Life cycle
Yesterday morning, I sifted through my ready-for-the-garden compost. It's been "cooking" for about six months while we use our other bin for the more recent vegetable scraps. It's like magic to me, the way all those chunky scraps are turned into rich fragrant soil by worms, pill bugs, microbes, and all sorts of other bugs that work on breaking down the matter. I'm one of those people who doesn't mind sticking my hand into warm compost wriggling with worms and bugs. It connects me to the basic fact of life, that all things break down and don't last. It used to scare me, this knowledge, but now I see that in totally accepting that fact, life opens up with all possibilities. The only catch is, there can be no expectations about what those possibilities are. And therein lies freedom. If I don't resist what shows up for me, there is a depth and richness to be fully experienced.
I've spent the last couple of months tending to my aging parents, one on the west coast, one on the east. My mom has now moved into her retirement apartment close to me and is becoming more childlike every day. My father is coming to the end of his long life, grumpy and miserable in his dementia. The week I arrived in NJ he was admitted to the hospital and almost broke a nurse's hand in his distress and plain orneriness. The first day I visited him, I thought would be his last. I sat with him on that day, just being there, not feeling like I had to do anything in particular. Mostly he slept, but at times he would wake up, full of wild fear of what was happening to him. When I held his hand and told him all was well, he would calm down and look into my eyes. In those moments, he was fully present, and all those years of being a difficult human being and a terrible parent disappeared. In his eyes, there was a deep wisdom that was clear and immediate. This is where we connected with love and without agenda. This is who my father really is. This is who we all are. The next day, my dad began to revive. And he was back to shouting at everyone in Hungarian and complaining about everything. His eyes didn't meet mine that day. But I know who's there. A few days later he was discharged and is now back at home.
So how does compost relate to that? Well, you may think me morbid, but eventually we all go back to the earth, disintegrate, and in the process, replenish life. Nothing is lost, really; we are all that unformed vividness of life that animates everything. Despite our mind stories to the contrary, that's what we always are. But it is our uniqueness that is like the rich compost, full of variety, yet all made up of the same substance, life itself.