Again, this year I was honored to MC KARA's annual meeting, held on June 9th. (KARA website) Below, are my introductory remarks.
Disappearing into pictures
A modern Zen master once spoke of dying as “disappearing into pictures.” Those words resonated with me and I think of them often. People have different ideas about where we go when we die. Wherever it is, those of us still living continue our relationship with those who have gone before us. I think the master was prompting us to think not only about death, but these relationships with the departed.
When I first walked into the VA nursing home in Menlo Park many years ago to work as a physician, I was greeted by rows of pictures on either side of the entrance corridor - pictures of young men and women in uniform, mostly in black and white. They looked like photos from some old John Wayne movie – handsome, young pilots standing next their planes, swabbies, WACs, and Waves. I didn’t know any of them. Over time, I did come to know and care for many of them. Most all are gone now, their passings marked by gold stars on their photos. Back then, it was hard for me to see the optimistic youths of those pictures in the eyes of the patients for whom I cared. Just as I am sure it was hard, if not impossible, for those young men and women to imagine growing so old. Pushing further back, I try to imagine them as young children and infants. In my mind, I know that they once were, as were you and I, but it is so hard to see. I imagine photos, taken in childhood, adulthood, and old age. Now that they’re gone, which photos reflected the true person?
In his book, Slaughter House Five, the author, Kurt Vonnegut, invented an interesting race of beings, called Tralfamadorans from the planet, Tralfamadore. These beings somehow existed outside of time and were thereby able to view everything and everybody across past, present and future. To Tralfamodorans, outside of time people look something like caterpillars – segmented creatures, small and tapered at both ends. To them, what we imagine to be an ever changing present self is nothing more than flashes of awareness of individual segments along the caterpillar’s body, each imagining that only they exist. To this image we might add a peculiar attribute of our species. In most cases the caterpillar is diapered at both ends. This diapering is calmly accepted at one end and yet is a source of great distress at the other, something quite mysterious and otherwise unknown in the great cosmos.
I don’t know if you find such a notion reassuring or disturbing. Personally, I find it useful to try to adopt a Tralfamadoran perspective. In the young boy I try to imagine the old man. In the old woman, the young girl.
From a more human perspective it is our nature to make and hold onto images of people we have lost. Images formed on paper, stone, in letters, and in memory. We might wish that we could perfectly sort the images, keeping only the happy ones. Some unpleasant, some ugly images cannot be so easily thrown away. They ache, like old battle scars.
When loved-ones die, we create memorials. Bu we are uneasily aware that these images will eventually fade just as photos fade in albums handed down across generations. Monuments turn to sand.
We can imagine new paths to immortality. Photos can be digitalized! In Google we trust that we will live-on in some cyber-version of eternity. And yet we know this too is not true. Some day, Google and the great Net will also tear and fall to cyber-dust.
Still, we persist in our remembrances and build monuments in spite of this truth. There’s something heroically human about that.
The Zen master spoke of disappearing into pictures. I think that’s important. It is tempting to dwell on the loss, the disappearance and miss this key point. Wherever the departed go, they remain with us in images. They remain with us and walk with us on our own caterpillar’s journey. There’s solace in that.
This annual meeting provides for us not only an opportunity to learn, but to reflect and remember. I encourage you to think back over this past year to gains and losses, joys and sorrows. What pictures come to your mind? Who walks with you on your caterpillar journey?