I spend my life as a writer staring at blank pages. How to fill them? What is my heart yearning to say?  Most of the time I’ll figure it out. I find the words. With this essay, I’m not sure just what I’m wanting to say. Maybe by writing, I’ll find out. 

In these last few weeks, my writing’s been exploring my interior spiritual and psychological life following a medical diagnosis that rocked me. I felt a strong urge to write about what I thought and felt. Most of the time I was certain of what I wanted to say. I kept close to the particulars of what I was experiencing, the emotional tones and the particular thoughts that were raised. However, in my attempts to write this essay I fumbled as never before: I wrote and rewrote several drafts. I kept feeling I was going in circles. I wasn’t speaking my heart. So, what’s going on, I wondered?

Although physically I function well right now, the circumference of my life frankly feels constrained. The leukemia keeps my outings largely confined to clinic visits, having blood drawn and tested and then, depending on results, having the treatment adjusted accordingly. I’m experiencing no significant discomfort in any of this and there’s no particular stress involved; at the clinic, the nurses are consistently cordial and pleasant. Generally speaking, I feel okay. 

The most recent tests reveal that for the last few weeks my numbers look good. What I can’t fathom is why, in this essentially positive development that should be lifting my spirits, I feel flat. Unlike the weeks before, when the whole scenario was more dicey and closer to the edge, I was more certain what I wanted to write. 

I feel little incentive to explore and write about my situation of the last couple of weeks. Ironically, it’s been the least problematic in months. I dearly hope I am not one of those driven types who need crises in order to feel energized.

I keep thinking to myself, ‘Isn’t what’s come about recently just what I would want?’  The treatment appears to be working, slowing down the disease process so I can live longer and enjoy a decent quality of life. 

 I’ve listened to stories of people who found themselves in all kinds of dire straits, the kind that seem to point to only one end which will be tragic one way or another. Then, for no apparent reasons, the unexpected happens and the situation starts turning around.  Initial reactions are not, as you might first expect, to feel elated but instead to be confused, even suspicious. Five months ago, I was sure I’d be dead by now. This is not an accurate forecast, at least as I write this. But then what am I to expect? Another week; six months; what?

This is embarrassing to consider and for me even to think it. But, to be candid, I’m wondering, could it be that I am so addicted to being in control, that as horrifying as the initial prognosis was, at least I had the assurance that I knew what was going to happen next? Outcome was even accompanied with well, a deadline.

What complicates the matter for me and brings in another possibility to my odd reaction this week, is the peculiarity of my personality. In my family and among some friends, I’ve earned a reputation over the years for being pessimistic, ‘real heavy,’ a human Eeyore, if you will. Eeyore, you might remember from the Winnie the Pooh series, is characterized as a pessimistic, gloomy, depressed, anhedonic (for me, watching sports is a drag), an old, grey, stuffed donkey. Eeyore’s frequent and favorite expletive is “Oh, bother!” Mine is shorter and less benign.

Like Eeyore, I am also old and grey and have some of his negative propensities. I’m aware of this liability. I try to resist it as best I can. I can’t always put on a happy face. It’s hard for me especially when I meet with flaming optimists –– whose ebullient extraversion and terminally chirpy dispositions insist on placing the sunniest spin on the darkest situations. They irritate me.  “Just look for the silver lining” and with a pat on the shoulder and a stiff upper lip dismiss me –– this does not do it for me. I like people who will listen to my dark and meandering perseverations, who seem to have neither the need to cheer me up nor the desire to assure me that indeed “ain’t it awful.”  I like people who will listen to what I happen to feel, even though it’s often messy, and about things that may not quite hang together, which,  is often the case.

Truth be told, for years I’ve had a thing for the children’s classic, Winnie the Pooh and especially for Eeyore. My wife, who is painfully aware of my temperament and needs to make an annual statement about it, gives me a stuffed Eeyore every birthday. I have one that even speaks, and says, “Oh, bother” when I press his hoof.

Eeyore often lost his tail. It was poorly secured and often fell off. I am sympathetic to Eeyore’s moods. I am, as Eeyore was, also surrounded by a forest filled with friends who, if not able to find for me what I’m looking for, will always provide me with support in my search. My life involves a tale of a very different sort. Eeyore’s tail was secured by a nail, my tale hangs by a thread. I will eventually lose my whole tale and when I think about how that goes, I can get stuck, and keep ruminating to myself, “Oh, bother.” Eeyore puts the matter front and center: “I get so upset I forget to be happy,” he says. The human tale that follows us for our lifetime grows even dearer as its fragility becomes more apparent. I want to hang on to it.

In the last few weeks, a rainbow appeared on my horizon. It surprised me. Seems I’m doing okay right now after several months of some dark clouds. 

 Eeyore is reported to have said when seeing a red balloon, to which he uncharacteristically took an immediate liking: “Sure is a cheerful color. Guess I’ll have to get used to it.”

Columnist George Merrill is an Episcopal Church priest and pastoral psychotherapist. A writer and photographer, he’s authored two books on spirituality: Reflections: Psychological and Spiritual Images of the Heart and The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. He is a native New Yorker, previously directing counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and in Baltimore. George’s essays, some award winning, have appeared in regional magazines and are broadcast twice monthly on Delmarva Public Radio.

“What would you like me to say about you when I preach at your funeral?” my pastor asked me recently. He was dead serious. This is a once in a lifetime offer.

I can say honestly, I had no idea what to say but my heart was warmed. His request left me feeling cared for, if not a little off balance.

What can I say about my life, any life for that matter? They get all jumbled up. I’ve lived my life like the old movie films were shown; one frame at a time. I never noticed how much each frame differed from the one following or preceding it because the frames flew by so quickly.

I know this: I’m never the same man for long. I have changed so much over the years. In one instance, in just over a ten year period, I changed dramatically. At sixteen, Arty, Jigger and I broke into an auto accessory store to get parts to keep Jigger’s old junk running. At twenty- six I knelt piously before the Bishop of New York at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, as he laid hands on my head, ordaining me to perform to perform the holy rites of the church. And then too, as time goes by, even the changes themselves will morph character traits in ways I would never have expected in myself. By the way this is not all bad. Actually, I grew more patient as I got older. Too bad it took so long.

Eulogies or sermons at funerals are profiles in how people wish others to see how they lived. Certain kind of rites tend to emphasize the deceased’s personal achievements and his or her contributions to society. They’re a sort of commentary on personal and civic virtue. Other rites highlight the quality of the relationships the deceased enjoyed with friends and family – like having been a loving wife or husband, devoted son, or caring daughter. Such emphases are necessarily sum totals of a life, broad generalities, running all the frames by us quickly enough that we see only broad sweeps with little detail.

In the interest of full disclosure, I must say that when Craig first asked me the question, my instinctive reaction was to do a little psychological posturing; rummaging through some of the old frames of my life to see which ones might show better. As picking frames became increasingly selective, I could see how I was only trying to look good –– so much so that even I could see the narcissism in what I was doing. I decided it was in everyone’s interest to have Greg to say whatever he wanted with no holds barred.

I believe that people are far more disposed to feel endeared to the deceased when they hear unvarnished stories of him or her having been caught in the act of being themselves. When our unpolished humanity is revealed, those kinds of no-pretense moments that just happen, they can change the mood of a funeral remarkably. One vignette that I recall, portrayed the deceased having worn different colored socks to a formal dinner where he was booked as the speaker. I remember another where a deceased mom, a bride’s mother, with a thousand things on her mind, once placed all the newly printed wedding invitations on top of the car while fetching her keys. She forgets them, and in the rear view mirror drives off and watches the invitations scatter like fall leaves

I have observed, both as an officiant at a funeral or sitting among mourners in a church, how the congregation will often fidget with service bulletins or shift in their seats as the deceased is lavished with praise for his or her virtues – which may have been justly deserved.

In recent years, it’s more common in churches and memorial services to have family members “say a few words” about loved ones as part of the ritual. Provided they don’t go on too long, it’s remarkable to see the energy among mourners increase as a relative is fondly roasted. It’s the messy human traits with which mourners immediately identify. Just being human will endear mourners to the deceased in ways that recitations of accomplishments, status or even good works, won’t. You can see how mourners, during these recitations, were respectfully attentive but emotionally absent. As the deceased is presented as a person, ears pick up.

A pinch of salt adds real zip to even the finest cuisine.

My closest friends have no illusions about my quirks and shortcomings. It frees me to be at ease with my foibles enough not to feel driven to pretend otherwise. My great aunt was prickly on this score and dismissed her neighbor this way. “Mrs. O’Doran puts on airs,” she would snort, throwing her nose in the air, defiantly.

As we’ve talked together over the years, our pastor, Greg, Jo and I have shared many intimacies. We have similar views on many spiritual matters but especially one: that telling our stories is the royal route by which we facilitate the healing of many kinds of wounds, especially our losses. Storytelling is a way we make our way across that devastating void the death of a loved one leaves.

Remember the bedtime rituals of your childhood? I do. I was told it was time for bed. I didn’t want to go, I hadn’t finished all the things I wanted to. The declaration of bedtime was never the right time but regardless of my feelings, it was to be that way.

The ritual was always the same: go upstairs, brush my teeth, go to the bathroom, put on PJ’s and get into bed. One of my parents promised they’d soon be up be up to read me a story. This always sweetened the pot.

When Greg left, I imagined my funeral in a similar way, a little like the bedtime of my childhood I resisted bedtime, like I resist the implications of my funeral: it’s not the right time; I have more to do. When the end of the day arrives, the knowledge that people who know and love me will tell stories about me –– and on me, too –– I find comforting.

Columnist George Merrill is an Episcopal Church priest and pastoral psychotherapist. A writer and photographer, he’s authored two books on spirituality: Reflections: Psychological and Spiritual Images of the Heart and The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. He is a native New Yorker, previously directing counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and in Baltimore. George’s essays, some award winning, have appeared in regional magazines and are broadcast twice monthly on Delmarva Public Radio.

As we have for over 30 years, my wife, Jo, and I are sitting on the porch this morning having breakfast. The grass in the yard is more verdant this summer then I remember it before. The flowers show radiantly, helped along by intermittent rains. The spinners are whirring happily in a southerly breeze.

Weather permitting, our breakfast ritual has remained the same except for a couple of things. Since we’ve recently grown aware of time’s limits, we have developed an increasing sense of the ‘now,’ a heightened awareness of each other and of those in our lives we have grown to love.

An odd thing to say, but as we begin to come to terms with having less, we are finding more.

Breakfast discussions have always been a pivotal time in our daily routine. We are typically more together then than we are any other time. Most all issues get on the table. We talk them over. The ritual, while staying pretty much the same, has assumed a different tenor of late. We speak less of circumstantial and household matters; we’ve become, well, contemplative. To say it differently, we speak of and listen more to the language of the heart than the scripts of the head which so much of daily management usually requires.

Since last April our conversations have grown intimate but with an intimacy very different from the intimacy I had once thought of.

To say we have entered a time of more truth-telling doesn’t quite describe it. I once thought of intimacy as the inner freedom we discover when we reveal a darker side of our personality to someone else and still feel safe and accepted –– and indeed that may be. But there’s another side to intimacy that our breakfast conversation revealed on that August 1st morning.

The intimacy was more like small vignettes of our interior lives appearing to us that had not been explicitly expressed before. The vignettes remain buried only because we have not taken them all that seriously or an occasion to have unearthed them has not arisen. These vignettes are not sensational at all, there’s nothing dramatic about them. They are simple thoughts and feelings about the fundamentals of our world that we have quietly entertained but never expressed. The vignettes are not the kind we have kept secret out of shame or for the fear of seeming childish and naive; They are thoughts and feelings we have always harbored (and I believe many people have) but never considered them sufficiently consequential that anyone would really care about them one way or the other. We usually blow them off thinking, “This is just me; I know it doesn’t make sense.” One such vignette rose casually the other morning at breakfast.

As you might expect we have talked occasionally about life after death over the years. In the past, I would describe those conversations more as scripts originating in the head, like the religious or political opinions which anyone may espouse in casual conversation but not necessarily feel they need to embrace it. This morning was different.

That morning I mentioned casually to Jo that this was my mother’s birthday. We began a mathematical calculation how old our mothers would be today. We started running numbers and came up with something like one hundred five to a hundred fifteen. We sat silently.

I recalled how often I’d wished that my mother and Jo could have known each other. She died years before Jo and I were married. I was sure they would have become good friends. I expressed this thought to Jo. Jo replied that was happy in the thought that I would finally meet her father.

We turned to face each other and it took us a minute to fully realize what we were saying. We grew teary. We were considering each other’s loved ones in a way we’d never expressed before, at least openly. We were clearly speaking of them as if they would be waiting to greet us.

Somehow the pith of what this conversation was unearthing had traveled beyond the scripts of the head to the language of the heart and each of us was surprised by how profoundly moved we were by what had just happened. What the heart was saying was that a typical head discussion of “Do you believe in a life after death?” would never have gotten anywhere near.

I confess that I did go into my head later that morning trying to interpret the event with the normal scripts of reason. I tried to be as scrupulous as possible in respecting that what I was exploring was something the heart revealed and not something my head had fabricated. In writing this, I’m trying to remain faithful to what my heart revealed.

I have always been impressed with how, whether expressed at funerals, or appearing in obituaries, or hearing children process the loss of loved ones –– even their pets ––that death bears the sting of a loss. There’s also an assumed and often unspoken thought accompanying it –– one deeply felt –– and running parallel: that these losses are a part of a universal process that ultimately occasions a rendezvous.

‘Going home’ is the popular way the sense of this understanding finds expression in common parlance. Even for me, a clergyman, I’ve often dodged the matter, fearing that it might be only a romantic inclination or a fanciful wish. The simple profundity of my own buried belief unnerved me because it did not fit easily into the tidy world in which my head feels safe and in control. But there it was.

Feelings of deep intimacy happen like that, even with people who are already close: they just pop up and when you hear them being articulated so casually, they seem surprising at first even though you know they are not.

Columnist George Merrill is an Episcopal Church priest and pastoral psychotherapist. A writer and photographer, he’s authored two books on spirituality: Reflections: Psychological and Spiritual Images of the Heart and The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. He is a native New Yorker, previously directing counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and in Baltimore. George’s essays, some award winning, have appeared in regional magazines and are broadcast twice monthly on Delmarva Public Radio.

When I’m not feeling well, everything looks bleak. I’ll start accentuating the negative, like, I must look awful, no one would want to be around me; I’m no good for anything.

There was a period not long ago when I hadn’t been well and I was heavily involved with medical treatment. I was cared for by more nurses than I had known in my entire life – except for my sister, a nurse, whom I don’t include in these tender reflections as our relationship was characterized more by conflict than concord. When I was a kid, I don’t think she cared for me, much.

I’ve been thinking about caring; the caring I’ve offered others in my lifetime and received, myself.

In providing care to others, I can’t say I leave a sterling track record. Even the normal caring involved in being a young dad I often found tedious: night feedings, diaper changes, the constant vigilance required to keep children from harm and the relentless demands of maintaining a home often made me feel put upon. I guess I’d have to say I did not bring the level of positive energy to these tasks as I wish now that I had. I can confidently say that I’ve gotten better, but I’m amazed at how long it’s taken. I believe caring is a virtue people can learn but there are others who are blessed enough to come by it naturally. Nurses are ‘naturals.’

Of the nurses who dealt with me, most were women and, with one exception, all of them were caring. I don’t mean caring in the perfunctory sense that they performed their duties efficiently and responsibly. I mean caring in the subtle, attitudinal sense of the word. With them, my experience led me to believe that each one took personal satisfaction in bringing comfort to me and to all those they ministered to. Their presence made me feel valued.

To be effective, a measure of genuine concern has to be in the caring somewhere. If the transaction has none, the interactions become lackluster and brittle.

At Johns Hopkins Hospital, I began noticing the significance that touching played in the interactions between a nurse and patient. While engaging in medical interventions or even small talk, a nurse’s touch communicated to me a powerful sense of being cared for at times when my illness and its treatment left me feeling disconnected, vulnerable and useless. I still marvel at how something apparently as small and inconsequential as a touch can have such a powerful effect on the emotional life of a human being. It remains for me one of the great mysteries of spirituality.

Touch is a powerful agent in the human experience. At the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo immortalized touch when he artistically rendered “The Creation of Adam.” In this portrayal, Adam is given life, not from the breath of God as written in Genesis, but from the touch of God’s finger. Something about a touch as a life-giving force seized the popular imagination even more than breath.

The touch I am speaking of is a very different sort from the erotic kind. Unfortunately, in today’s troubled world, the word ‘touch’ has become a forbidden word. It evokes predatory images, heartbreaking pictures of exploitation and broken trust. With erotic touching, there’s a compulsion to dominate and to make emotional claims on another.

The touch I’m discussing makes no claims. It occasions no arousal or titillation. I can best describe my reaction to the nurses’ touch as a feeling of being incredibly grounded, belonging, an integral part of a dynamic process greater which although unseen, is palpable. It’s a little like feeling loved but without any of the possessive claims that are so often associated with the word ‘love.’

For me, nurse Jean represented the restorative power of a touch. A birdlike young woman, thin as a willow’s limb, Jean walked soundlessly in and out of my room at a pace just short of sprinting. She was frequently assigned to my care. Jean was emotive and demonstrative. She had a hint of an accent, Puerto Rican maybe. Jean wore the protective mask which only emphasized her eyes that flashed intermittently as she emphasized something about which she felt strongly. The energy in the room seemed to increase with her presence.

Jean loved to talk.

When Jean would finish some medical intervention, she’d place a finger on my arm or shoulder and just chat for a minute. In fact she talked all the time. Her finger pressure increased or decreased depending on the level of enthusiasm her story invoked for her. Her soliloquies always seemed more like free association than inspired by some particular topic. I recall little of what she said, but I know I felt better even though my discomforts may have remained. I did not feel alone. It was not her words, but the music I heard in her voice and in the touch that I felt. They mobilized a form of healing that doesn’t’ necessarily heal but definitely transforms. I feel the climate changing, as I do with shifts in the weather.

The night before I was to leave Hopkins, I tossed and turned, fearful of the days coming next. The door opened and Jean entered silently, taking her characteristically long strides. She drew close to the bed, saw I was awake, and placed her hand on my arm. She chatted briefly. She told me she’d be leaving on vacation to see family, and she knew I’d be gone when she returned. Jean wished me well and said she wanted to leave this note. She chatted some and left.

The note read;

“Mr. Merrill,

I didn’t want to wake you up but I’m off for the next 7 days and I hope that you’re outta here by then. Thank you for being such a nice patient.

Don’t come back too soon ––even though I know you will miss us too much!!! I hope you get well soon and say “Hi” to Ms. Jo for me.!!! Take care always!!!
Jean ☺”

It was a nice touch, I thought.

Columnist George Merrill is an Episcopal Church priest and pastoral psychotherapist. A writer and photographer, he’s authored two books on spirituality: Reflections: Psychological and Spiritual Images of the Heart and The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. He is a native New Yorker, previously directing counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and in Baltimore. George’s essays, some award winning, have appeared in regional magazines and are broadcast twice monthly on Delmarva Public Radio.

I’ve noticed something, lately.

Since our lives were turned topsy-turvy when we were blindsided by my diagnosis, my wife and I have begun talking nonsense more frequently. As a result, we have grown remarkably closer. We used to consider mindless chatter like the weather and political discussions the bread of airheads. Now it’s food for the soul, a welcomed piece of our lives, a kind of non-sectarian speaking in tongues.

Our lives at this juncture are confined mostly to appointments with doctors and other medical facilities or just being with each other at home.

We’ve become dogged by one fear; that someone ‘out there’ could infect me with some simple germ that I am not prepared to defend myself against. I have a marginally functional immune system which leaves me a sitting duck. I’m not a danger to others, but others may be a danger to me. I feel restricted. This does not encourage a robust social life.

Living in this kind of climate for a few weeks has bred a certain habit of –– I’m not sure how to describe it except maybe, mindlessness. This to say that we have come to enjoy talking pure nonsense –– actually getting absorbed in the nonsensical excursions of our ‘spinners’. Spinners have earned a significant place in securing a hold on our sanity.

My wife, Jo, has kept flower pots on the porch for years. She’s placed spinners in the pots. Spinners are florid, burlesque, dime store bugs or flower decorations that have wings or petals that spin in the wind. They are goofy enough to retain my attention and help our minds go totally blank.

We check them out daily. Just the other day we talked about the spinners nonstop for a full hour and a half, like people might talk of their children or pets. I would describe our conversations as something like pillow talk only we’re sitting up in chairs, more focused and not as dreamy.

Coincidentally, about the time I learned of my diagnosis, some of the previous spinners had begun falling apart. We’d had them for years. Jo ordered new ones. One day, after spending most of the day engaged in the tedium of medical and doctors’ appointments, we came home to find our order of new spinners had arrived. We placed the spinners in the old pots.

As we putzed around arranging and rearranging them, we began to talk of their particular ways of being, how they behaved in the wind, in stillness or how their florid colors radiated brilliantly in bright sunlight.

We had one concern: the hummingbird spinner. As soon as the wind rose, his spinner/propeller would rotate lustily. It was evident that soon his spinning blades might clip off the small wings which were fastened with tiny springs to his body. We considered at some length how some strategic interventions might spare the hummingbird this misfortune and increase our pleasure in aiding his safety as well as extending his life.

For at least an hour and a half we arranged and rearranged all the spinners, musing particularly about the hummingbird’s peculiar habits and imminent danger to his torso.

Poets will often discuss exhaustively the distance between words in a poem or the unique way sentences or paragraphs get placed. They speak glowingly about the significance of the blank spaces and how they contain all kinds of subtle intimations of greater truth, deeper realities and infinite possibilities.

I’m of a mind recently, that some blank spaces should remain just that: blank spaces, especially mental ones. We need blank spaces in our lives. They should signify absolutely nothing. The spaces can become a respite from the search for significance or purpose or whatever problems we find that are driving us nuts; always trying to figure them out. These searches can become tiring enough as you know, so when I suddenly noticed that both of us were caught up with the particular habits of spinners to the extent that we had lost all sense of time and place, I could see we had inadvertently discovered a small harbor of refuge at this difficult time.

After half a day keeping medical appointments we’d take a break, repair to the spinners, and enjoy ‘spinner time’ as we came to name it. We reveled in the spiritual fecundity of mindlessness and even gained positive energy from our fanciful and frivolous musings. We got more than we gave, I can tell you that.

Even as I write this, I begin to see our romance with spinners is a form of play, the way kids play, and how deeply healing just playing can be. This kind of healing is not formulaic, but spontaneous, often eliciting belly laughs and gallows humor that provokes tears and guffaws alternately, often in the same moment. It’s fun.

We continue with one concern: the hummingbird spinner. A strong wind places him in a precarious position. I worry that his rotating prop as it furiously spins and bends backwards, sooner or later will whack the small fixed wing just behind it into spaghetti.

I don’t know that either of us have the particular skills to make appropriate repairs. Actually it “ain’t really broke” at the moment. We’ve decided our task right now is not to try fix anything else in our lives but to just enjoy our little spinners and let them take us to a dream world as long as they can.

Columnist George Merrill is an Episcopal Church priest and pastoral psychotherapist. A writer and photographer, he’s authored two books on spirituality: Reflections: Psychological and Spiritual Images of the Heart and The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. He is a native New Yorker, previously directing counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and in Baltimore. George’s essays, some award winning, have appeared in regional magazines and are broadcast twice monthly on Delmarva Public Radio.

The room is cell-size and not particularly welcoming. It looks like the interior of a space capsule: tubes wires and flashing numbers everywhere, blinking like tinsel on a Christmas tree. It’s all about numbers. The numbers are about my blood, the kind of blood circulating through my body right now. There’s not a lot of the good stuff. I hope to be getting that presently.

I look out the window. In the distance, I can see the Key Bridge spanning the Patapsco River. A single church spire rises in the background just beyond a series of refurbished rowhouses. These houses are the kind that have defined the city’s mystique since the 1800’s. It’s unmistakable, charming, but this is well outside the space capsule.

My privileged view of Baltimore has come at a price. I am here for a six-day venue of chemotherapy at Johns Hopkins Hospital. My literary sabbatical from the Spy began shortly after the discovery that I was diagnosed with a particularly aggressive form of a cancer, AML. I almost died. My life changed overnight.

I want to share with readers not the drama of the events happening a few weeks ago, but rather to comment on some peripheral and unexpected fallouts from them. Looking back, these events seemed to me like a fireworks display, when the grand starburst of light explodes in darkness and as the darkness returns, it begins filling up with tiny shards of light so small and inconsequential as to seem wholly unrelated to the starburst. That is how I recall vividly the little things in the circumstances that darkness began revealing.

Everyone that I engaged during that week wore a mask. I would imagine it was at least 50 people who served me in some capacity –– professionals like doctors, nurses, other medical workers like EMT’s, nurse practitioners, and specialized technicians among the cadre of service workers. As they came close, I saw only their eyes; their faces were masked. Through their eyes, by the tone of their voices, and by the particular aura they emanated, I grew to know them and be comforted.

I have friends who tell me everyone has an aura and they can see it enveloping an individual’s face, like halos. I cannot do this, but I know I have experienced the heart of intentions, mine and others. I believe that the intent of those who served me was to facilitate as much healing in my life as their skills and presence could promote.

Soon, I caught on to that. The sounds of their voices and sight of their eyes were enough and I’d feel less and less invaded when they woke me at three in the morning with chirpy salutations telling me that they were there to check my vitals. The essential nature of their presence was at work and I knew I had been feeling it deeply. I’d groan as they approached the bed. I’d shoo them away in a mocking manner and then laugh. I still felt like hell, but comforted, nonetheless. The transfer of energy is a remarkable phenomenon in physics, and even greater when healing energy is experienced as we engage each other spiritually.

Caring energy is communicated in thousands of elusive ways.

When I first thought about the diagnosis I thought about dying, the idea of my being dead. It frightened me. Intentionally thinking about it was a pure act of bravado, a psychological ruse to prove to myself that, if I could imagine such a scenario and look the grim reaper square in the eye, I would not fear death anymore.

Try as I would, it didn’t work. I struggled vainly to imagine again and again my total absence in the world but was not able to rid myself of ‘me’ in any way. Wasn’t ‘I’ the one that was declaring my own absence? It was absurd. I could not rid myself of my ego. Like a shadow, my long habit of being seemed to want to follow me wherever I went, even into the depths. Does this mean that my life has continuity? Or is such thinking just egoism? It was a rough night. Mercifully, the dilemma remained unresolved and I fell asleep.

There’s an old saying that the unexamined life is not worth living. Well, yes and no. There are things in my new life that I must do that in my previous life I did without giving a second thought; little things like morning ablutions being a good example.

My previous life, just days ago, I would rise in the morning and automatically perform the mundane rituals of meeting the day. Each act, from brushing teeth to all the other stuff I performed, I did skillfully without giving any of them a thought. Now my new life was as if I was a baby taking first steps; each particular performance required my full attention and concentration, taking what once required four minutes, now, requiring at least ten –– I don’t ever recall living a day so deliberately. A lapse of attention could be embarrassing and quite literally, make a mess. I lived life carefully, slowly and intentionally. It was at first maddening, and I thought I’d go nuts. Something deep within me began surrendering. I got with the program. Go slow.

My wife and I, long before this particular crisis descended, shared a common view of the world. It had to do with how we understood the people whom we met along the way. It seemed to both of us how that in different instances while walking our paths, certain people showed up who were critical to our healing at that particular time in our lives. They gave us something important we needed and then faded from our lives, barely noticed.

We talk about them as angels; they’ll just show up uninvited and help turn dicey moments into ones more tolerable. They bring grace into our lives at times when we can see only downers. They always show up unexpectedly and they can be familiar faces or total strangers.

I’ve met a lot them recently in the most unlikely places – like a cell-size room – that seemed as impersonal and indifferent as a space capsule.

Columnist George Merrill is an Episcopal Church priest and pastoral psychotherapist. A writer and photographer, he’s authored two books on spirituality: Reflections: Psychological and Spiritual Images of the Heart and The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. He is a native New Yorker, previously directing counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and in Baltimore. George’s essays, some award winning, have appeared in regional magazines and are broadcast twice monthly on Delmarva Public Radio.

 

My children and my grandchildren possess, I’d say conservatively, at least thousands of photographic images of their family life. It seems to me that every second of their lives is being documented by a digital photograph; some pictures are printed out, others live in cyberspace where they have plenty of room and can be reached at the touch of a button.

This comes in sharp contrast to the collection of photographs I have from my growing up years. Compared to a post-modern family, my own photographs consist of a highly limited selection, scraggly at that, and most turning a light brown like onions that I’ve left in the bin too long.

I’ve noticed that my children and grandchildren’s digital images vibrate with rich saturated colors. They also have a visual acuity as sharp as a knife’s edge. I would have to say that they do come off as consistently joyful and celebratory. The black and white pictures of my own growing up years are marginal in quality and compared to my kids’, they seem like historic documentaries. Mine have a prevailing solemnity to them so even scenes from children’s birthday parties in the 40’s and 50’s, the children don’t appear to be having much fun but rather trying obediently to follow the photographer’s exhortation to hold still and say cheese.

What am I to make of this? A couple of things come to mind.

Not only have the complexities of handling cameras been dramatically reduced by the arrival of digital photography, but the volume of still images that can be taken digitally in a minute exceeds a film camera’s capacity for a year. Film cameras typically had 36 snaps and that was it. If you had the energy to reload another film into the camera you seriously jeopardized the mood of your subjects. You might compare this film-reloading moment in picture taking to the art of love; when being performed with mutual satisfaction requires uninterrupted attention for the whole thing to go well. If you do stop to scratch your foot or your elbow, you do it at great cost to what you’re about.

Candid photography of today, with its effortless mechanics, leaves the photographer free to click away and get great shots with the no real concerns about shadows, highlights, focal distance or anything that traditionally would intrude upon achieving decent images. The good news is how in modern photography the photographer can be highly mobile and a lot more invisible as he doesn’t need to fuss a lot with equipment. This allows for amazing spontaneity.

I had an odd thought the other day about all this. Will people four generations hence have any interest when they see a yellow deckled edge picture of my aunt Daisy wearing her white gloves and flowered hat, or a photo taken in 1936 on my second birthday where I’m looking grumpy in front of a birthday cake? Today’s digital images will certainly be more colorful and sharper but as they increase in volume, what will they come to mean to people? The sheer volume of pictures is already staggering and growing by the day. When the market’s flooded, things tend to lose value. Selecting what images may be kept or pitched will be a daunting task. Will the mystique of the photograph be lost among millions and millions of images? I don’t know.

As I think of pictures, I recall in 1940, when I saw my first rendering of world class art. A family friend I called Uncle Tommy, copied three famous paintings. Tommy was French, a chemist and an expert manufacturer of colors. The copies were exquisitely rendered. They were prominently displayed in the living room. They fascinated me.

One was Gaugin’s ‘Two Tahitian Women,’ the other two were Van Gogh’s ‘Self-portrait with a Bandage and Pipe’ and Van Gogh’s famous ‘Sunflowers’. I was in and out of the house frequently and the paintings became etched in my mind. I knew nothing about painting. Uncle Tommy said once that the paintings took a long time to complete.

I’m not sure why but over the years I’ve never put my own photographs on the walls of my studio. I had a recent urge to do that. I chose three images I was extremely fond of, because of the moment they represented and for their quality. They were scenes on the western shore taken shortly after I first arrived in Maryland and was dazzled by its stunning landscapes. One was at Elk Neck State Park, the other two at the Gunpowder Falls. The photographs are large. I enlarged them to 16 x 20. They are well done, but I’ve wondered that they mean more to me because of the time and the place where the pictures were taken. Each was a precious moment in my life that I once saw through a lens darkly and it came to life in a click.

I suspect that those of us accustomed to having much, there are some for whom the plenty is not what is so rewarding; it’s the little, the few, even the tiny, just a couple of things or even fleeting moments. Among so much abundance that life brings, the real treasures can be harder to spot than for those who know and understand scarcity.

To my knowledge Uncle Tommy never made other paintings other than the Van Gogh’s and the Gauguin. It may have been enough for him, the specialness of it. I will never know what that was.

Columnist George Merrill is an Episcopal Church priest and pastoral psychotherapist. A writer and photographer, he’s authored two books on spirituality: Reflections: Psychological and Spiritual Images of the Heart and The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. He is a native New Yorker, previously directing counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and in Baltimore. George’s essays, some award winning, have appeared in regional magazines and are broadcast twice monthly on Delmarva Public Radio.

Editor’s Note:

One of the great traditions of the Spy for many years, according to many of our readers, is waking up to George Merrill’s essays on Sunday mornings.

Since 2015, George has graced the pages of the Spy with now some 330 commentaries with his beautifully nuanced, playful, but ultimately powerful moral observations. To my knowledge, he has never missed a Sunday since we started. But the other day he let me know he wanted a small break from the six year routine. He told me he would be taking a mini-sabbatical of sorts starting next week.

The need to renew one’s self as a writer is as fundamental as the impulse to write itself. And so, like many Spy readers, I will wait, somewhat impatiently, as George forces himself to put down his pen (and it is a pen, not a computer) to recharge for a few weeks.

While he warns he might break this self-imposed retreat at any time, it’s fair to note to his considerable fan base that it will not be a regular occurrence during the Spring.

In the meantime, the Spy will attempt to fill the gap with the inauguration of the “Spy Sunday Essay” by guest writers later this month. More on that later.

DW

Last Tuesday, Derek Chauvin was found guilty in the murder of George Floyd. The jury, a racially diverse group of seven women and five men, deliberated 10 hours before reaching their verdict: Chauvin was found guilty of second – degree murder, third– degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.

I understand this trial as an epic event in American social history. It signals a change in course that allows greater possibilities for a vibrant America; vibrant because all its citizens can have a place at the table and when they speak, they will be heard.

For over 300 years the African American community has endured relentless abuse and exploitation by a white establishment –– a white community that enjoyed a free hand by assuming an unchallenged assumption of power and privilege which was never constitutionally theirs.

Over the years, Blacks were convinced that their grievances would never even be considered much less justly addressed by the legal system.

America’s law enforcement establishment has rarely been held accountable for the conduct in its behavior toward minority groups and especially African-Americans.

Two cancers that have festered in the American soul for generations, I believe, found redress by the decision on Tuesday in the George Floyd trial.
The law enforcement system and the officers who execute its responsibilities have been delivered a mandate. They can now expect to be held legally accountable for how they perform their duties. They will be required to act in a disciplined manner and to abide by specific conventions of policing protocol. They will abide by codes of conduct.

I was particularly aware of how this trial came on the heels of the previous administration. One of its characteristics of this administration was the unconscionable ways in which it flaunted conventions of government and its codes of conduct. Social and federal protocols were flagrantly trivialized with no apparent demands for accountability coming from the congress. Federal agencies were casually manipulated, loyal government servants were abused and humiliated, while the White House itself, our national symbol, was co opted by the president as a public relations stunt for his own personal interests. Playing by the rules was trivialized. The importance of accountability in public service had been treated dismissively.

The verdict in the trial I saw, in one sense, as symbolic: it begins a process of not only vindicating the abuses suffered by African-Americans, but in an ironic way, the verdict also served to restore to white America the soul it had lost in the practices of administering justice.

Imagine for a moment the Black population now in our midst. It consists of roughly 49 million people. Here are American citizens who have been forced to hide their lamps under a bushel, so that the unique light they have ready to share in the American experience was never seen and valued. In order for this to happen Blacks had to feel some confidence in the law’s protection, and be reassured that they would be playing on a level field.

The Chauvin verdict was a sign that the burden of doubt that has plagued Blacks, the doubt they carried since they were brought here as chattel only to serve as slaves, has being seriously challenged. The African American is an American and belongs here. Blacks, like the white immigrants who once came here, this is their home. African Americans want to build a life here.

The skills and resources existing in this population bring to our collective lives, a deeper understand of our humanity and its suffering. And looking to the future, equal justice will make America great for all of us, not great again, but great for the first time.

Ironically, the statement the verdict makes creates the possibility that has never have been the case before; that African-Americans are under the law, and indeed full participants in the American dream and under the law will be treated in ways consistent with any citizens rights.

Columnist George Merrill is an Episcopal Church priest and pastoral psychotherapist. A writer and photographer, he’s authored two books on spirituality: Reflections: Psychological and Spiritual Images of the Heart and The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. He is a native New Yorker, previously directing counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and in Baltimore. George’s essays, some award winning, have appeared in regional magazines and are broadcast twice monthly on Delmarva Public Radio.

My wife and I have finally had COVID 19 shots. We are now prepared to live a new life. How might that look?

It’s a little over a year since the pandemic became a reality. My wife and I were among those only marginally affected. COVID infected 31, 516, 783 people significantly, leaving 569, 528 dead. I keep having that mixed feeling people report having when they tell you they’ve dodged the bullet.

I’ve been thinking back over the year. It’s not so much what I did do during the height of the pandemic but what I didn’t. My routines changed dramatically. The period was an experience in avoiding, simplifying, unloading, while waiting for shots. I began to live more reactively, cautiously. I felt surrounded by danger.

Shopping the supermarket wasn’t playful anymore; I stopped indulging the pleasures of wandering the aisles aimlessly like dogs do on walks; they will sniff the environment with every step they take with no purpose other than curiosity.  At the pandemic’s height, when I went shopping, I took a list of items meticulously prepared. I came, I saw, I bought, I checked out and got back to the car with groceries in the trunk in a matter of minutes. I have never experienced myself so single focused in a supermarket before. It used to be fun.  It’s now efficient, instead.

I didn’t conduct small group classes in spirituality and eldering any more as I had for the last fifteen years. Prohibitions against group assembly nixed that. I missed the group interactions. They were deeply moving and often funny. A virtual presence like Zoom may substitute some in times like this but it will never be as energizing as the real thing, surrounded by real bodies and being attuned to the nuances that real presence awakens.

In a similar vein, I did not gather with friends or even family for dinner or meet acquaintances for coffee. The pulling back hurt, especially so since during this period we had a great granddaughter born. We saw her regularly on an electronic site called Tinybeans. Through this medium we watched her grow almost daily in the first year until we made our first visit. Holding her was magical. 

I did not engage any more in what was probably an unhealthy habit, anyway. When I grew bored or was restless, before, I might jump in the car and go to malls or stores to just to look around. I might go to Penny’s and check out clothing or to Lowes to inspect tools. This never amounted to purposeful behavior –– it was shamelessly escapist, tainted with the scourge of consumerism. I behaved this way only because I didn’t know what else to do with myself. 

There was one upside: I didn’t spend much money on gas during this period. I used the car so little there was not need.

I will confess that for a time I felt deprived of “normal” activities.  

The pandemic, at its height, kept most people at home. That was perhaps the greatest complaint: the feeling of being housebound, trapped, with nowhere to go. I know I’m not alone in this but for a number of us, this confinement revealed some surprises. It was common to hear people say: “I can’t believe I’ve accumulated so much junk.”  I’ve heard the comment a lot from people when they’re moving but rarely from anyone who’s not going anywhere.  People were amazed as they opened long forgotten closets, poked around cabinet drawers, searched garage shelves, attics and cellars; “Why in heavens name did I keep this for?” As our clutter was exposed, the purges began.

Landfills were suddenly inundated by householders bringing truckloads of junk. Some landfills prohibited them from dumping until they could efficiently accommodate the deluge. Neighborhood recycling stations began refusing cardboard since homeowners who had finally dumped old household stuff, started all over again. They bought more stuff through Amazon. Cardboard is a must when mail ordering and for a while cardboard seemed to spontaneously reproduce.

I wondered about other venues for getting rid of things: I thought immediately of the kids. It was very painful to discover that my kids had no interest in the furniture mom and dad wanted to dump. It was hurtful to learn that not only did the kids have no sentimental attachment to great grandma’s sewing table –– a beautiful Victorian relic –– or other memorabilia I was sure they would want, but also no interest even in childhood mementoes that survived the rooms they grew up in. Too dated for them, they’d say. What do you do with what’s piled up or perhaps more to the point, how come what I once wanted, needed, valued, and paid a hefty price for, no one, including myself, needs, wants or values anymore. Everything has a shelf life excepting perhaps those items Sotheby’s auctions off at extortionist prices. Awakening to the reality of being up to my ears with “stuff” is humbling. It’s a sign that a new generation is taking over the one I’m vacating. 

The post- pandemic era will be shaping a new mentality. Just what that will look like isn’t clear. Hopefully we’ll be getting along with a little less.

I wondered what Google might be offering for people downsizing –– a subject referred to alternatively as decluttering –– and I found at least twenty books on the subject, numerous tips, suggestions for decluttering and a couple of writers that identified downsizing and decluttering as spiritual exercises. I was interested to note, too, that getting rid of books was especially difficult. It was a subject with its own category, addressed as specialty in itself.

Some of the books suggested that unaddressed clutter in one’s life was a form of addiction requiring a kind of 12 Step approach, which assume meant taking the first step that we were powerless.

Columnist George Merrill is an Episcopal Church priest and pastoral psychotherapist. A writer and photographer, he’s authored two books on spirituality: Reflections: Psychological and Spiritual Images of the Heart and The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. He is a native New Yorker, previously directing counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and in Baltimore. George’s essays, some award winning, have appeared in regional magazines and are broadcast twice monthly on Delmarva Public Radio.

 

 

 

 

 

Possessing illegal drugs is a crime. Costs for some prescription drugs is a crime.  On both sides of the law we have a drug problem.

As is the case with most of us elderly, as the years add up, so do the pills. Taking more medications is as much a part of an aging life-style as afternoon napping and watching Jeopardy.

Either because of medical necessity or spiritual emptiness, young Americans are getting hooked on drugs at alarming rates. Addictions are largely driven by feelings of spiritual vacuity, a pervasive sense of inner emptiness and meaninglessness. Sedative dugs anaesthetize those feelings while amphetamines and hallucinogenic drugs provide intoxicating energy and optimism. For the chronically ill, there are often not enough drugs, on the street there are always too many, and for all concerned they cost too much. It’s an odd thought that legitimate patients, drug pushers and junkies share a common concern: will our drugs be available when we want them, and if they are, will we have enough money to pay for them?

As a kid, on my bike, I delivered prescriptions for our local pharmacist. Mrs. Waters was my favorite client. She was so grateful when I arrived with her “headache powders” and tipped me generously, a quarter, big money in 1948. Heaven only knows what may have been in the powders but whatever it was she was always glad to see me and that, including the tip, made me feel good.

Our dependence on drugs for our health and comfort has grown dramatically since World War II.  Prior to 194l, only six drugs accounted for sixty percent of all prescriptions written. In the last decade, James Surowieki reported in the New Yorker, that U.S. drug companies have created more than three hundred new medications.  

Drugs and medicinal potions have been integral to the human experience. From ritual incantations chanted over herbs and roots, from ‘potions,’ from the claims of ‘patent medicines,’ to the modern miracles of pharmacology, we continually hope for healing. Healing from what? From the afflictions that ail our bodies, to be sure, but also from the conditions that trouble our spirit.

In Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth worries about his wife’s disturbed state of mind; she’s not sleeping. He implores the doctor:

“Cans’t thou not minister to a mind diseased…

Raze out the written troubles of the brain,

And with some sweet oblivious antidote, cleanse 

the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff

Which weighs upon the heart.”

Macbeth’s plea is common enough: “Come on, Doc, can’t you give her something?” 

He can’t: “Therein the patient must minister to himself,” the physician concludes. Today, Macbeth would never have held still for that kind of advice; he would have immediately sought a second opinion. 

America’s extraordinary history with patent medicines–– nostrums as they were called –– reveals our deep longing to be made whole, a desire often exploited by charlatans that introduce false hope. This history should also make us thank our lucky stars for the FDA.

Before modern pharmacology, and in the absence of effective diagnoses and treatment, the sick were desperately vulnerable. Their plight bred a large ‘patent medicine’ industry which made outrageous claims, while selling as antidotes, what were hardly even anodynes, and toxic ones at that. 

If you lived around tidewater, there was even a potion offered to treat ‘miasma’, allergy to swamp gasses. Most likely, it was a derivative of Jack Daniels.

Take the shameless Dr. Archambault, an industrious nineteenth century Boston entrepreneur. He claimed that his treatment called “Wonderful Paris Vital Sparks,” stimulated “marital vigor.”  It was reputed to ” . . . act on the organs as rapidly as a cathartic acts on the bowels.” Dr. Archambault’s formula, with its comprehensive properties but explosive propensities was wisely accompanied with his company’s assurance of legitimacy. Similar to our own prescription drug disclaimers today, it covered the waterfront while remaining totally inscrutable. “Sincerity in speaking as they think, believing as they pretend, acting as they profess, performing as they promise, and being as they appear to be. This is what the Dr. Archambault Co. always does.”  Bubba’s lawyer couldn’t have said it better.

Patent medicines affected no cures, except perhaps for the soothing effects of opioids and alcohol.  Their active agents were typically combinations of both. Some contained lethal agents like mercury compounds and hydrochloric acid. The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 began to curtail these shams, and suits against the companies continued well into the l920’s. 

Today, Lady Macbeth’s physician would have knocked her out like a light in seconds and would not likely have recommended psychotherapy. Every day new wonder drugs promise effective treatment for all kinds of ailments–even those that may be “just in your head.” Some critics are disturbed by the increasing use of drugs to correct aberrant behavior like shoplifting, or interpersonal problems such as shyness, and the recently diagnosed affliction, “Affluenza,” a nervous disorder suffered by some who win lotteries or become millionaires overnight. Affluenza patients may turn out to be lucky on more than one count: the cause of their neurosis also pays the freight for treating it. For the rest of us, treatment costs are onerous.

But rarely do drug manufacturers make the outrageous and fraudulent claims they once made in the past. Manufacturers’ disclaimers, however, will frequently contribute to our confusion. Most are written as exhaustively as Dr. Archambault’s assurances. Medical professionals regard such disclaimers as simply attempts by manufacturers to CYA. Are drug companies suspect in their practices? If they are, it’s not the first time. Back in 1776, Adam Smith wrote that “Apothecaries’ profit has become a by-word denoting something uncommonly extravagant.”

You’ve probably noticed that many HMO’s are sexist. For instance, most HMO’s will cover Viagra but not Birth Control pills. I know women with insurance policies that won’t routinely cover an annual physical for them. Men’s yearly physicals are regularly covered. I’ll bet it’s mostly guys who are making these policies. 

Our real problems arise around the miracles of modern pharmacology, not so much from their efficacy–– many are an undisputed  blessing –– but in learning how to use them to live life more fully, not to escape it.

Columnist George Merrill is an Episcopal Church priest and pastoral psychotherapist. A writer and photographer, he’s authored two books on spirituality: Reflections: Psychological and Spiritual Images of the Heart and The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. He is a native New Yorker, previously directing counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and in Baltimore. George’s essays, some award winning, have appeared in regional magazines and are broadcast twice monthly on Delmarva Public Radio.