Death as a Companion
I am 75 years and, except for a touch of high blood pressure, (thank you and fuck you, Covid), in very good health. In fact, there are parts of me — specifically my arms and my legs — that are in the best health they’ve been since 1988 when I was stricken with a disease — diffuse progressive systemic sclerosis — AKA scleroderma — that was supposed to kill me. It wasn’t my body’s first brush with death; there was tuberculosis shortly after I was born, back when tuberculosis was “incurable”; there was double pneumonia in my teens; and the guy who held me hostage at knifepoint in my 20s.
On the lighter side of that relationship, both of my parents were pathologists. One of my most vivid childhood memories is of sitting in the waiting room of the morgue for the city of Philadelphia, waiting for my mother to emerge from yet another weekend emergency autopsy. I grew up with specimens in the refrigerator and was probably the only kid on the block with an actual human fetus in a bottle which I kept in my bedroom library. When I was older, my mother actually had me assist at an autopsy. So death has always been there for me, just another part of life.
It’s getting different now, though, and not in a bad way.
Because my experience with scleroderma lasted for about four years, during which time my body began slowly turning itself into collagen, inside and out, and then, to everyone’s surprise, and thanks to a very unusual and experimental treatment called extra corporeal photopheresis, it began turning itself back to normal again. During that period of time, I developed a very intimate relationship with my body, one in which I was forced to pay attention to her needs, to what made her feel better or worse. It was the beginning of a profound realization that “me” was more complex than I had imagined, that there were, as it were, ‘aspects’ of me. What my mind wanted didn’t always sit well with what my body wanted and, if I wanted to not hurt, then I had to pay attention to the subtle messages that my body would send me, small sensations, usually, regarding something that I was about to eat or do that would make my body feel worse despite the fact that my mind had thought that whatever it was would be a good idea.
About three years ago I began working with an acupuncturist to see what we might do with regard to the only indication left on my body of scleroderma: my fingers, which are tightly curled in to the point where they almost touch the palms of my hands… they stay that way; for the most part, they are unable to straighten out, though the tip of my index finger on my left hand has courageously managed an attempt to move out from 45° to about maybe 60°. I appreciate the effort; it helps with using the mouse.
Our work together — I see my acupuncturist about once a month — has led to seriously unexpected emotional releases and, over the course of the last few years, my body has let go of both physical and emotional trauma that she had been carrying around since I was a mere child. It was not what I expected to have happen when we began the work, but it was so profound and freeing that I felt that we should continue. So, we have continued and I have, for the first time in my life, felt a deep sense of peace and contentment that I’ve never known before. Meanwhile, my body and I have deepened our relationship and this year…
… This year, even as my fingers finally begin to seem to be developing a little flexibility, and as my arms and legs are beginning to grow hair again which they haven’t since 1988, my body has begun introducing me to what I imagine is how it will feel when we have to part ways.
Back in the late 80s, before I got what was supposed to be terminally ill, I had established daily morning yoga practice. Once I became so stiff all over, though — from scleroderma — so stiff that I could barely move at all, I’d try to go through the routine in my head. When my body finally began to return to normal again, my whole body and I returned to yoga. By now it has become an intrinsic and meditative part of my day, wherever I may be.
One morning, just recently, my body took advantage of that meditative state and, as I was lying — ironically, in corpse pose — I felt… something… it’s hard to put the sensing of it in words… but it was as though most of my right leg lifted up out of my body — it was still connected at the hip, but definitely “out” from my foot to about midway up my thigh. It was a bit ghostlike. And it was accompanied by a very definite feeling; so it was not just a visual thing; it was very much a sense of a kind of leg-shaped packet of energy rising up out of a very physical leg that I could still clearly see was lying flat on the floor.
This was — emphatically — nothing like disassociation. I’m a champ at disassociation. As a child, when I was being overwhelmed by sexual abuse, I disassociated on a regular basis, “diving” into the earth and then “swimming” up into the trees via their roots, from which vantage point I would watch what was going on below and advise my little body on how to best respond to what was going on for the sake of efficiency and getting it all over with quickly. Decades later, under hypnosis trying to surface the memories, in therapy, or overwhelmed by pain at a dentist appointment, and, most recently, in an acupuncture session either where the pain or the memories or the combination was overwhelming, I have disassociated. It was my acupuncturist who explained to me, after she got me to return to my body, what I had been doing. Disassociation was automatic for me by then; it was just what I did when push came to shove.
At that moment on the floor, though, that morning, I was fully there, fully present in my body, and I knew… this is her — this is my body — letting me know how it will feel when she has to let me go, when she’s just too tired to do life anymore.
And I get it. And I’m so grateful that we have established the kind of relationship where she trusts me enough to give me this gift of knowing so that, when she actually has had enough and just has to go, I won’t be afraid… and, perhaps, more importantly, I won’t try to hold her back from leaving. Heaven knows, she’s worked hard. She deserves a nap.
