Meetings at the Edge by Stephen Levine

Author:Stephen Levine [Levine, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-77368-5
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2010-12-08T00:00:00+00:00

Losing Life, Choosing Death

EVELYN

Evelyn first called about four years ago. Her physician, who had attended our workshops in the past, suggested she contact us. Evelyn’s body was slowly deteriorating from ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, a neuromuscular degenerative disease that often consumes the body in discomfort and eventual paralysis and death. Her husband had died from cancer two years before, “As I stood next to the bed, his eyes receding into the darkness.” Within a year after his death Evelyn had received a limited life prognosis as ALS became more evident in her body. Her hands and legs began to stiffen, losing their practiced agility. No longer able to work her ceramics or “play with the potting wheel,” she was grieving the loss of her hands. In the first month of our work together, we investigated the possibility of her sending forgiveness to her body while gradually opening with some “don’t know” to what the future might hold. The slow and often painful investigation of “the way I’m losing the world” seemed useful and our sharings continued for over two years until her death. What she laughingly referred to as her “almost sensual rasp” became instantly recognizable in the dozens of phone sharings we experienced together.

After having sat with our meditation group in Santa Cruz for nearly a year, Evelyn decided to “take the next step” and attend one of the Conscious Living/Conscious Dying workshops. On the second afternoon of the workshop, as we left the meditation hall walking down the hill toward the dining room, her foot slipped and she collapsed like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Walking a few feet behind her, I kneeled and caught her in my arms, our eyes meeting in recognition of this “turning point.” It was the first time her legs hadn’t worked properly. The fear of that moment was interrupted by an ironic laugh as she hoarsely said, “Act III,” tears slowly forming in the corners of her eyes. Clearly the end game had begun.

Over the next year the increasing inability to control her body guided her into many “frightening and remarkable experiences.” “But if only I could throw a pot, even one a month, it would make me feel so much better. But as this ALS eats my body, I find life less and less available.”

At the second workshop that Evy attended, in the introductory circle a woman in her mid-fifties stood up wearing a Grateful Dead T-shirt that exposed her double mastectomy—flat-chested as a teenage boy—and said softly to the group, “Two years ago I was graced with cancer.” Evy was instantly drawn to Barbara and they spent “good time together” over the following months. Eight months later, when Barbara died, Evy felt a yet deeper loss of her connection with life. As the paralysis affected her chest and lungs, her voice became thin and weak, broken by the sound of her gulping air in an attempt to maintain an even air pressure through her vocal cords.

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