Category: bereaved

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.

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.

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.

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 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.