My father-in-law is dying. He has led one of those mythical lives that I pray are not forgotten as we rapidly rush to fully embrace modernities arrogant hold on a single narrative. He came of age in the same village I now write this from, a small patchwork quilt of little bamboo huts lining one dirt road, just miles from where Thailand snuggles the Laos border. I sit by his side now, watching him stare out at the coconut trees reflecting peacefully. He holds my hand, shifts his gaze towards me and smiles. “My children are here. We are eating well. I am happy. I am ready.”
When Pa was younger he would journey into the forests surrounding this village regularly to hunt wild boars to feed his family. Once a large one managed to narrowly avert his arrow and instead it was Pa who was attacked that day. He was never the same after that. Part of his brain was severely damaged and as a result he began acting childlike again, an oddly wonderful side effect of such a traumatic event that made it very easy for people to connect with him. That annoying trait of being a grown up, that makes you self-conscious and judgmental dissipated when that big jungle pig pounced my wife’s dad. As such, even though I speak very little of the Laos language he speaks and there isn’t all that much between the two of us that is relatable, he spoke with me easily, as a toddler would, just wanting to play, laugh and enjoy the present moment.
I remember when he came to visit us for our wedding, which took place at our farm in Chiang Mai. It was the furthest Pa had ever traveled from his home. Incidentally, it would be the furthest my own father would travel from his home too. For many, having the in-laws meet our parents can be an awkward, anxiety inducing affair. But for my wife and I, we knew it would be a delight. And we were not wrong in assuming this. My wife’s family arrived in typical Thai fashion, in the old family pick-up truck, two seated in the front and six or so in the bed. Being farmers, they brought with them much of their most recent harvest to share, which, at the time, was peanuts. My family and I were helping get things ready for the reception when they drove in.
Americans, due to mostly eating diets of sugar and fat are, generally speaking, much bigger than Thai people. Although my father-in-law had not met any Americans in life other than me, he knew this much, so when he caught a glimpse of my well- rounded father he just assumed that he must be his daughters new father-in-law! Upon seeing him thus, he immediately leaped out of the truck before it even fully parked and with a hand full of peanuts he ran up to my dad, put his head on my pops’ large round belly, proceeding to hug him, smiling joyfully with infectious inhibition. My dad began laughing so hard he cried. We all did. Pa patted my dads belly and smiled with his famous toothy grin shining from cheek to cheek and quickly began to hand feed peanuts into my laughing fathers mouth.
I have many similar stories to tell of my father-in-law. Because he never seemed to even notice that I cannot speak Laos (the language he speaks) he always spoke to me as if I could understand him. Where others in Thailand are usually quite shy around me, and I in turn am often rather shy around them, Pa just spoke to me as if I knew everything he was saying, and somehow, I always did! His heart was so open that language never got in the way. In many ways, he was one of my dearest friends in Thailand. He shared everything with me.
As it goes, all things must pass. Pa’s life is now coming to its grand finale. What a blessing for his whole family to now gather alongside him as he prepares for his next great adventure. He is displaying for us all how to leave this life with courage, acceptance and joy. A few days ago, doctors had him hooked up to so many fancy technological “advancements” that could surely keep his heart pumping likely for much longer than is natural. Yet he knew right away that none of that would equate to actual living. So late at night he simply ripped those plastic tubes off and used what little physical strength he had to sit up, slide out of his hospital bed and walk straight out of the room! As his family was sleeping next to him, no one even knew he left the room until one of the attendants noticed him wandering around the halls! Classic Pa.
He wanted to go home. Back to the village. Back to the Land. So we honored his request and brought him home. He knows he has late stage lung cancer, and as the forests around us are all literally on fire, the AQI often reaching well over 200, without the care a modern hospital can offer, it is unlikely that he will live more than another week or so. But as those born of another time, one more in-tact and better oriented to natural law than this current age know well, this is as it should be. Modernity confuses Order by always suggesting there is a better way than The Way It Is. Yet, there is always a price to pay for messing with Gaia. Sure, we have the ability now to have strawberries in winter, to turn on an air conditioner when it’s hot. We can video call a friend who lives on the other side of the world from the magic talking stone we hold in the palm of our hand without honoring properly all the myriad precious stones making the miracle allow for such convenience and yes, if we so desire, we can extend life itself far longer than the gods ever intended. Yet all these things have strings attached. In Pa’s case, he didn’t want any of those strings.
So now he rests peacefully at home, in the same place where he first fell in love, where his children and granddaughter were born, where so much joy and laughter and sadness and grief took place along with boredom and hope and longing and regret. So much life. He rests in it all. Present for what is around him now. There is no iPhone in his hand, no flatscreen taking him away to some other place. No microwaved processed “foods” or honking horns or sterile walls and neon lights. All there is is the sounds of the jungle night and the beating heat of the day. He is here. We are here too. We are together and we all know what is coming.
We are together, and we know what is coming.
painting by Amanda Sage and Joseph Robert Merritt
There has been a lot of dying in my world recently. It started with the passing of two dear friends here in Chiang Mai. Then my wife and I lost our unborn child. There have been others too. With most of these inevitable losses, we were unprepared, shocked by the news of their passing. Yet with my father-in-law, we are blessed to know before he leaves us. And as I watch the world around me and reflect over these last few years, observing those among our global family who cling desperately to old ways of thinking as if somehow by holding tighter the end won’t come, a parallel condition comes into view.
Modernity is dying. Monarchies and democracies, economies and religions, all forms of institutionalized variations of the so-called “developed” worlds’ view is entering its swan song. We all know it. Deep in our bones we know that what is holding this strange dream together is on the cusp. Soon, all that we know will pass. The views that have seemed so concrete, the structures that for, what seemed to be so long, held together ideas and illusions of order are collapsing all around us. We all know it. And we are blessed! Because as it all fades away, we have the opportunity to lovingly allow it all to die with honor. There is thus a real opportunity here for Peace.
My father-in-law, like all humans, was not perfect. He did his best given the information and resources he had available to him. In the end though, no one is thinking at all about his flaws. We remember him as a strong, loving father who did his best. Modernity, with all its terrible madness, has also done what it thought was best. It has foolishly experimented with very curious notions, toying with natural law, suggesting that certain humans were somehow more privileged than others, that humans as a whole were somehow more important to the grand unfolding than soil, the four-leggeds, the oceans, the sun. Yet in the end, Truth comes riding in like a freight train. Balance returns one way or another. And Death comes for us all.
I have had the great fortune to meet with many elders around the world from diverse cultural backgrounds. So common among them is the recognition that to live well is to die well, and vice vera. There is a constant thread among most land-based peoples I have connected with through my travels that suggests that we ought set aside a bit of time each day to meditate on dying, so that we stay ever-present and always steeped in deep awareness and gratitude for this precious human experience. It won’t last very long and we would be foolish to waste our time here.
As humans, we have the ability to be kind. Many living beings are kind, in fact. Elephants die well. They even collectively grieve the loss of their deceased beloveds. It is unwise to be cruel to those who are dying. Likewise, we would be better to not regenerate our hate by enthusiastically wishing the death of modernity’s systems of amnesia and greed. True, the pain that has been inflicted upon the world as a result of modernity has been unthinkable in scope, yet as we can see being played out in Gaza now, and as we saw after the 9/11 attacks years ago, if we don’t choose to evolve beyond “getting even” than all we will do is feed the hungry ghosts that continue to haunt us. What we need then is not to start another war, but to allow the unnatural systems that already are fading to die gently. In all its horror, the past few thousand years of modernities reign have still managed to teach us many lessons, like a trickster who sheds light through curious means.
In her outstanding book, Hospicing Modernity, Vanessa Machado de Oliveira offers many ways in which we can do this. She speaks much more elegantly than I do about this topic and as such I won’t attempt to summarize her brilliant insights but rather strongly encourage all readers here to explore her work. Yet I do wish to emphasize that the current tones of ungrounded urgency and fear, whether they cause us to cling too tightly to a life that no longer serves us, or to angrily react in a way that dishonors the life of another, it’s all a symptom of the same fear that keeps us stuck in the same destructive, habitual cycle, generation after generation. Thus, for the benefit of not only ourselves but generations beyond now that we will never see, it would be wise to challenge our engrained reactions and experiment instead with presence, forgiveness, empathy, wisdom and grace.
We are together, and we know what’s coming.
Learn more about the work of Joe Bob Merritt here:
http://josephrobertmerritt.com/
Learn more about the work or Amanda Sage here:
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Learn more about the work of Vanessa Machado de Oliveira here:
https://decolonialfutures.net/hospicingmodernity/
#maypeaceprevailonearth