Vulnerability & Death

This morning my husband told me a story about a teenage girl who died this past weekend. 

While I was taking my son to Little League and my daughter to gymnastics, this young girl died tragically when a tree fell on her while she laid in a hammock in her backyard.

Her family tried to save her by having her rushed to the hospital by Life Star, but she didn’t make it.

When you hear dramatic and traumatic stories like these it is like someone pouring a bucket of ice water over your head.  Like the intensity of freezing cold water, you quickly wake up to the fact that you have again fallen asleep to the reality of your own death and those of your loved ones.  And with this harsh reminder, you are brought back to your senses that you too are invulnerable.

Vulnerability and death are two topics that I think about a lot.  In part because of the type of work I do with chronically suicidal people, but also having lived closed to several people who have been sick and died.

Most recently I’ve been living up close and personal with vulnerability and death as I’ve supported my mother in her cancer treatment.

Two weeks ago I brought her to her first chemotherapy infusion.

For those of you who have been through it, you already know the drill.  But for those of you who don’t, when a patient goes to the hospital (or in our case it is a satellite site for the hospital) for their chemotherapy infusion, she or he sits in a room with other cancer patients who are receiving their infusions at the same time.

The room we were in was large enough to treat 6 cancer patients at a time- each patient with his or her own big, leather recliner chair, IV drip and uncomfortable plastic chair next to it for the person who drove him or her to treatment.

Being only 38 years old and not having gone through cancer myself, it was surreal to be so up close and personal with illness that has the potential for death.

Though I think the personal and intimate nature of family illness is sacred territory and very different from the professional realm, you might think because of the type of work I do with folks who think about taking their own lives nearly every day might have better prepared me for this Chemotherapy Infusion Room, and who knows, maybe it did in some small way. 

But I think what got me, what really threw me off, was when I walked into the room and saw a woman in the room whose child is a year younger than mine and goes to the same elementary school, and she too was receiving chemotherapy.

It was like, one minute I was really trying to stay in my logical mind to keep it all together emotionally and listen to all of the nurse’s instructions, and then I see a mother younger than I and: BAM! Bucket of ice water right over the head! Vulnerability.

This topic of vulnerability has gotten a lot of attention recently with the popularity of Social Researcher (and Texan) Brene Brown including all of her books, interviews, TED talks and endorsement by Oprah Winfrey.

To me this is long overdue, especially in the connections she makes between vulnerability and shame and vulnerability and courage.

But when I think about vulnerability and death, I feel drawn to Philosopher and Poet David Whyte’s observations on vulnerability.  He says:

Vulnerability is not a weakness, a passing indisposition, or something we can arrange to do without; vulnerability is not a choice, vulnerability is the underlying, ever present, and abiding under-current of our natural state. To run from vulnerability is to run from the essence of our nature; the attempt to be invulnerable is the vain attempt to become something we are not and most especially to close off our understanding of the grief of others.

What seems especially relevant to me, in the context of my recent experience bringing my mother to chemotherapy is this last line: “Especially to close off our understanding of the grief of others.” Such an insightful observation.  How often do we avoid people, places and things that remind us of death and the invulnerability of ourselves and our beloveds?

See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, right?  If I just delude myself into forgetfulness of the reality that eventually everything and everyone will fall away in an un-prescribed time, then maybe it won’t really happen…

Not that I’m judging.  This is the human struggle right? I suppose this is where we might pull from all we know from the Buddhist teachings and practices about death, impermanence, ignorance, and delusion to help ourselves with this seemingly impossible piece of radical acceptance.

What is miraculous then, are those few and far between individuals who actually lean into the vulnerability that surrounds death- examples of which might be the Zen Hospice Project in San Francisco, California, one of many I’m sure.

Mr. Whyte encourages this possibility to lean into vulnerability with the following:

To have a temporary, isolated sense of power over all events and circumstances is a lovely, illusionary privilege and perhaps the prime and most beautifully constructed conceit of being human and especially of being youthfully human, but it is a privilege that must be surrendered with that same youth, with ill health, with accident, with the loss of loved ones who do not share our untouchable powers, powers eventually and most emphatically given up as we approach our last breath. The only choice we have as we mature is how we inhabit our vulnerability, how we inhabit our vulnerability, how we become larger and more courageous and more compassionate through our intimacy with disappearance. Our choice is to inhabit vulnerability as generous citizens of loss, robustly and fully, or conversely, as misers and complainers, reluctant, and fearful, always at the gates of existence, but never bravely and completely attempting to enter, never wanting to risk ourselves, never walking fully through the door.

So it seems we have a choice with Vulnerability and Death or Loss. We can either pick:

Door A: Inhabit vulnerability as generous citizens of loss or

Door B: Stand always at the gates of existence, but never bravely and completely attempting to enter.

Which will it be? Which door will you choose?

My guess for me, particularly in regards to death as the most radical form of impermanence, is a vacillation between the two. 

I will likely (ungracefully) continue to walk in and out (just as I literally walked in and out of the Chemotherapy Infusion Room) of vulnerability.  And I will try to be self-compassionate each time, to myself and others, because I don’t think there is any place for judgment here.

Yours tenderly.

Claire.