Nain and the Passing of Leaves

“The great Way is not difficult

It just precludes picking and choosing”

- Sengcan

A Welsh grandmother was passing away with stage four Lung Cancer and the annual pilgrimage of windswept fall leaves. There wasn’t anything that could be done and she knew deeply that the end of her path was near, whether she wanted it or not. As the disease progressed she watched her family come and go through the bedroom door, giving her blessings and longing “I love you’s.” Her dutiful old dog, Tess, her husband of forty-five years clucking about the room like a worried mother hen, her son and granddaughter flown all the way from sunny San Diego, and her frowning sister: each brought their own unique wafts of love and care that were tantalizing to the senses.

She had never felt so much gratitude before and she smiled at the grief of being torn between two worlds: this one and the next. As she continued to slip more into the unknown, simmering family dynamics and questions of morphine fell in and out of hearing. Her mind was going and the logical parameters or boundaries of what she thought was real, were breaking apart. Talking and breathing were hard for her now and there was a strange, ironic humor in it all. Being ok with dying, thankful, gracious, and lingering with this life, but ready for what lay beyond the borders of the known, where she couldn’t pick or choose. She realized that this life had always been this way.

In the midst of death, as all her opinions, thoughts, and beliefs melted away, a freedom beyond the scope of what she had previously experienced, leaped towards her. She had lost her borders and so she stepped intimately into the life she had always been a part of:

One day she awoke between dreams, pain, and memories, and asked aloud, “What day is it?”

Her husband responded, “It’s Tuesday dear, how are you feeling?”

She had lost her sense of relationship with the outside world, or what she once thought of as reality. All that mattered to her now was that it was her time and that she was ready to move on. She said, “I’m supposed to be dead today!”

Later on she awoke again to see her granddaughter smiling and holding her once strong hands: hands that recalled setting sail across coral reef passages in the Seychelles and plucking rocket lettuce, tomatoes, and fresh chicken eggs from her bountiful Welsh garden. Hands that had borne her children and grandchildren, hands that clasped her mug of white wine and slapped her thigh after a good laugh: Hands that had touched and expressed so much in this world and that held fast so many dear ones to her heart.

Her granddaughter interrupted her thoughts and lovingly told her, “I’m going on a walk Nain. I will be back in a little bit.”[1]

The Welsh grandmother was very tired but she had not lost her spirit and her humor.

She responded, “If you tell me that you are going to see me when you get back, I’m going to throw something at you!”

The grandmother held on, slipping in and out of consciousness deep into the night and the following day. She passed away, leaving her family to grieve as she went out the backdoor.[2] There wasn’t anything she or anyone else could do but accept the moment and appreciate the existence of a wonderful, vibrant woman. She appears now and again in the laughter of her descendants and the winds that blow their sails through the calmest of mornings and the darkest of nights:

“If you tell me that you are going to see me when you get back, I’m going to throw something at you!” – reverberating outward, her own fierce kindness was her Way.

Nain’s death was hard on her family, but easy on the sky under which she lived. When she let go, it all became so clear. I often hear this line jumping out of redwood tree roots, or the texture of frozen ice cream – intimate, yet tantalizing to the senses.

An old master said, “the great Way is not difficult / if you just don’t pick and choose.”