hope it is ok.  I hope it is not too hard for him or too hard for me. I have to remember that it is probably at least as ok as it was for him at the end of this time in Arizona before I got him back here. But it still is so hard.