To Be..or..not

Existential

Existential

When Hamlet questioned to be or not to be, was he contemplating suicide or just allowing himself to wake up and look around? The not to be, perhaps, was the normal state of reality, not the escape route of suicide. To be was the invitation to stay awake. To be was being awake and aware and capable of absorbing the whole of life as it is.

Anxiety. This has been my to be tormentor for the past few weeks, and I could see it yesterday when I was so terrified that I would not deliver to the group assembled for the gravesite funeral in Tewksbury. I had to bring myself to calm by coming into the present and using the tools of mindfulness to be awake enough to be the person I was expected to be, to deliver the words and honor the life and death of this middle- aged woman whose sudden death so shocked her family and friends. I also had to accept the errors I discovered after I reached the cemetery.

Before the entourage arrived I stood facing the sun in the cold wind and looked over many rows of gravestones and thanked those at rest there for having lived and for allowing themselves to die. Of course, there is no choice there; once you are born, that’s in the cards; you are holding the cards for your ending right from the beginning.

And then it was time. And then it was not just me, but an assembly of others, from the funeral directors and their team to the arrangement of flowers so tenderly adorning her gravesite, to the immediate family including her mother in a wheelchair with oxygen looking bewildered as her caregivers were visibly grieving.

And then it was the play of existence, the response to the sun and the cold and the wind and the assembly of mourners, the trust in the words I read and the sound of her friend reading and holding back tears, the trust I had in my own ability to project my voice loudly enough to honor those who had to stand several rows back.

And my reserve this time to stay out of the way and to not insert myself into their grief.

I know this is loving respect for those whose grief belongs to them and not to me. I cannot be their grief since the threads of memory and the shock of sudden, unexpected death is real and raw. I cannot and should not be a part of their grieving, but then what do I offer? That thin layer of distance and difference is the entire point of the offer and without it I would be completely inauthentic. I can project from my life experience of loss, hope, renewal, but that still has its own veil of separation. And that thin veil of separation makes all the difference, provides an invisible but palpable lifeline.

My anxiety is captured not only in funeral work, but also in teaching. There are days when my stomach is jangled in a similar state and I question what I am about to present, or even what I am doing there in front of young people sharing a skill, a craft, a subject that is so vast. What do I know and why am I trusting myself to carry this on with live people listening and responding? What can I say and what will I say that may come out of my mouth with the hidden critic working to undermine my faith in my work and wanting to tell me to pull back, to pull out, to run away and get out of the room.

So are these moments of high anxiety of simply being in front of others delivering the words I am so capable of giving a sign of existential anxiety? Is it that confronting to just get out of my head and into the world where I might be noticed that I endure a form of emotional torture now before I begin?

And yet I begin again and again.