Death Of a friend

These topics or letters are a product of whatever the current themes and patterns I’m encountering in my practice of psychotherapy and collaboration with clients.

Over the weekend a good friend, who I will call Joe, died. It was later found that a rare variety of cancer was the cause of his death. Two weeks ago Joe and I had our last talk on the phone, in which he shared of a recent hospital stay and that his ailing health remained somewhat of a mystery to his doctors. He stated, “Now I really have to walk my talk,” meaning, all of the letting go of ego and fabricated identities that he felt were so central to internal suffering in humans as well as suffering on a global scale was now critical. We made plans to meet for lunch after the new year.

The grief I feel about Joe’s death has been mixed with moments of humor and delight, for Joe was delightful. A constant youthful look in his eyes always greeted me, and I imagined he must have looked this same way when he was a child. He was filled with a tireless humor, quick to shed light on the ironies he encountered. Bouts of immobilizing anxiety as well as many decades of sincere practice in working with his mind and ego were all on full display during our decade of friendship.

The humor that I have encountered since his spouse called to share about his death has everything to do with his real belief that the thinking mind is a trickster, a charade that often leaves one fearful and blaming. Joe felt it was part of his life’s work to let go of his thinking mind and its fearful tendencies and to allow a fullness of ‘this very moment’ to be his ‘home ground.’ He conveyed these beliefs with irreverent analogies that had me often howling with laughter! He was a truly alive human being and now, in death, his liveliness touches me more profoudly than it had before.

A truly unique aspect of Joe (for I know no one like him in this regard) was how he shared about his success in business and financial wealth as having been motivated by fear and need for safety, but later in life he had come to a realization that holding onto safety to avoid existential fear was a wast of his time. In this way he serves as a supremely potent role model to me: one can spend a working lifetime moving in one direction but he showed how one can be freed to reimagine a new way and let go into a fullness of new possibility, not to mention a fantastic internal (eternal) wealth.

Joe and I often bantered and misunderstood each other over the idea of ‘attachments.’ He came from the perspective of spiritual attachments and the lessons of Buddhism, taoism, zen and some Christ (for good measure!) that suggested that all attachments are ultimately a hinderance as we travel towards the ego-less place of wholeness, where the dissolving of a separate self and the prison of identities dissipates into a ‘fertile void.’

I often came from the biological drive for human attachments, such as the bond necessary for an infant to create contact with caregiver, which later translates into relationship and trust that supports future relationships in a secure and healthy manner. Joe clearly was attached and created beautiful attachments with his family (noteably his grandchildren in our conversations) and friends, and he was willing to allow the spiritual letting-go of remaining attached to ego. This made him not unique, for all of us have the capacity to do this, but it did make him a warrior of heart because he courageously went there himself!

Now, I am left knowing that Joe, almost three decades my senior, was a true friend and a teacher to me. In addition to Joe’s belief that one’s thinking mind is a hindrance to living life in its fullest and joy-filled reality, was how imperfect he was, which makes him all the more lovable and real to me. He had vices and issues and he shared about them. He was beautifully vulnerable and this piece allowed him to reach out with a genuineness that caused me to want to respond in turn.

As I write this I am reminded of another close friend (still living), of about Joe’s age, who, in dealing with his own mortality has tasked himself with writing his own obituary. Like Joe, this friend isn’t so interested in being seen in the conventional ‘best light,’ but decided to take stabs at the obituary when feeling irritable, upset or angered, stating that “most obituaries are boring and inauthentic! They say only the ‘good’ parts and leave the real juicy bits out, and that’s the stuff that really makes many of us feel a greater connection to them…meaning that they weren’t always the best parent, the perfect spouse, or the enlightened friend. That’s the stuff I also want to be part of my story.”

Joe’s legacy to me (and his gift of friendship) is a more welcoming openness to the parts of me I would rather ‘cast of overboard’ or abandon. Joe seemed to live out a wholeness and an acceptance of himself and duly offered that to me again and again and again. He was, and is now, a living gift. Are we not so lucky to carry those gifts within us?

Joe often cited spiritual thinkers. One of his last sharings with me came from his son and is ‘so’ Joe:

“Having no destination, I am never lost.”  - Ikkyu

Thank you my good friend.