The chronic malcontent has an epiphany about mindfulness

I have epiphanies about as often as I vacuum my carpet, which is to say, about once or twice a year, so when they happen, I try to milk them for all they are worth. Ditto when I vacuum. I roll around on the floor for months afterward, reveling in the absence of cat barf. Lately I've had a spate of little revelations related to the meaning of life and death, nothing really earth shattering, you know, just realizations along the lines of you can't take it with you, so you might as well dump it all now.

In certain circles (of which I am on the periphery, like when I was a barely tolerated 15-year-old lurking among the fringe loonies orbiting the center hall socialites), it seems I hear words like mindfulness with some frequency. Mindful seems to toddle along with words like right thinking, right livelihood, that sort of thing. It's very Zen. I don't know much about all that meditation yoga chi chi hoohaw, so I won't offer an opinion. But my epiphany is related to mindfulness, so if I'm going to write about it, it's quite likely you'll see me roll an eye or two, if you happen to be watching. Which I hope you aren't, because the place is a mess. I need to vacuum.

I've been worrying lately that I'm not mindful enough. What does that even mean? Thanks for asking. I'm not really sure. Suddenly I'm dumbfounded: I have been stewing and fretting, wondering if I should be pursuing mindfulness without fully knowing what it actually is. That's just nuts, when I think about it. That's like saying yes, please, I'd like a full glass of retsina without sipping someone else's first.

What does mindfulness mean to you? What words come to mind when you are feeling mindful? (Har har.) The word mind is starting to look odd as I'm typing it. Am I misspelling mind? (Would you mind?) Whoa. Suddenly I'm feeling a wave of vertigo. What is going on? My mind is trying to kill me. Let's assume it's a hot flash of creativity and move on, shall we?

Back to mindfulness. At first, I thought mindful meant being hyper self-aware. I've heard people say, “When I swim [or run or dance or make art], I'm fully present.” I think they are referring to a type of mindfulness, a feeling of being aware of being in one's skin. Wow, that's so meta. They swear they feel one with the universe, whatever that means. Even though they look like nerds with their goofy swim goggles. We are all just tiny specks, how can we be one with the universe? The universe is really big. Whatever. Anyway, I thought, it's one of those Zen things. After meditating for an hour, eat some rice cakes with soy butter and wash it down with wheat grass. Like that.

I wonder, why would anyone want to be that self-aware? Isn't life excruciating enough as it is? I do all I can to avoid feeling fully present. A normal person can't take a lot of self-awareness. That's what pork rinds and Pepsi are for, to dull the roar, so you can function. Am I right? Maybe that's why most Americans are getting fat. They are rebelling against being mindful.

Back to my epiphany. Here's what I think about mindfulness. I think mindfulness is just another form of self-obsession. Yep. I said it. It's out there now. What do I mean? Well, take mindful eating. People who don't read novels or newspapers while they eat are sneaks. They could interrupt you at any second with some inane comment about how delicious their organic potatoes are. Like I care. I'm reading, for god's sake!

They count their chews, they count their steps, they count their pennies, maybe all that weighing and measuring is all just self-obsession, masquerading as self-awareness. Whoa, am I going to get it from my Zen yoga junkie friends. I just basically called them all self-obsessed wackjobs.

There's another part to my epiphany. I can't share it with you, though, because if I do, it will lose its magic. When you have a really great idea, you should nurture it for awhile before you share it. That's how you help the magic grow. But I will say this: It's the opposite of being mindful, and it does not involve pork rinds.

The chronic malcontent goes up the country

Today I drove my mother out into the country for Cousin Dave's memorial gathering. I took I-84 to US 30 and cut up Newberry Road just past the little town of Linnton. We expected rain, but it was intermittently sunny. I wore sunglasses. The roads were dry. The car ran fine. I found the Grange Hall without getting lost. As we came around the bend, I could see we were late. Cars and huge trucks lined the gravel road in front of the building.

“I'll drop you off,” I said to Mom and pulled up in front. She maneuvered out of the car and almost fell over as she tried to slam the car door. “Slippery,” she said. She wobbled toward the building.

I crossed my fingers, drove back onto Skyline, and found a spot a couple hundred yards along in a pullout. I parked, spent a moment hoping nobody would come round the curve and wipe out into my car, and walked back along the gravel road to the hall. The air was refreshingly brisk. I smelled spring. I pulled out my camera as I walked. Water gurgled in a gully but I couldn't see anything beneath the lush greenery. An open meadow past the row of parked cars glistened brilliant green, soggy wet against a backdrop of fir trees.

A group of unfamiliar men stood near the door, chatting. One guy said something about Dave elk hunting in eastern Oregon. I didn't linger to introduce myself. I am not a hunter. I gave them a weak finger wave and one of those smiles that I hope said, I don't know you, we share a loss, but not a huge loss, because I was only a cousin, and I'm guessing you guys are work buddies, and the sun is shining so how bad could it be?

Inside the grange hall, people milled about, talking loudly and carrying paper plates of food. Cookies, crock pot meatballs bristling with toothpicks. Across a big open space of beige linoleum, I spotted both my brothers and my sister-in-law. My mother was lost in the crush. About five long folding tables covered with blue paper tablecloths had been set up in a row, blocking access to a display of photos. Children of all sizes and genders, mostly blonde, ran screaming among the adults.

Someone had created a huge photo poster of Dave's life, pasting photos on multiple sheets of poster board, captioning each one by hand. I recognized none of the photos. Dave was a stranger to me, I realized. There were no photos of family Christmases that included my family (although I have some from our elementary school days). I felt sad to realize that I grew up distant from my cousins, even though we lived in the same city. For a tiny second, I blamed my mother. Then I realized that we all lived full, busy lives. Across the city might as well be on another planet when you are a kid. Even after we grew up, the only time I saw my cousins was on rare occasions when I was visiting from California and they happened to be visiting my parents. Once, maybe twice. The next generation of cousins once-removed appeared and grew up without me. Now there are twice-removed cousins running around.

Some people are close to their cousins. Not me. Much as I adore my girl cousin, our lives rarely intersect. She's busy with a full-time job, traveling, a relationship, and I'm busy in my cave doing this. I don't even know my boy cousins.

I wandered and took pictures. Two framed paintings perched on table easels, one of a country cabin and one of an elk standing on a ridge. A set of antlers took up most of a side table, elk presumably. I wouldn't know. I do know the owner of those antlers is almost certainly deceased. A large flat-screen computer monitor showed a slideshow of photos of Dave and his kids and grand-kids. His eldest daughter sat on a bench by the wall, watching the slides and weeping.

I was ready to go when my mother gave me the high sign.

“I would use the restroom, but I don't like the look of those stairs,” she said. The restrooms were in the basement. The stairs were steep and many. Carpeted, though, which might save old bones from ruin. Still, I didn't argue.

“Just as long as you don't mess up my car.”

I walked out into the sunshine to fetch my car. The sons and daughters of my cousins were standing around in groups. My cousins once-removed. I waved and pointed to my car, which I'm sure was perfectly translatable as I'm going to fetch my car because my mother can't walk that far. I walked on, breathing in the spring air. It could be fake spring; we get that a lot here in February. Crocuses bloom, and then bam!—snowstorm. But it's an el nino year and the hottest on record besides. I think winter is over.

As we pulled out of the parking area, I noticed my mother digging through her many pockets. She does this frequently. It usually means something got lost: a glove, sunglasses, cell phone.

“What are you looking for?”

“I thought I saved my cigarette butts,” she said. “But now I can't find them. Guess I threw them away.” My mother, the perfect guest: she packs 'em in, she smokes 'em, she packs 'em out.

I smelled burned ash and started coughing.

“You aren't on fire, are you? I don't have a fire extinguisher.”

She laughed. I wasn't joking; no fire extinguisher. I let it go, figuring if she were on fire, we'd find out soon enough.

On the way back, the smell of burned cigarettes was overpowering. I rolled my window down a bit and tried to breathe through my mouth.

The chronic malcontent takes a philosophical view

I've been dreaming lately of escape. Hitting the road, leaving it all behind, taking a geographical. Even though I know that wherever I go, there I'll be, I still want to take myself someplace else. I'm not sure where exactly. I haven't done more than choose a direction: south.

My friend Bravadita has used her recent brush with death as a metaphysical platform from which to launch a tiny house. She's collecting sinks and things, immersed in the process of crafting a new life from the inside out, from the ground up. I'm guessing the actions she takes toward building her pint-sized dream house help her tolerate her crappy day job. I want to get some of that.

The maternal parental unit has now declared her intention to stay in her condo as long as possible. I interpret that to mean until she falls, breaks a hip, has to go into rehab, and from there, into an adult care home. I don't say that to her. I say, I support you in your desire to stay independent as long as possible. I work daily at being a good daughter.

She changes her mind weekly. I try to keep up.

Today Mom took a cab to a doctor's appointment about two miles from her home. She arranged it by phone ahead of time. I kept my fingers crossed this morning, as I waited by the phone, in case she needed a ride home. I was fretting a little bit. I was acting like a parent whose child had gone to school on the school bus for the first time.

I called her around noon, wondering what I would do if she'd gone AWOL. Wanted! Scrawny old lady wandering in NE Portland. If seen, do not approach. Call authorities. I imagined my tiny twig mother getting into the cab of a semi-truck, bound for Ojai with a load of lettuce. Breaker, breaker in a deep smoker's voice.

She answered the phone. I breathed a sigh of relief.

“How did it go?” I asked (on your first day on the school bus).

“The driver who took me home was quite nice,” she said. “A lot nicer than the one who picked me up.” The customer has spoken. Are you listening, cab company? I doubt it. Nobody cares what old ladies think.

“I'm glad you made it home safe,” I said.

“I'm going to eat lunch and take a nap,” she said and hung up the phone. I felt some of my tension ease. Maybe this is a good sign. Mom can take a cab.

My brother is adamant that Mom should move into a care home, the sooner the better.

“You want her to be safe,” I said with compassion.

“Yes!”

“Even if that means she's not happy.”

“Yes!” Well, he didn't actually say that, but he meant it.

I felt the same way up until a few weeks ago, when I started to shift more toward the happy camp. I'm sensing my family is trapped in a four-quadrant decision window. What's that, you wonder? Thanks for asking. It's a quadrant with four choices: safe but not happy, happy but not safe, not happy and not safe, or happy AND safe. Of course, we say we want happy AND safe, but truthfully, Mom prefers happy not safe, and the children lean toward safe not happy. As long as Mom is competent, she can do what she wants. Up to and including getting into semi-trucks with strange truckers.

I don't trust my feelings on any of this. It's like when I hear someone who clearly has an eating disorder declare, “I can have bread everyday. I just have to manage it.” Like when an alcoholic says, “I can have a beer once in a while. I can handle it.”

It used to be I would see family at weddings. I stopped getting wedding invitations years ago, after the cousins of my generation had kids and then grand-kids. Now I can see what's coming: I'll be seeing my cousins at funerals. What's left of us, that is. On Saturday I'm taking Mom to a grange hall in the country for Cousin Dave's memorial service. I imagine it will feel as bleak as the graveside service did, except for indoors.

A pollster called me this evening from a 555 number. Is that even possible? I thought it was Windows Technical Support again. I started preparing my strategy as soon as I heard a young woman speaking with a clipped British-Indian accent.

“I'm not trying to sell you anything and I won't ask for a contribution or a donation,” she reassured me. It was almost time for iZombie, but I sighed and agreed to be polled.

Most of the survey was about two bond measures, one to raise money for schools and the other to raise money to build affordable housing for seniors. As I struggled to translate her accent, I thought to myself, it's pretty silly to expect people to quickly come up with thoughtful responses on such important issues. I did my best to answer, though. Definitely yes, somewhat yes, undecided lean yes, not at all convincing. It was entertaining to hear her pronounce Oregon Orreezhjan. I almost stopped her to ask where she was calling from. Deepest darkest Atlanta, probably. Or Austin. The heart of call center country.

Mostly I was grateful that that wasn't my job, to call weary people at 8:30 at night. 10:30 central time zone. In the background was the buzz of many voices. It sounded a lot like the buzzy background of the Windows Technical Support cretins who've been calling me three times a day for the past month.

Today the scammers left me alone. I can hardly believe it. Maybe it's because I asked the young man how he could live with himself, knowing he was breaking the law, taking advantage of people with a heartless scam. Probably not. One can hope.

Fool on a hill

I've only been to Skyline Memorial Cemetery once, with Mom to direct me, some years ago, so I wasn't sure I would find the place. The clouds were low over the West hills of Portland. The road was socked in with fog. I almost missed the sign. Luckily, I had viewed the place from satellite the night before (Google Earth!), so I knew that the funeral home office was just off the second driveway. I was 20 minutes early on purpose. I figured I'd use the restroom, get a map, and sneak into the periphery of the group somewhere near the grave site, if I could find it.

As it turned out, the family was gathering in the lobby of the funeral home office. The former wife of my youngest cousin was already there. We recognized each other, which for me is a big deal, for her, probably not so much. Still, she seemed glad to see me, and I was glad to see her. I like her. When I came out of the candlelit restroom, I greeted her with a hug. I was conscious of the degree of my social enthusiasm and wondered if I should dial it back a bit. Not that I'm so flamboyantly social, I've met her what, five times in 30 years? But it was a funeral. Well, at least I wore black.

People I didn't recognize came in out of the damp fog. In my cloud of social anxiety, I was just barely conscious of my awareness that most of them in my generation were overweight and obviously colored their hair. And they all looked so old. What happened to us? Dave was only 61; that seems so young to me. It occurred to me as I was standing awkwardly trying to keep an appropriately sad but welcoming look on my face, that I probably looked just as old and decrepit to them as they did to me. WTF.

I realized that some of the strangers were actually grownup children of my cousins, towing their own young daughters and sons. Some of the faces I may have seen once at a barbecue a few years back, at my aunt's 75th birthday. Seems like ancient history now. My memory fails me daily. Names and faces... like my mother, I am learning to fake it.

The funeral home assistant, a tall heavy young woman dressed in a parka and black leggings, perked up as soon as Cousin Dave's wife arrived. I could see her move into a brisk-but-sympathetic let's-get-this-show-on-the-road mode. I tried to model my face after her expression. Nobody noticed.

“If you want to drive your car to the site, just follow the truck.” She didn't have to say which truck. We all knew: The truck with the casket hanging out the back. I can only imagine what it was like to drive that truck from the house to the cemetery. Did they hang a festive red flag on the end of the casket? Would any nearby drivers realize that there was an embalmed body, sans a few organs, resting in the box? Now there's a plot for a story...

Someone murmured something about walking. That sounded good to me, and apparently to many others. We swarmed out the door into the drippy fog and walked in small groups out to the parking lot. My aunt came over, a tiny shred of an old woman wearing an eye-watering hot fuchsia windbreaker. I think my mother might actually have a pound or two over my aunt. (My aunt has always competed to be thinnest.)

She gave me a long, uncomfortable hug. Her eyebrows barely reached my chest. I'm not sure where she was looking—at my jacket, I guess. I stared off across the parking lot, patting her back, realizing belatedly that I was actually holding her up. I waited for her weight to transfer back onto her tiny feet and extricated myself from her embrace.

An exotic long-haired young woman came over and gave me a hug. Who...?

“I'm Julie,” she said in a choked voice. Oh, right. Julie. My brain scrambled, trying to unravel the family tree on the spot. Dave's second daughter. Oh, right. She just lost her father. Bummer.

My brother and his girlfriend were there, two familiar faces. The small crowd walked in groups up a small rise. As we crested the hill, a cold wind attacked. Nothing out of the ordinary, just the typical 40° damp wind we all know as Portland winter. We all huddled into our scarves and trudged onward.

Not far along the road was the mausoleum wall. About 20 yards below the road, a backhoe and a little pickup filled with gravel were parked on the muddy grass. An empty bier stood waiting for the casket. I presumed the bier hid the open grave beneath. Hey, I've seen funerals on TV, I know what's what. Pretty soon, six men of varying ages struggled into view, carrying the wooden casket across the slippery grass. I recognized Dave's two brothers and Dave's son. I thought of all the things that could go wrong, but they settled the box on the bier without mishap. 

I hovered on the periphery as about 30 people clustered around, facing a bearded guy wearing black and holding a book. Minister, pastor? Four members of the grounds crew waited respectfully nearby. One was a blond woman wearing enormous black gloves. I imagined they were itching to get back to backhoeing and spreading gravel.

As if on cue, as the minister led the crowd in the first of several prayers, the fog began to lift. The view was impressive. Far across the valley, sunlit glimmered on a section of the Willamette River. Dave's other daughter stood up to make some brief remarks. Fifteen minutes later, the wind was cutting through my jacket. Small children were crying out loud, the adults were sniffling into tissues, partly from grief, partly from the biting wind, and I was ready to bail.

After another prayer, a young girl stood by the box and faced the assembled group to sing an a capella hymn. The first stanza had everyone moaning and sobbing. So cute! So sweet. By the third stanza, people were starting to shift around in the mud and pull their scarves around their necks. By the fifth stanza, she was still going strong. Where's Monty Python when you need him? I gazed off over the open fields of the cemetery below, inching away from the mourners (prayer and hymns have that effect on me), and watched a crow fight off a hawk over our heads. The hawk kept circling, aloft on the wind, and lazily drifted away toward some distant trees. The crow returned to a tree near the mausoleum, the winner, for now.

The story should end here for effect, but life is so strange. The grounds crew lifted a white plastic cover and placed it over the casket. Unfortunately, the cover did not fit over the box. My youngest cousin, Dave's younger brother, had built the box himself with the assistance of Dave's son. He was standing next to me as we watched the dilemma unfold.

“Twenty-four inches tall and twenty-eight inches wide,” my cousin said. “That's what they told me. It better fit.”

People milled around for a few minutes, churning up the grass, then most retired to the shelter of the mausoleum wall, where the cemetery people had set up two rows of folding chairs covered in dark green fake fur (I kid you not). The cousins and sibling gathered in groups according to their age brackets, waiting for the cemetery crew to find a cover that would fit. I wandered a dozen yards away to see the grave marker for my grandparents, who both died in 1985. My girl cousin came over with her daughter.

“When Grandpa came to stay with my mother, after Grandma died, he was so sad,” my cousin said, glaring bleakly at her twig of a mother who was holding court by the mausoleum wall. “My mother had no compassion at all for him and what he was going through.”

She looked at me. “You know my mother.”

“I do know your mother,” I agreed. I thought about mothers. I decided that even as much as I'm struggling with my own mother, I would not want to trade. I know her mother.

The wind felt like it was coming straight off the ocean. At that point, I hit my limit. I didn't know I had a limit on graveside services, but apparently I do. I decided I didn't need to see my cousin's coffin lowered into the dirt. I said goodbye to my girl cousin and her daughter, and to my brother and headed away from the group to get up to the road. The grass in places was pure mud, which made walking treacherous. My brother's wife walked back to the parking lot with me. The hem of her long dress was wet from trailing in sodden grass. We talked about aging parents, but didn't figure anything out.

Cousin Dave is on the roof

I dreamed a mildly romantic dream last night. Sadly, though, no tongues to report; I rarely progress that far in dreams anymore. Don't know what that means, and it doesn't matter. I didn't regret the loss. I was more interested in the fact that, in my dream, I was ageless. I mean, I wasn't any specific age, as far as I could tell. I wasn't old or young. I just was. My perception of me existed outside time.

Sure, my dreams have changed over the years, whose haven't? When I was 6, I dreamed creatures from outer space were taking over the earth in flying saucers. That was the year the city adopted oscillating sirens on their police cars. I was sure invasion was imminent. When I was young, I used to fly a lot in my dreams. I don't fly anymore. I don't even run. Now all I do is stomp repeatedly on nonfunctional brakes. Or I lose my car altogether in some part of the city I've never seen before.

I feel like I live life interrupted, daily. I aim in one direction and find myself going in another. I wait in wait-and-see mode, not bothering anymore to wonder what the future holds. I know what it holds. I don't need a magic 8 ball to know where we are all headed. Yep, you got it. Hell in a hand-basket.

Cousin Dave died last week. His mother called me because she was afraid if she called my mother, the news would send her off her rocker. (Oh, sorry, that's a euphemism for lose her mind. No, that's a euphemism too. I mean, she would lose what cognitive ability she still has.) I was the designated bad-news bearer for my immediate family. I took the coward's way out and wrote an email to my siblings. But I called my mother first to give her the sad news.

“Cousin Dave died yesterday,” I said when I got her on the phone. Oh, darn. Should I have used a euphemism to soften the blow? Should I have said Cousin Dave is on the roof? I am a lousy liar. I can't even tell a good joke, because I dread making people wait through the setup. I should probably at least have made sure she was sitting down. Well, in my defense, I did wait until evening so I didn't ruin her afternoon nap.

My mother is a former nurse. And she's a former librarian. That means, to me, that if she hasn't seen death and dying up close in person, she's certainly shelved some books about it. I figured she would say, oh, that's terribly sad, grieve a bit, and move on. Unfortunately, my mother has been replaced by a pod person whom I no longer recognize. This new pod-mom creature was devastated by the news of the loss of Cousin Dave.

“Oh, no. Not Dave. No. Why couldn't it have been me?” she wailed. I cringed. I know it's not my mother anymore, but it's still hard to hear her suffer.

Cousin Dave was my mother's brother's eldest son. A heart attack laid him out. By the time they got him to the hospital, he was dead. Oh, wait, I should say he had passed. Or passed away? Is that the right euphemism? I can't keep track. I always thought passing was what one did on the two-lane road to the coast when you're stuck behind a log truck. Whatever. So, Dave is gone. We lost him.

Eventually Mom emerged from her blue funk to call my aunt and get the details. She called me the next day and sounded pretty calm as she told me about the casket-building her brother's remaining children and grandchildren were doing. I was impressed. Casket building would never have occurred to me. I'd be more likely to sew a shroud.

“They plan to wrap him in an elk hide,” my mother said bemusedly. “The other kids plan to put in a Native American blanket.” Right. For his trip to the happy hunting ground. I don't know what Dave's idea of heaven was, but I'm pretty sure it involved guns, judging by how many racks he had hanging in his living room. And when I say racks, I mean elk and deer antlers, just so we're clear.

I didn't know Dave well. I am closer to his sister, my only girl cousin. Dave was an enigma, like all older males. He grew a beard, married a Mormon, had a pack of kids and got divorced. He was happily remarried to a woman I met once or twice, who seemed to enjoy hunting as much as Dave did. I'm sad she's a widow. Dave was only 61, the same age as my older brother.

Mom told me today she doesn't feel up to attending the graveside service day after tomorrow. I guess I'll drive up the hill to... I don't even know what that part of the city is called...to Skyline Cemetery, a place I've only visited once, some years ago, to see the graves of my mother's parents. They died the same year, 1985, within months of each other. Dave's grave will be nearby, with a nice view.

When I was maybe 14 or 15, before I got my first boyfriend, I remember a family visit to Cousin Dave's house. I don't know if it was winter or summer, but I remember Dave, my handsome older boy cousin, offering to play some records for me on his record player. (If you don't know what a record player is, it's a device that played vinyl records.) He might have played more than one song, but the only one I remember is Chicago's Colour My World. To this day, I can't hear that song without thinking of Cousin Dave. RIP Cousin Dave. You will be missed.