Senility - the Passage from Life to Death

During a recent Centering Prayer meeting, we were practicing Lectio Divina with recording of Fr. Thomas Keating.  An excerpt of the recorded message follows.

“What you mean by happiness is pretty important. Success, fame, fortune and wealth, these tend to get drained of their excitement as you get older, especially in the mid-life crisis, and not to mention senility, and in the passage from life to death which is really a very special time in peoples lives. Of its nature it is a transformative period because the process of dying takes away the capacity for every other kind of passing, or, this world, of satisfaction that we might have hoped for. Everything recedes and there is nothing left but you, whoever you are. And so the spiritual journey is really a deliberate anticipation of the passage of death in which one freely and deliberately makes friends with this process that frees one from the limitations of happiness in this world and opens ones whole being to the possibilities that are unknown to us at first but which we finally come to know in the dying process is not going to work here in this world.”

The phrase that shimmered for me, wasn’t actually spoken.  What I heard and what I took into contemplation was “Senility, the passage from life to death.”  What Fr. Keating actually said is highlight in red above.  Praying with the phrase changed my relationship with senility which I interpreted as dementia. 

I recently attended a conference on Alzheimer’s.  My mother-in-law experiences some dementia.  My aunt recently died after living with Alzheimer’s for some fifteen years.  Other family members and friends are assisting parents who have dementia in one form or another.  Dementia has been on my mind a lot.

Somehow thinking of it as a passage from life into death removed some of the fear and loathing I’ve felt for the condition.  When I’ve been invited to journey the “passage from life to death” with family, friends and hospice clients, I’ve felt deeply honored.  Normal priorities are suspended.  Chronos time is entered.  It becomes clear that very little of what is usually considered important actually is.  All the energy shifts to presence…being fully attentive to each moment.

Obviously “normal life” can’t be suspended for 15 years, but I wonder if I can suspend my “normal” consciousness, and definition of reality when I am with someone in the passage between life and death (read passage between the worlds, read the passage between consensual reality and the reality I’ve entered with the person I’m journeying through dementia with).  It is no longer an option for that person to enter my reality.  I have been invited to enter theirs.

It is difficult to let go of my desire for things to be the way they were.  Sometimes hard to accept that things have changed.  Sometimes the person slips in and out of dementia, and I believe I can call them back if I just try hard enough.  I’ve experienced frustration with folks in early dementia, thinking they aren’t trying or they’re playing games.  I’ve felt angry that things are so difficult and frustrated at my inability to change things.  My contemplation offered me the possibility of other choices. 

I have a picture on my desk of the passage way in to the main chamber in Newgrange. It looks like a birth canal.  It is haunting and compelling.  Scholars have been unable to determine the purpose of Newgrange.  There are theories that it has been used for both birth and death rituals.  I am choosing to see the passage of dementia as something like that.  A place of sacred mystery. A passage way between the worlds. Preparation is called for before stepping in to such a place.  It is an honor to be invited to enter.