dying for a rare form of dementia.

it was of course sad to hear of terry jones’ death. as one of the stars of the monty python movies, i adored him. but it was the fact that he’d been suffering from a rare form of dementia that honestly fascinated me. i mean, is it to his credit that his dementia was rare? is it almost to be expected that someone so uncommonly funny would end up with an uncommonly rare form of dementia? 

hardly two days earlier, a friend sent me a video to watch, of a ninenty-seven-year-old man talking about his impending death. i doubt that it was a tremendously popular video. i doubt it ever went viral or that hollywood was interested. it certainly wasn’t worthy of a python skit. but in fact i really appreciated it. 

the old guy’s name was mr. fingarette, a professor of philosophy, obviously an intelligent person who‘d written several books during his lifetime. one of those books even specifically argued that it was irrational to fear death, a hypothesis that during the video he admitted was wrong. at least, he said, that right or wrong he finds himself fearing death and definitely not wanting to die. and personally i feel that’s where he put his fingarette right on the point.

anyone who knows me knows i’ve spent my adulthood as a student of life: a meditator, philosopher of sorts, a mystic of sorts. and as i approach my seventieth year one thing i can say with absolute certainty, after all these years seeking truth and knowledge: i’d really rather not die. at the very same time i also know with absolute certainty that the other shoe is gonna drop, so to speak. it may be sooner or later, but it’s a coming. 

that being said, the questions i find myself asking are: ‘how can i fully live the time i still have? what might i do to make a difference? how can i make more of a mark?’ and the answers i find myself continuously coming up with are: ‘there’s nothing more i really wanna do. there’s no reason to try making a difference and there’s no reason to try making more of a mark.’ in short, there’s nothing one can or perhaps should do, just live and then die. 

i happen to be a writer so i write. however, in all honesty i don’t have anything new to say. great writers, philosophers and mystics, much greater than me, have pretty much said it all. great world-changers have tried and failed to be immortalized by making their mark. and so i come inexorably back to simply stopping, mostly meditating. i come inexorably back to the honourable practice of letting go. there’s a space, a state within deep meditation in which desires and fears cease to persist, the questions stop, in which one dissolves into an ocean of blissful acceptance. 

great saints and sages have talked about that state all through the ages. i’m unable or unwilling to confirm their alleged findings. i only know that it seems to be a state that leaves one marginally better able to deal with ones impending demise. it seems to be an answer unformed, an acceptance undefined. perhaps that’s what’s left to do: to die with a rare form of dementia.   

my winter tour.

the ‘lotus heart centre’ is cool. majestically perched on the side of a hill north of brighton, ontario, the property’s large, sprawling, rolling. there are paths through the trees and the ice-encrusted grass crunched as i walked them. the centre itself is large, sprawling, perhaps even rolling. the meditation/yoga room is impressive, with a heated floor, and there’s photos of sri yukteswar, babaji, yogananda, christ, ramana maharshi, amma and another gentleman who seemed to have been a victim of body-snatchers.

i was mildly uncomfortable upon first joining the group. i may be on the asperger spectrum or perhaps it was simply a reaction to an unusual circumstance. having all arrived, there was an ‘orientation’ session scheduled that evening following dinner. that was to get to know each other a bit, ending off with a meditation led by andre, the owner of the place. i gave a short and, i thought, authoritative talk when it was my turn. and then we meditated.

now, as the meditation guru guy there was, i presumed, a certain expectation that i was in fact a good meditator, at least better than the folks actually paying to sit with me. but during that initial meditation, while everyone sat perfectly still and for what i thought was an inordinate length of time, i was restless. i was the worst meditator of the bunch. i wanted it to end. my legs twitched, back ached. i wanted to go to my room, lie on the bed and look at my ipad. i kept thinking: ‘jeez, i can’t just get up and go. i have to make a proper impression. i’m the meditation guru guy.’ needless to say i was damned grateful when the gong sounded and people began shifting, openning their eyes. of course i maintained my position just a bit longer, so people would see.    

it’s noteworthy that my restlessness actually subsided not long before the end of that sitting. my legs settled down, back stopped aching. and it occurred to me that my ipad could wait.

i adored each of the people by the time i slithered away three days later. the owners, andre and cezarine, a husband and wife team, had worked tirelessly cooking incredible meals while also leading sessions and taking care of a thousand details. dr. heidi walk is a medical doctor who decided years ago that she’d rather heal people. ok, that may be unfair. suffice it to say she decided to reinvent herself as a mindfulness meditation and stress-reduction teacher. and then there was me, ‘the meditation guru guy.’

the border-crossing after i left the retreat wasn’t cool. it was kinda stereotypically uncool. i was a little too loosey goosey for the immigration folks. it was odd to be looked upon as a great teacher one day and a great threat to national security the next. eventually, after providing proof of money in a bank account, their attitude softened. of course i could’ve been a terrorist with money in a bank account, but i guess that’d be ok. because they picked me up off the floor, dusted me off, apologized for tasering me and allowed me to enter trump-land.

ithaca, new york, is cool. there’s a world-renowned vegetarian restaurant with the rather unfortunate name: ‘moosewood.’ it’s not strictly-speaking vegetarian anyway since they offer a fish entree every day. when i was there it was a snapper of some sort. i had a snapper once, many years ago. that being said, the presence of snappers didn’t bother me nearly as much as my next culinary experience a day later. i went to a vietnamese cafe that had separate vegetarian and non-vegetarian sections to their menu. so what could possibly go wrong?

well, when i took the very first bite outta the springroll i immediately realized it was chicken. so i pointed out the mistake to the server who responded: “no you order chicken.” at this point i should probably mention that i’ve been strictly vegetarian for forty-nine years. so it was highly unlikely that i had ordered a chicken springroll. i could have early onset dementia i suppose. one might not actually know one has dementia, would one (?) be that as it may, the lady was a bit upset and repeated: “you order chicken.” so, being terribly canadian and a great meditation guru guy, or perhaps a guy with dementia, i simply asked if i might change my order. i even added that it’d be ok to include the chicken springroll on my bill. needless to say, i was somewhat uncomfortable during the rest of the meal, but it all seemed fine in the end.

next day i stumbled across a funky cool community-based cinema. i melded into the crowd going in and watched a great film called: ‘little women.’ i walked around charming if somewhat drab neighbourhoods with old houses that more often than not seemed in need of tlc. one large lumbering guy carrying an empty bucket, outta the blue, asked if i’d seen the headlines that morning. he approached as though we’d known each other for our whole lives, which i found at once both unsettling and somewhat endearing. i admitted i hadn’t read the paper, so he ranted on about how more people were leaving new york state than any other. all in all, ithaca’s cool, but two days was plenty and i was yet another person leaving new york state.

as it happened i made one more stop in new york state before leaving. the ‘ananda ashram’ in monroe, new york, is cool, i guess. the property’s large, but not really sprawling or rolling: a collection of buildings on two sides of the street that confused the heck outta me. i had a deuce of a time trying to figure out where i was supposed to be at any given time. looking for the dining hall in the dark that first night was downright freaky. and the ashram seemed virtually deserted. i stumbled around like in a scene from a scarey slasher-movie. finally, i caught a human who pointed me in the right direction and i gratefully made dinner on time, such as it was.

there’s a small lake to walk around, meditation with aging yoginis chanting mantras and reading panchatantra stories. my room was next to what certainly sounded like a room filled to over-flowing with a whole village of himalayan hill-folk. strangely, however, although i heard them well enough late into each night, i never saw even one. i had booked three nights at the ashram, but two nights was plenty.

northampton, massachusetts, is cool. now that’s a cool town, not just because i have dear old cool friends there. it’s just a vibrant, charming, cool place.