Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.

This teaching from Buddha changed my life and put me on a healing path after my Dad’s suicide. And, as I was thinking about what to write on this the 18th anniversary of his death, April 27, the day before his 62nd birthday, April 28 – the celebration of his life, I was blindsided by a sudden and devastating death of a young coworker and friend. (That’s his picture of totality above.)

What the fuck do you do with this? Why the fuck? How the fuck? So young. What happened? He didn’t seem that sick. It can’t be. It is. It just is. Pain. I am suffering for him, his family, his wife, my other coworkers, myself.

And then, there’s this word – totality – that has been agitating my brain ever since the solar eclipse a few weeks back when we were all consumed with the “path of totality” – millions packing up their families and their cars with totality as their destination. What a word! Totality! I couldn’t decide if I feared it, or I was seeking it. Whether it is closed and final and finite or the key to transcendence and the eternal. Totality.

What is the lesson to be learned beyond a neat, stellar phenomenon for a couple of minutes? Surely, it’s more than cosmic entertainment, cheap cardboard sunglasses, and a media bonanza!

It wasn’t coming to me though. But, that word – totality - wouldn’t leave me alone.

And then, Andrew died. His photos of totality still in my texts from him. He had flown home to experience the path of totality with his family.

Is death totality? I don’t think so. Or, at least, that’s not what has been bothering me with that word for all these weeks.
​
What is totality in life? In the living?

And, while I was running yesterday trying to burn off the overwhelming suffering energy that has had me wrecked since I heard the news of my friend’s death, it suddenly became clear to me again, like it did when Dad died, and I read those words the first time from Buddha.

Totality is just the sun and the moon together.

Both light and shadow.

Source and reflection.

Love and loss.

Joy and sorrow.

Fullness and loneliness.

Presence and absence.

Life and death.

Totality is not a celestial moment that happens once in a generation. It is existence. All of it. In totality.

And, in human existence, pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.
​
Thank you for the light. It will always be part of my darkness.  

I’m doing the dishes. I like to listen to music while I do the dishes. Tonight, I needed some Pearl Jam. Alexa hit me with “Yellow Ledbetter” out of the gate. So, I obviously asked her to turn it up! The luxury of hands-free Alexa when your hands are covered with dish suds! I am almost immediately sing-mumbling at the top of my lungs about a porch and a wave and a boxer or a bag. Who knows what the hell that song says, and who really cares! Just sing! And, do it loud! Like I’ve been doing it for 30 years!

My sweet and lovingly spiteful younger daughter in defiance of the volume of both my music and my voice – which could never be mistaken for music – decides she suddenly wants to practice her piano and asks if I will turn the music down.

I politely decline. I return to my vociferous sing-mumbling: “Ohhhh….ohhhh….yeah…yeah…can you see them…”

She turns and heads to the piano. I turn it up more.

Still, I start to hear her piano notes through the grungy wash of Pearl Jam at its most melodic and confusing and wonderful.

I can tell she’s playing as loud as she can, pushing my grandmother’s ivory piano keys to their limit. But, she will be heard. She’s playing Taylor Swift. “All Too Well.” Taylor will be heard. Pearl Jam or no Pearl Jam.

Oh shit. Alexa follows with “Alive”. I am a teenager. And now, I actually know all the words and all the badass air-guitar riffs. But, I’m down to my last dirty bowl. My time and excuse for extremely loud Pearl Jam on a Thursday night, a school night, are running out like the sudsy water down the drain.

Taylor via my daughter via my grandmother’s piano keeps audibly peeking in as I reach 1990’s musical euphoria. “Oh, I, oh, I’m still alive.”

I reluctantly stop Alexa at the end of “Alive.” I didn’t want to stop. I could have kept doing dishes and jamming all night. Just as Pearl Jam soothed my angsty, teenage soul, so can they soothe my wrinkly, dishpan hands. But, alas. The dishes were done.

Taylor takes over. But, just for a few more bars. With the good-spirited spite of my singing and Pearl Jam diminished, my daughter suddenly decided she had practiced enough.

Little shit. I love it. I love her. So grunge.

But, in the end, I suppose Taylor wins again. So be it. As Eddie Vedder mumbled: “I don’t know whether I’m the boxer or the bag.”
​
It doesn’t matter.
 
Postscript:
I decided to look up the lyrics to “Yellow Ledbetter”. It doesn’t make any more sense than the glorious mumbles I hear clear as day in the music. But, for what it’s worth:
 
Yellow Ledbetter
Unsealed on a porch a letter sat
Then you said I wanna leave it again
Once I saw her on a beach of weathered sand
And on the sand I wanna leave it again, yeah
On a weekend wanna wish it all away
And they called and I said that I want what I said
And then I call out again
And the reason oughtta leave her calm, I know
I said I don't know whether I'm the boxer or the bag
Oh yeah, can you see them
Out on the porch
Yeah but they don't wave
I see them
'Round the front way, yeah
And I know and I know I don't want to stay
Make me cry
I see
I don't know, there's something else
I wanna drum it all away
Oh, I said I don't, I don't know whether I'm the boxer or the bag
Oh yeah, can you see them
Out on the porch
Yeah but they don't wave
I see them
'Round the front way, yeah
And I know and I know I don't want to stay
I don't wanna stay
I don't wanna stay
I don't wanna stay, oh no
Yeah
Oh, oh
Oh, oh
 
 
Images:
https://lifeonacocktailnapkin.com/eddie-vedder-in-the-house/
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/taylor-swift-live-performance-in-st-louis--785174516257828659/