Presence and Absence

Kamalashila died a month ago. I can barely believe it when I write that. It seems too long and too short at the same time. Time is doing strange things. I am sitting at the kitchen table. Elbows leaning on its heavy wooden top. Kamalashila had found a wooden table top on the streets shortly after we moved here last year. A friend and I carried it upstairs as it was so heavy. It was rectangular at the time and was missing four corners where it legs had been removed, which were an integral part of the top. After some deliberation and discussion Kamalashila decided to make it into an oval, using his jig saw. After all, he argued, we are now living close to Oval. It is not perfect but it is pretty good.
Footsteps from the flat above now, reminding me of a Halloween party that was held there yesterday evening. Though the music stopped at a decent time and we had been notified of the party beforehand, I was already sitting in bed reading when the sound of the bass became a bit too much for me. I remembered Kamalashila’s noise-cancelling headphones, which he bought after he had been hospitalised for the first time in the Spring. I found them and tried to connect them to my own laptop. Music starting to play. And through the wall it had picked up his old phone signal in the living room and had spontaneously started an Oasis song called ‘Live Forever’. It was quite pleasant really. I only found out the title on looking it up just now. Strange signs or presence and absence at the same time happening a fair amount at this point. I look at the FindMy feature on my phone and it shows KS is right here, at home. Of course these are his devices that are still with me.
Also with me now are his ashes. I picked them up with a friend from the crematorium yesterday. I had brought the same backpack I used for carrying my father’s ashes now almost two years ago. His container was rectangular like a big cereal box. Kamalashila’s is round. Another instance of a rectangular turning into something round. Square pegs and round holes come to mind. We all walked back to the underground station, Tooting Broadway. I was carrying him on my back. I felt joy. Maybe that is weird. But it reminded me of us playfully trying to lift each other up and jump on each other’s backs. After a coffee in a cafe, with the ashes in the bag sitting next to my friend and I on the table, we went on the tube. The bag was now on my lap. That made me smile too. We walked to my flat and then the ashes came home. The tube went into the hearth. The Manjushri rupa in front of it. Home again, for a while, until the journey continues.

Published
Categorised as bereaved

Live Wires

In the past days I have been feeling less inclined to write. I am often tired, headachy and slightly nauseous. I actually looked up the physical symptoms of grief, and it all seems to fit in. I have up days and down days with it all. Some days go by and I am doing fine and then later not so much. I spend quite a bit of time alone. Which suits me at the moment. But I try to meet a friend every day for a coffee or a visit to a gallery. In the past week I have been to the Turner Prize at the Tate Britain and to the Garden Museum, apart from the Van Gogh exhibition in the National Gallery. I have been to a tour about the river Effra. I have gone to my tour guide training course evening. I have met up with others to talk through the memorial service for Kamalashila. I have walked on the Southbank.
Apart from these meetings, I am slowly dismantling the Virtual Vihara. Which is actually awful. Because Kamalashila spent so much time putting it up. If feels painful to undo what he has done so effectively and so idiosyncratically. But it cannot stay like it is. I am thinking about Miss Havisham’s room in Great Expectations. Things need to shift and change and transform to heal the gap Kamalashila has left. But it needs to take an appropriate time. I don’t know what that is. I felt with some things I have perhaps moved slightly too fast. But I am trying to consciously make small changes in that room every day. I am weary. This is yet another shift involving lots of stuff that needs to find another destination, another purpose or home. We made a massive effort when we moved from the cottage in East Suffolk to this London flat. The amount of things that needed to be sorted and shifted and passed on was about a third or perhaps even half of all our belongings at the time. Now I am having to condense everything to a one-person household. It doesn’t have to happen in one day, or one week, or one month. But it does need to happen at some point. I do get help, of course. Which is lovely. But the decisions need to come from me. And these are often hard to make. And apart from stuff, there are so many other strands that are lying untouched. Like live wires. I have to tread carefully.

Life goes on. Stuff is happening. The sunset seen yesterday evening from the Waterloo Bridge.

Published
Categorised as bereaved

Private View

The room is crowded. It is a bit after nine in the morning and I am at a Van Gogh exhibition. I catch myself staring at titles. Unable to read explanatory texts. My glasses are steaming up because I have been rushing to get here in time. My nose is detecting smells: shampoo, perfume, some sweat. And I hope that isn’t me. I do glance at the paintings as I stand in a room full of excited and knowledgeable voices. I find myself next to The Public Garden, Arles. I hear people commenting on the trees. Another smell passes by. People love the trees. Someone is reminded of the trees in Massachusetts. Leaf peepers, my memory conjures up. Sweat is trickling down my spine.
I wipe my face with my hand. I notice a solitary figure on a bench in the painting. I rest with her. Then I spot a group of three people on a bench in the left corner. I feel crowded again. Well-modulated voices all around me, plus a burr and loud laughter. I enjoy picking out phrases. But of course as I start listening out for them, none jump out. “Yeah.” Voices rising and falling. I look at my screen. I listen. But so far I am not looking at the paintings much. I love the enthusiasm behind me. I stand still in front of Undergrowth. This I love. Background blending with trees. Big blobs of paint. A straight line contrasting with the curliness of mosses. Light tones among dark. More dark than light. Bright and promising green in the distance.
The woman who welcomed me liked my scarf. I told her about it perking me up. And that I hoped the exhibition would do this too. What to say when asked how I am? I said I had a recent bereavement. I move to the next painting instinctively, but have not looked at it yet. So I said I had a bereavement and had to shield myself from the compassionate look in her eyes. What to say to someone you know professionally when your husband died less than three weeks ago. I said: “I won’t say much about it, otherwise,” and here I point with both hands at my face. Mimicking tears streaming down. She nods kindly. I am facing the Garden of the Asylum at Saint-Rémy. Here I see an empty bench. Vincent, I relate. A tentative path, neatly marked rows of grass. Bright yellow on the facade of a building. The sun hitting the grass and the blossom on the trees. I shuffle along. I nearly walk into someone. She doesn’t notice. I am on the move again, noticing I am in room two already. How incredibly prolific he must have been while staying at that asylum of Saint-Rémy. Somebody says jolly good next to my right ear. I end up in another corner, next to a doorway and The Weeping Tree. Dark. Moody. Yet, beautiful, driven and dedicated. Now I get interested in looking. My body temperature has balanced out. Some space has opened up. A bit later my heart and spirit lift. And I meet The Sower.

Best to stand at an angle when one is also typing on one’s phone in order not to block the view. The Sower, Vincent van Gogh, 1888.
Published
Categorised as bereaved

Keeper

I am sitting in KS’s room. His old room, you could say. But actually it isn’t that old. We moved into this flat less than a year ago. I was a bit worried about him as he didn’t seem to have any energy at all. We thought it was a multiple sclerosis relapse at the time. Actually his MS specialist told him last month that there had not been any development in the MS since 2018. The treatment he had had at that time, a treatment that is now discontinued because of the risks it poses, had worked perfectly according to the neurologist. So the increased lack of energy in the past years, the sensitivity to temperature shifts, the bad sleep, the reduced mobility in the hip: it all had to do with the cancer. It has taken Kamalashila such a lot of effort to put this room together exactly how he liked it. Especially since he felt so tired a lot of the time. He had it mostly ready in time for the two-month online retreat he led earlier this year. He designed an amazing wall of cupboards. He also installed book shelves in the alcoves and we spent a few days putting the books up, in some sort of order. He was very happy with the room, although he would keep tweaking it. This seemed to be part of his nature. The wanting to make small changes frequently. To improve things.
After he had put it together according to his wishes, he fell ill. And the irony of it all is that now, of course, this room needs to come apart again. I am slowly turning towards the objects that are now redundant, that will be passed on. Objects that have been gifted. I remember we had a strangely joyful evening on the day he heard his terminal prognosis and he was back home from hospital. We were sitting on the couch here and talking about who was going to get what. I am sitting on that same couch now. Over my head the angel wing plant. It has been flowering abundantly since his death. Perhaps displaying its own kind of grief or celebration. I have never seen it flowering in so many different places. This plant has lived with us since we moved into a flat in West Hampstead in 2010. It is sensitive. When we relocated to London, Kamalashila built a frame out of bamboo sticks to protect it, with layers of bubble wrap around it. It survived the move wonderfully and has been thriving ever since. Some of the many medical people that have been in this room would often comment on that beautiful plant. Some would even make photos. Kamalashila must have spent quite a bit of time in this room feeling low in energy and nauseous. He had basically been nauseous to a degree since the beginning of April. It is strange picking up my life again and being the sole keeper of the fridge and the kitchen. Not having to worry about him not eating, or only eating porridge. Not worrying about the cooking smells. Following my pleasures. Yet this doesn’t give me much joy. Perhaps it will eventually.

Published
Categorised as treatment

Ashes to ashes

I am tired. I have emerged from yet another bath. I sometimes take two a day. Baths are a blessing. Outside the sky is a bit clearer. Inside not so very much. I have finally done the meter readings for gas and electricity. The first reading involves lifting a heavy gate. The second manipulating a cunningly folded panel. I had to lift that heavy gate twice as I had been looking at the wrong meter, belonging to another flat. It turned out the reading didn’t match at all with what the online system told me. So I had to go back and check the right meter. I was proud I went down again and went through that gate yet again. In the end the readings were correctly done and submitted. They are the first ones I have done without KS. In the background there is considerable anxiety about the memorial service, numbers etc. But between all of this I sense my heavy and jittery heart.

Kamalashila’s body was cremated this morning at the Lambeth Crematorium. I have been feeling very stirred up and sad between trying to do those things that come with living an ordinary life, such as meter readings. He wrote ‘I am nourished through solitude and [… ] I die inside if I cut myself off for too long from that source…’. I feel sad he didn’t get the solitude he craved in these last years of his life, particularly the past half year. I hope he is getting some now. I feel sad that I was sometimes not able to grant him all the solitude he needed. I feel sad that sometimes I didn’t receive the companionship I needed. I just feel sad. No companionship at all anymore now. My eyes are dripping. Some teardrops reluctant to fully take the plunge. I look at the shadows the sunlight is casting in this room. I see the sharp shadows blur when the sun disappears behind the clouds. Then they sharpen again. Like the edges of my sadness.

I gave this to KS’s sister Esther this morning.
Published
Categorised as bereaved

Wet socks

It has been a month since Kamalashila was here at home with me. It is still strange to be here on my own now. I am sitting on the yellow couch again. Only this time it is my couch. The sky is grey. The concrete building facing us (or rather me), the one I am determined to like because it is called Holland Rise, looks flat and dull. My legs stretched out in front of me. I am wearing his merino woolen socks and one of his jumpers. The colours match, which is a coincidence. The socks are wet. We would be making lots of jokes about socks. Wet socks are the pits. They are wet because I have been spraying the bodhi tree with water containing a splash of vinegar. I am still trying to bring the tree back to health.
A friend kindly came this morning to help with some admin around KS’s death. We will have to do multiple rounds to finish it all. Just now I went through a pile of hospital papers he had received since being hospitalised at the beginning of April. Discharges. Medication lists. Consent forms. Appointments for visits, scans and blood tests. I added these to the already quite bulky file of past appointments. Problems with his lungs, skin, teeth, kidneys, hernias, MS. A few days before he died I was lying awake in the night thinking about all the different doctors, specialists, nurses, porters, physiotherapists and other medical staff members he has seen in the past half year. There must have been hundreds. So much care and compassion. But at the moment I feel precisely nothing. Perhaps a touch of cynicism. I am not enjoying this. The lymphoma team sent a condolences card. I just hope this means they will stop phoning. Last week Kamalashila’s phone rang. I thought I would pick it up. It was someone from the medical centre offering him a vaccination. I bluntly said: he is dead, he won’t be needing that. The person phoning was deeply shocked. I was not enjoying that either. My brain doesn’t allow me to realise he is dead. Which is just as well.

I found this lovely drawing at the back of KS’s discharge summary of his hospital stay at Guys from 1-4 Sept.

It is final

A week later. My heart is in upheaval and aches. I have been to the rose garden in Kennington Park just now. Sitting on a bench, I opened some envelopes with condolences cards I had found in the letter box on my way out and read them. I very much appreciate all the loving thoughts being sent my and our way. I needed some time alone today. Yesterday I registered Kamalashila’s death at our local town hall. I had felt anxious about this. I do not like forms and formalities at the best of times. As the time for the appointment came and went, I became more irritated. I could not bear the jokes the warden made. I could not bear the informality of the staff there, looking at our records and whispering to each other. I felt outraged by the appointment not being on time, but going 15 mins over. I also could not bear the vicinity of my friend who is still kindly staying with me to support me. In the office of the registrar I was irritated with the seating arrangements, the registrar’s hairline and later also about the misspelling of the cause of death as lymphonia. That was one of the mistakes. I can see in retrospect this is quite funny. At last the correct certificate was printed.
More things about the afternoon seem funny now. I made sure my friend knew how to get back to my place. I knew she had a key. But I could not help myself: I fled. I just needed to be on my own with my excessive irritation. As I was roaming around in the Brixton Orchard, which is built over a nuclear bunker, I spotted my friend passing on the other side of the street. I hid among the trees. I can see how funny this is, in retrospect. I am certainly not proud of myself. After a while I walked into the opposite direction and it was then that I spotted the library. I spent an hour or so in the library, on the first floor, looking out over that wretched place where I had registered Kamalashila’s death earlier. It was real. It was official. He is no longer here. I started walking home and met a friend on the street. This was lovely and it was good to briefly chat about what had happened. I then went home. My friend came back after a while. I hid in my bedroom and then in the bathroom. I cried. My glasses collected my tears. I then cried all the way through eating the food my friend had prepared. It was not a good day. It was final. I am alone, in a way.

I cannot bear anyone too near now.

Wallpaper at Lambeth Town Hall, which I won’t look too long at.
Published
Categorised as bereaved

Looking after Bodhi

It is only five days ago that Kamalashila died. A good friend is kindly staying with me these past days. We have taken all the excess medication, a big bag, back to the pharmacy, labels removed as requested previously. This included the end-of-life drugs. The bag was big and the pharmacist looked hesitant. I said: my husband died. She could not refuse. My friend and I gently sorted through clothes and taken some to a charity. We made a start tackling the bodhi tree in the virtual vihara. This is how I have started referring to the room in this flat that Kamalashila used for his online sessions. Where he sat and talked to visiting friends. Where he wrote at his desk. We also meditated there in the mornings. Back to the bodhi tree: it developed into a small tree out of a cutting from the tree in Bodhgaya. We were sent two cuttings by post twelve years ago or so, and because we missed the delivery had to collect from the post office a few days later. One did not survive the transit. The other is still alive, but going through various episodes of assault by insects, among other things. At the moment it is rife with aphids. Kamalashila would treat that tree and it hasn’t had much attention in recent times. So my friend and I have been removing aphids from leaves and stems with a sponge and soapy water. There are quite a lot of leaves. She regards it as a meditative activity. I am not that keen.
The medical examiner phoned yesterday about the death certificate. This was about what had been suggested as the cause of death. He had carefully gone through the medical records and was asking how everything had been and whether I had comments and suggestions about the care Kamalashila had received. It was a good conversation and he was kind and considerate, but it stirred me up. It brought everything back again. In as far as it had been away. It is all quite a lot that is coming towards me in the aftermath of Kamalashila’s demise. There is so much to do, think about, arrange, decide. Luckily a great number of issues can be dealt with further down the line. But right now I am experiencing overload. I also need to attend to how I feel, to experience the energies in my body. My heart is too full and tense. So I am sitting here and I write. It usually helps bringing some sort of order and perspective. It is all still too much. Far too much. How strange this all comes with a loss.

Bodhi tree after treatment.
Published
Categorised as bereaved

Hole

It is three days after Kamalashila’s death. A nurse at the hospice had told me nothing would be happening during the weekend regarding registration etcetera. So I did not have to think about anything like that. I walked along the river with a friend. And yesterday morning I went to the hospice, accompanied by another friend, to go through all the steps that need to be taken. Later we had coffee and she listened to my account of the past three weeks. She accompanied me home and sat next to me as I made the appointment for the death registration. This felt very significant. I cried. We talked through what needed to be asked and said before I phoned the funeral directors to arrange the direct cremation. Kamalashila’s cremation will happen in the Lambeth Crematorium in Tooting. I smile when I type Tooting. It is a significant place for our Buddhist community.
Later in the day I met another friend who is going to help with the memorial service. We discussed possible dates. We talked about Kamalashila. About the last weeks. I came home. Cooked a meal for myself. I have hardly been home. I have only come home to sleep, have a bath, read a book, do some necessary chores. I went through the sad contents of the fridge. None of it has had much attention and a lot of it needed to come out and be thrown away.
This morning a good friend came to collect the drum Kamalashila wanted him to have. The beating of that drum reminds me of the beating of his heart. It represents his passion and his voice. I felt a bit sick when it was packed away. But it goes to the best home for it and was received with pride and gratitude. I know it will be put to very good use. Kamalashila’s virtual vihara feels clear and calm. There is no sense of lingering here. We have had a lot of months to prepare for his death, so we have talked about where things would go and how to approach this time after his death. But of course there are many bits and pieces that need to be decided on and that we hadn’t thought about. And it is quite early days. I feel I first need to process what has happened since the new diagnosis. I haven’t even sensed into the giant hole Kamalashila is leaving in the fabric of my life.

I found this on KS’s phone, dated 4 January this year. Not the best photo of him, but standing with a poetry tile on the Southbank. The verse is selected by his father who was a surveyor engaged with developing the Southbank.

Published
Categorised as bereaved

No more I love you’s*

I still need to write. Kamalashila died yesterday morning. I am still here. It is incomprehensible. I do not know how I feel. I do feel something. I feel many things. But I cannot give it words. Sometimes I cry. Sometimes I just gaze ahead. I talk to friends and cry when I think about the past three weeks and the pain Kamalashila had to go through. I cry about the pressure I have felt making some decisions. I said goodbye to him a number of times yesterday morning, after he had died. I thanked him for our lives together. For all he has given me. I kissed his forehead when he was still warm. I stroked his hand. I kissed his forehead when it was a bit colder. I stroked his hand again. I looked at his chest. It was not moving, not heaving. No more laboured breathing now. I kissed his forehead later and it was much colder. I kissed him for the last time when it was 11 am. It was seven hours after he had died. He was quite cold. I took the Manjushri rupa. Left the scarf that was draped around it with Kamalashila. I walked out of the door and left him behind.
The last time I had seen him alive was the evening before. I had been looking in regularly to see how he was doing and sat with him for short periods. He was very close to death, the doctors had said. It could happen any moment. And you could see it in his face, hear it in his breathing. But when I walked in at 9pm and chanted a mantra for him, I saw something on his face that made me think: it is enough. He doesn’t need me here anymore. He wanted to be left alone. So I left. His sister Zoë and I were at the hospice. Both sleeping in different rooms. We asked the nurse to wake us up an hour after he had died. So he would have that hour still to himself. They checked him every 15-20 mins, by shining a torch on his chest, in the darkened room. The room felt very clean and quiet. He was clean and peaceful. The air was fresh.
At a quarter past five the nurse knocked on my door. He is gone, she said. We embraced. These nurses and doctors at the hospice are so amazing. He was later dressed in a suit and t-shirt. One nurse put a purple flower on his chest. She also opened the window. For his spirit, she said. Kamalashila 2, as he called himself after the new diagnosis, always wore suits. There is no space in the hospice for people to come and visit the body later on. But we had some hours. They stretched it till 11am because it was cold. I put a message in the group with helpers and good friends. Some friends came and sat with him. Outside his room we sat and talked. I talked a lot. The friends listened and witnessed. I felt held. Then at 11am I went in to say my final goodbye and collected the rupa. This part was now over. His body was going into the morgue. I went on the bus. Home.

*This song is playing through my head today.

Diffuser, purple flowers, rose oil and frankincense, and Manjushri with mala and scarf.
At the end of Kamalashila’s bed. I took the diffuser away in the afternoon. It was too much.
Published
Categorised as bereaved