Radical Acts of Love. Janie Brown. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

Автор: Janie Brown
Издательство: Ingram
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Жанр произведения: Биографии и Мемуары
Год издания: 0
isbn: 9781786899057
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Radical Acts of Love

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      First published in Great Britain in 2020 by Canongate Books Ltd,

      14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE

       canongate.co.uk

      This digital edition first published in 2020 by Canongate Books

      Copyright © Janie Brown, 2020

      The right of Janie Brown to be identified as the

      author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance

      with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

      Excerpt from The Art of Forgiveness, Lovingkindness and Peace by Jack Kornfield, copyright © 2002, 2008 by Jack Kornfield. Reprinted by permission of Bantam Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

      Excerpt by Audre Lorde, from ‘Audre Lorde’ in Interview with the Muse, by Nina Winter (Berkeley, California: Moon Books, 1978), 72-81. Copyright © 1976, 1978. Reprinted with permission.

      Excerpt by Joanna Macy, copyright © by Joanna Macy. Reprinted with permission.

      Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologises for any errors or omissions and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints of editions of this book.

      British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library ISBN 978 1 78689 902 6 eISBN 978 1 78689 905 7

      FOR KIRSTEN,

      WHO INSPIRED ME TO WRITE

      AND FOR ALL THE OTHER PEOPLE IN THIS BOOK

      WHO ALSO GRACED ME WITH THEIR LIVES

       ‘If you would indeed behold the spirit of death,

       open your heart wide unto the body of life.’

      — ‘DEATH POEM XXVII’ BY KHALIL GIBRAN

      ‘He, too, has been changed in his turn,

       Transformed utterly:

       A terrible beauty is born.’

      — ‘EASTER, 1916’ BY W.B. YEATS

      Contents

       Preface

       I. OPENING THE HEART TO DYING

       1 KAREN: Golden Love

       2 DANIEL: Memory Box

       3 RACHEL: Pod of Orcas

       4 JOHN: Fear Disappears

       5 DAN: Dying on His Own Terms

       II. ACCEPTING THE UNRESOLVED HEART

       6 BRIGID: Best Laid Plans

       7 JIM: No Talk of Dying

       8 PAT: The Decision

       9 GEORGE: Defying Death

       III. HEALING THE TROUBLED HEART

       10 BELLA: Soul Retrieval

       11 ANNELIESE: Released

       12 KIRSTEN: Writing on Purpose

       13 LOUISE: The Possibility of Forgiveness

       IV. SURRENDERING TO THE SPACIOUS HEART

       14 PHILIP: The Rightness of Everything

       15 RONALD AND MARCO: Growing the Heart

       16 HEATHER: The Plunge

       17 BILL: Thirteen Weeks

       18 JEN: Awe

       19 KATE: The Dance

       20 LIZ: Excruciating Beauty

       Acknowledgements

      Preface

      Gran was the first person I saw die. I was nineteen years old and she was eighty-one. She was my father’s mother and she lived with our family for the last couple of years of her life, in a small cottage attached to the old sandstone house my three siblings and I were raised in, just outside Glasgow. Gran died of oesophageal cancer, more common in those days because of the heavy cigarette-smoking combined with her daily tipples of whisky. I remember following Mum into Gran’s bright white bedroom and watching over her shoulder as she washed my grandmother and changed the soiled sheets. I wanted to help her care for Gran but I felt frozen, unsure what to do, even though I had worked in hospitals for two summers by that time. Gran was my kin, not a patient. That made a difference then.

      I don’t remember being afraid of death, rather just curious about the unusual smells in the room and the fact that she coughed a lot and didn’t talk much. Mum made it okay. She didn’t seem afraid either, just busy. She had been a nurse too, which must have helped her know what to do. There were no long heartfelt conversations at Gran’s bedside, nor long bucket lists of activities to be accomplished. There was just the work of dying – for my gran, the patient, and for my mum, the caregiver.

      I learned then that most deaths are natural. Not easy, but not necessarily scary; nor traumatic or over-medicalised; not romantic nor glorified. Death is most often ordinary and manageable, acceptable but deeply sad. The majority of old people, like my grandmother, died at home in those days before it was commonplace to be admitted to a hospital, or hospice, for the last days or weeks of life.