FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH: Remembering My Grandmother
By Christopher Worth
This week we are going to diverge from our conversation on mind and world, just
a little bit. We'll pick it up again at some point next week.
Last weekend my grandmother passed away. And yes, it was a sad moment for me, but not in the normal sense of mourning or great loss. For me, my grandmother is not lost. As my loyal readers will know, I believe that she has passed on into a world which we are still interacting with (even though we can't necessarily see it). It is the world of the ephemeral, the creative, of all those languages that we have a primal need to make mysterious. I believe that God exists within the fabric of this planet, within the structure that makes up the everything. For me, God is everything and nothing simultaneously.
My favorite local priest, Burt Valdez, sums up the way I think about God in this way. He says that once when he was talking to a kindergarden class he asked them where Heaven was. Of course, they all pointed up in unison. He gently said "No. This is where God is." He pointed his hand out straight and began spinning like a dreidel or a whirling dervish. I can imagine the children's eyes as they realized that God is everywhere. That is why I am not sad in the sense of mourning or loss. What brings me sadness in reflecting on my grandmother's death is questions of potential.
My sister-in-law tells me that my grandmother said that she had done everything she wanted to do in life several weeks before her death. Still, I question if doors were not closed for her within the situation of her family. Now, it is quite natural to be taken up by life and moved forward by situations. If, for example, I had not been given cerebral palsy, I may have been able to become a great track star or (because CP is a brain injury and it affects the part of my brain that deals with mathematical values), without it I might have been able to become Albert Einstein. Then again, I could have ended up being a nobody. This is true!
If we exist only in the what ifs, it is too easy to only see the limitations and to never embrace possibilities. We must strike a balance between acknowledging the what ifs and finding a way to move in the direction of their positive outcomes. Over the years I have found that in order to shape these outcomes, one must recognize their full self. All problems, all solutions, everything that exists before now and in the future must be embraced because it makes us who we are. And by embracing it all, a strange thing happens. If one attempts to do that, then the realization occurs that they know nothing about anything about it, and that we can only start from where we are.
Several weeks ago I wrote about embracing all the stages of my development and understanding that all these stages are still active in how i'm developing. Well, it won't surprise you when I say that's what I believe happens for each person I come across. It's not a grain of wisdom that only I hold. My mom and sister came into town yesterday. When we were sitting at the table in Max and Erma's, my sister was talking about how she really was creative. She talked about it as though she had to convince herself and us, but the thing is (and I told her this) that I saw her creativity years ago. And for me, that young girl, that six year old that she was, is still active in her, although it may have been repressed by situations and time. I smiled as she talked because I can remember when I said to her, "Why won't you pretend with me?" and she said that she didn't like to do that.
I realized, sitting at Max and Erma's, that my insistence on my sister in playing pretend may have had the potential to close that door in that moment of growth. I thought of my grandmother and the sacrifices she made for their family and how, in the end, she didn't see them as moments she did not capitalize on. She just embraced the path that her life finally played itself out on. Whether she fully self actualized or not, she grabbed onto the idea that she had done everything she could, used every tool she wanted, and she was satisfied. For what it's worth, maybe the key is to recognize that potential is all around us, that doors can open and close, and that at our last breath we must have satisfaction that we are moving back into the fabric of consciousness having done what we could. Who knows? That last breath may just be another door opening. I think that's the truth that have gleaned from this week in review.