Up Until Now

by Petrea King

  ***

  I had only been in practice for a couple of years when I was asked to speak in public about my experience of facing my own mortality and working with people facing theirs. I was nervous about giving a public presentation, especially on such a personal and difficult experience—but I didn’t expect to have a panic attack.

  There were four speakers at the event, and we were all seated on the stage with about three hundred people in the audience, mostly medical practitioners and other health professionals. The auditorium had no windows. Standing for long periods has never been easy for me, as my legs become painful and swollen. But asking for a stool would have involved admitting I had a problem with my legs and bring unwanted attention to me; so, of course, I didn’t ask.

  I was the first speaker. As I went to the lectern, my heart was pounding. I took hold of the lectern’s sides to steady myself as heat rose in my face and my breathlessness and internal shakiness increased. I reached for a glass of water and spilt its contents down the front of my clothing. Without uttering one coherent word, I returned to my seat on the stage looking, and feeling, like a wet idiot. I then had to sit while the other three speakers eloquently delivered their speeches! I don’t remember a word they said as I was so consumed with the shame of having performed so poorly.

  The next time I was asked to speak at an event, without hesitation I said, ‘Yes.’ I refuse to go to my grave living with all the fears, limitations and anxieties that I accumulated as a young person. I don’t want to be defined by past traumas, and I want to grow and flourish regardless of the things that might have caused me to shrink.

  CHAPTER 24

  A growing confidence

  Other than my immediate family, everyone I knew had a life-threatening illness. Occasionally the children and I would socialise with my clients, particularly if they had kids around the same age. I felt a deep sense of gratitude for the purpose my life was taking on. Every day above ground left me humble and grateful for the opportunity to interact with such courageous people.

  When I asked them what stood in the way of them being at peace, people revealed extraordinary stories of suffering, of dashed dreams, of tortuous self-loathing, of broken-heartedness, of family secrets, of grief, shame, guilt, resentment, regret, abuse and remorse. Our explorations went to the very heart of our shared existence as we addressed the questions: Who am I? What am I doing on the planet? Am I living the life I came here to live? If not, why not and what am I going to do about it?

  These were the very questions I had contemplated all my life. How do we live a life of purpose? How do we identify our purpose? Does each of us have a preordained purpose or do we choose it?

  While living in Sorrento, I had asked Padre Luigi these questions. His response was simple: ‘Be where you can love the best.’ At the time, I’d drawn little comfort from his words as they only added to my confusion, but I had come to value this uncomplicated wisdom.

  Most of us want to feel happy and useful; that our lives contribute to the wellbeing or happiness of another; that our presence has nourished another human being; or that we have expressed our creativity to invent or create something of beauty or benefit to others. This isn’t about a life in neon lights—it’s in our small gestures of kindness, in the way we live our values, in the giving of time with a listening heart.

  Love is in the detail. It is demonstrated in the way we set a table, season a meal, stroke a brow, hold a hand, stand up when the world would have us sit, sit when the world would have us move to violence. It is about living a life true to our purpose and as an expression of the creative loving power of the universe. Not ‘my way’ but ‘Life’s way’—a way that supports and enhances Life—even if you call Life by another name, such as God. The challenge is to align ourselves with the wise, compassionate, intuitive, humorous and spontaneous essence that lies beyond the story of our lives.

  The people I saw in my practice and through the support and meditation groups helped me to find the words to describe the journey of healing that I had undertaken and they had now embarked upon. I remain indebted to them. Without them, I would never have found the words that have, in turn, benefited others.

  I continue to learn from people willing to share this precious inner journey, because it involves courage, relentless honesty and a deep commitment to heal from the notion that we are somehow separate from love—which is our essential nature.

  ***

  The downside to the success of my practice was that my flat was becoming cramped. An increasing number of people attended the weekly support and meditation groups, sitting on every available piece of furniture and on every inch of floor space. A frail person might arrive, and someone slightly less frail would give up their seat to ensure they would be as comfortable as possible.

  It was humbling and heartwarming to see people demonstrate such selflessness and compassion. But it was also becoming obvious that my furniture wasn’t always suitable for people who were unwell. I felt for them enduring this additional discomfort as, for instance, some people needed to lie down for the duration of the group, or sit in a chair with a straight back and with arms to support them getting in and out.

  I did what I could to accommodate all of these people, who clearly weren’t deterred by the cramped conditions, but I also yearned to provide a better environment for our support and meditation groups.

  After the three-month course at Waverley Hospital, about twenty-five women and men, including Kay Moechtar, had become regular members of the Monday morning support group at my flat. Most of them had cancer, but there was also a sprinkling of both gay and straight people with HIV or AIDS. Regardless of the cause of each person’s disease, they were all facing their mortality with courage, honesty and good grace. There is an extraordinary dynamic when people gather to listen intently to each other speak the truth of their current experience without judgement or interruption.

  Together we traversed the powerful landscape of all human emotions—abuse and shame, grief and loss, hope and humour, sorrow and despair, compassion and laughter, anguish and hopelessness, love and connection, guilt and blame, faith and self-loathing, resentment, anxiety and panic. And in this supportive space, it was easy for us all to venture vicariously into the emotional spaces being described.

  While listening to someone tell their story, we can explore our own deep place of emotion. It’s incredibly empowering and illuminating to hear someone articulate what we are feeling before we’ve found the words to describe it to ourselves. This helps us understand that we are not alone with our complex and fluctuating feelings. And, of course, the moment we articulate the feeling, we discover that we’re already more than it is, as we have captured it in words. The energy of the feeling is released, and we find relief in the mutual knowledge that we are in company that empathises and understands. To discover that our experience isn’t unique leaves us comforted and less isolated.

  ***

  Many years ago, a man with AIDS demanded of me that I write about ‘black holes’. He shouted his instruction at me, a habit with him: ‘Nobody talks of the inner darkness—the agonising, isolating madness that engulfs and consumes. You know about black holes, so for god’s sake write about them!’

  The first thing this gentleman had said to me, with considerable volume and passion—before hello, before he’d sat down, and only just after I’d closed my consultation room door—was this, ‘I’ve arranged my public schedule to kill myself in November, but I’ll be damned if I’ll die before I’ve learned how to love!’ He was a public figure, and in the 1980s the stigma of AIDS hung over many a man and woman as an unbearable shame.

  Suicide was a common topic of conversation in the weekly support groups I conducted at Albion Street for ten years, from the beginning of the epidemic in Australia. At that time, the grim reaper regularly appeared on our screens as bowling balls knocked men, women and children off their feet. Judgement, rage, grief and fear were rife in the community, and there were many unkno
wns as friends, lovers and doctors died from this insidious disease.

  It is often in the unexplored darkness of our inner world that the light is discovered. The public figure and I shared many conversations about his self-loathing and the harsh judgements he inflicted on himself, and finally tears of sadness for the small boy who had felt so unloved and misunderstood by his mother and so wounded by life. Many people mistook his arrogance as a belief in his own importance. His bravado concealed the self-doubt that infused his every waking moment and, now that he was facing his mortality, served only to sharpen his resolve to find healing and peace.

  Because of this, he frequently attended support groups in my home, hoping that anonymity would be respected there. In facilitating these groups, I was a bit like a mother lion protecting her cubs, as anonymity and confidentiality lie at the heart of honest disclosure. It is an added and unnecessary agony when a person’s public profile is acknowledged at a time when they are desperate to explore their inner darkness and vulnerabilities.

  In these weekly groups, the public figure forged a formidable relationship with another member, a nun called Maryanne. They were an unlikely duo: she spoke quietly with hands folded neatly in her lap, while his gestures were large, his presence dominant, his voice deep and passionate as he unpacked his trepidations. But sometimes Maryanne would articulate how he felt before he’d come near being able to understand his experience or describe it to himself, let alone others. He found it unnerving and uncanny that Maryanne could accurately describe his inner landscape before he could find his own words. She had led a sheltered life after entering a convent at sixteen, while his life had been a wild and sometimes dangerous exploration of the world.

  Yet they became fast friends and, towards the end of their lives, I ferried them between hospices for visits. Sometimes they just sat in silence, basking in each other’s company, and at others they shared some new insight from their journey to the edge of life. Watching them sit together, holding hands, remains a sweet memory.

  ***

  The meditation groups were also very important and helpful. My gratitude for the practice of meditation is immense—the ability to witness thoughts, feelings and sensations without being overwhelmed by them is a treasure beyond all others. Many of my patients and support group members came to appreciate this too. The Tuesday evening meditation group sometimes had fifty or more people attending. The attendees became dear to one another and easily welcomed new members into their midst. In time, we developed rituals to address our grief at the loss of members who had grown dear to us all. Meditating in a group always engendered a deeper experience of transformative states than in people’s individual practice. They relished the profound peace and stillness their practice afforded them and the rare opportunity of being in deep silence together.

  One of the members, Rob, had a melanoma which had spread throughout his body when he first started attending the meditation group. The initial and extensive surgery to remove the melanoma in his neck had resulted in most of one side of his neck being removed. He then had one lung removed and later, a third of his remaining lung removed. By the time he started attending the meditation groups the melanoma had spread to many other areas of his body.

  Rob, whose daughter was only eighteen months of age at the time, had been told his life would end within two or three months. Rob drove with a friend from the other side of the city to attend every meditation group on Tuesday evenings for the next six years. He mostly lay on the floor underneath my dining room table and snored his way through each practice. Rob was adamant that he wasn’t asleep; ‘I go somewhere’, he would say. A guided practice can take a person into a profoundly deep and restful state, and he loved the deep quiet and stillness he experienced. I maintained contact with Rob for over twenty years and he remained free of melanoma and lived long enough to see his daughter grow to adulthood. He claimed that meditation vastly improved his quality of life and, along with many other lifestyle changes, perhaps his quantity of life too.

  By this time in my life, I no longer took my thoughts or feelings so personally, so seriously, and focused on cultivating a sense of compassion and kindness towards suffering, whether it was my own or someone else’s. My mind’s unconscious inner chatter had stopped. I was grateful for the uninvited, unexpected questions or suggestions that popped out of my mind’s quietness when I was with a patient or in a support group.

  I was frequently called upon to see people that no one else had been able to help; people who were suicidal or deeply despairing, bed-bound or depressed. One woman, Lizzie, had been in a distant and unreachable place ever since she had returned from an overseas exchange student placement. During her year overseas, she had been unwittingly caught up in a satanic cult and since her return, Lizzie had stopped speaking altogether. Her distressed parents cared for her at home but they were at their wits’ end because nothing and no one seemed able to assist their once vibrant and academically brilliant daughter. My visits to an increasingly dishevelled Lizzie were always challenging as she would just stare unseeingly at me or her surroundings. I wondered whether my presence or words had any impact upon her but her parents remained grateful for my visits. The inner calm and stability afforded through meditation allowed me to offer compassion and support to this family though I could only trust that my words to her, and to her parents, brought some small comfort. I found it painful to be in the presence of someone I couldn’t help but I also knew from long experience that not everything can be fixed or made better.

  When facilitating groups or in more intimate conversations, I gained great fulfilment through helping people understand themselves better, and to challenge and more deeply explore their fears and anxieties. It is easier to venture into the caverns of anguish in good company. Laughter was a frequent visitor to our conversations, and I was in awe of how people could be sharing anguish and tears in one moment and then crack a joke in the next. These encounters left me feeling humble and grateful to play even a small part in the most intimate areas of people’s unfolding journeys. The resilience and capacity of the human spirit to embrace its challenges remains a constant inspiration and wonder to me.

  CHAPTER 25

  A full house

  Each week, Kate and I shared our home with up to a hundred people with life-threatening illnesses, not only through the support and meditation groups but also through my private consultations. I continued to learn so much through working with so many people living at the edge of life. While many vastly improved their quality of life, many also went on to die and it was hard to love and lose these wonderful people.

  I developed rituals of healing and remembrance for the support and meditation group members when much-loved participants died. Each death provided us with an opportunity to consider the shaky ground on which we all live. We wept and laughed together as we shared the precious journey of healing and loss.

  Several times a year, I conducted weekend retreats in the Southern Highlands for members of the various groups. These were incredibly inspiring and wonderful opportunities for people with HIV/AIDS and cancer to share their insights, laughter and tears. Costs were kept to a minimum so that as many people as possible could be present, and there were often fifty people in attendance. Children were frequently present at these weekends too, as many of the participants were young parents.

  I organised the catering, purchased and transported the food, sorted out the sleeping arrangements (taking people’s physical needs into account), arranged the car-pooling to get everyone to the venue, and facilitated the programs. We all prepared meals together through a roster that depended on people’s level of wellness, and those who felt most confident in the kitchen would oversee the preparation.

  On the Saturday evening, we conducted a very special ceremony to allow everyone present to honour and acknowledge people we loved who had died, and to reflect on our own mortality.

  In the centre of our circle was a small fire on a table surrounded with flowers and dozens
of unlit tealights. I would lead a meditation where we calmed and centred ourselves, and then we would visualise those we loved who had died. We inwardly reflected upon the qualities that each of these people possessed and what it was that endeared them to us—their humour, tenacity, wisdom, insight or other qualities. We took some moments to tell them, silently in our minds, whatever lay in our hearts. We listened for what they would say to us in response; then we visualised them dissolving into light.

  When participants felt ready, they would venture into the centre of the circle, using the fire to light a tealight in acknowledgement of the person they were honouring, and place it among the flowers. Afterwards we sat in darkness and silence aside from the crackling of the fire and its dancing flames, and the dozens of tealights flickering among the flowers. Each participant’s face was deeply reflective.

  During the ceremony, any children present would always be entranced and respectful. Finally, at the end, they would light sparklers from the fire and deliver one to each person in the circle as a symbol of our continuing journeys. The joy, love and wonder on the children’s faces and the sputtering stars of light from the sparklers left us all in a space of connection and brought us fully into the present moment where life was unfolding beautifully. The ceremony felt deeply sacred to each person in the circle and the children felt it too.

  Our willingness to come together like this was profoundly healing. The ceremony melted isolation, as shared silence is such a gift. And it often made difficult conversations possible after they had been hovering unsaid in the space between couples. A willingness to acknowledge people who had died enabled painful and challenging words to finally find utterance.

  ***

  Another feature of these weekends was the horseriding. Some people who were quite unwell still chose to go riding, so suitable steeds were found for them. The owners of the property were well-experienced with riders of all abilities and disabilities, and they displayed great compassion for the people attending.