And Then … There’ll Be One

 

Saying goodbye – whether from relationships or to Life itself – is never easy

for love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.

 

 

Of course, even at the age of 75 I still remember falling in love with Marnie, way back in 1959. For me, falling in love wasn’t like I fell into a hole. It was more like falling through space; like jumping off my own private planet to visit hers. And when I arrived there, close to her heart and mind, everything took on a different appearance: the future, the flowers, the creatures, the air itself.

 

The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories, that it has come to be disbelieved. Few people dare now to say that two beings have fallen in love because they have looked at each other. Yet it is in this way that love begins, and in this way only. The rest is only the rest, and comes afterwards. Nothing is more real than these great shocks which two souls give each other in exchanging this spark.                                                      (Victor Hugo)

 

It was such a big surprise to me to find myself falling in love because I’d thought I had everything just right on my own planet, which was true in a way, but then Marnie smiled at me across the room, and in a flash I knew, just knew, that change was upon me and that I must engage her world … and that would require a giant leap. Away I went into destiny, falling into her orbit and feeling all light-headed and woozy, disorientated and happy at the same time. Suddenly, some things don’t matter any more and the only thing I became interested in, was to become ever closer to that most alluring person who was smiling at me, waiting for me.

 

The Little Black Dress

My carriage straight, your bosom taut,

I courted you smartly as young men ought,

Applauded your shape in a little black dress,

Followed your arms as they rose to undress.

 

Now frames are bent, our breastwork sags,

The little black dress is gone for rags,

And I court you gently, as old men must,

With a shade less ardour, a bit less fuss.

(Dan Burt)

 

And so – after a while – we kind of decided to hitch our two planets together, call it home and knit the story of our lives together. Falling in love was really the huge jump that had to be made, to be with someone I just didn’t want to go through life without. I yearned to be alone no more.

 

In deep love it happens that the two persons are not two. Something between the two has come into being and they have become two poles. Something is flowing between the two. When this flow is there you will feel blissful. If love gives bliss, it gives bliss only because of this: that two persons – just for a single moment – lose their egos; their “otherness” is lost and oneness comes into being. Even for a single moment if it happens, it is ecstatic, it is blissful, you have entered paradise – even for a single moment. And this moment can be transforming.

(OSHO)

 

When a couple loves wisely, it is as though each sees not just the mere daily self but the high secret self of the other, and each creates a mirror whereby the other can see his or her true image to copy in daily life. In one early glance, one can know when they’ve found their true mirror. That’s about it, I guess.

 

To have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness, and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part.

(Book of Common Prayer)

 

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It is important to accept as normal that few things feel as stressful as struggling with someone you love. We have to remember that long-term relationships are a journey and that the destination often is a place called “good enough”. That doesn’t mean settling for something less than passionate and intense. It means understanding and accepting that the intoxication that couples feel early on is a neuro-chemical, psychological thing that doesn’t last. The couple that thrives, continually renegotiates and updates their contracts: I chose you then, and again and again, and still.

 

A marriage is a relationship. When you make a sacrifice in marriage, you’re not sacrificing to the other; you’re sacrificing to the relationship. This is symbolized by the Chinese image of the Tai Chi; the dark and the light interacting is the relationship of yin and yang, male and female which is what a marriage is. And this is what you are. You’re no longer separate, you’re the relationship. And so marriage is not a love affair, but is an ordeal and the ordeal is sacrifice of ego to the relationship of a twoness which now becomes the one.

                                                          (Joseph Campbell, in dialogue with Bill Moyers)

 

And so, together we two lived, and tested, and tried to fuse into one … in body, mind, soul and goal. And if there were victories, then together we shared victory. And if tragedy came our way, then together we had to endure. And so it goes in all marriages. It is well said that a marriage is a good one, when the tethers are tested and fray but not break, and that the two stay together, and in the fullness of time, one is there to hold the other’s hand as Death approaches.

 

Having lived together for a long time, sometimes it seems hard to demark the boundaries where one’s own mind-self stops, and the mind-self of the other arises. Often one commences a conversation, only to find that the other has been also cultivating the same ground. Even when writing correspondence or drafting a story, I’m not wholly sure which of us it is that’s actually the one writing. And sometimes in our frequent talks, it is almost as though we each are transmitting into – and receiving from – a third, central mind, and it even seems that this centrality is the active, integrating thinker: the generative essence that informs the minds of both of us. Perhaps this is natural, since in many things we two are one in terms of our paths and experiences and personal concerns: two souls entwined in this place called Life … and co-existing as if one person.

 

nor do I see how the most marvellous wife (do you recognize yourself?) could do much to alter this. But she could undoubtedly do a very great deal to help a man along the road to excellence. I am very aggressive, very ardent in anything I do: but I need DRIVE. There are a number of ways in which you could help me. But I hope you know that I would never ask nor require it. It is quite obvious, though, that if you were not to help me, but simply expected things to happen by magic, we would fail miserably.”

(excerpt from the proposal letter from the communications guru, Marshall McLuhan, to his future wife Corinne)

 

See … although the man may have the greater strength and energy, it requires the woman to guide and channel that energy to better ends for both.

 

There is much to marvel at in Life, and perhaps the most marvelous is that two independent people, a man and his woman, can merge their bodies, souls, minds and visions into One, and create and sustain a single existence, and the power of their invisible bonds inspire the fruit of their union and thus another generation succeeds them in the Great Chain of human evolution. Recently we two were ushered into the presence of our first, infant Great-grandson. Ah Yes: Life Goes On.

 

Two discrete souls, having found each other in the bubbling froth of their conjoint moment across the vast arc of time, then struggling as a singularity to fulfill both self and other; the perennial saga of two having forged a reality within the refuge of their love.

 

 

Description: Music of the Spheres

 

 

(Marnie’s “Northern Lights” painting; the two halves having again found their complement, from their remote worlds.)

 

Go, eat your bread in gladness and drink your wine in joy, for your action was long ago approved by God. Let your clothes always be freshly washed and your head never lack ointment. Enjoy happiness with a woman you love all the fleeting days of life that have been granted you under the sun. Whatever it is in your power to do, do with all your might. For there is no doing, no learning, no wisdom in the grave to which you are going.   (Eccles. 9: 7-10)

 

For decades we two have traveled Life’s trails together. Such rich memories!! Exploring the sites of past civilizations in Meso-America; arriving at a chosen, remote primitive Costa Rican Paraiso by starlight, and from our cabana going for a midnight skinny-dip in the Pacific, emerging from the swells with our bodies glowing in the starlight from the fluorescence, like a Greek God and his Consort; with the fly off our tent at Zipolite, Southern Mexico, watching the canopy of stars parade past, with the Great Dipper to the north, and the Southern Cross at the opposite zenith; memories of the marvelous people met along our travels, many of whom have passed on, yet many are still in frequent contact with us. Our daily walks: my gaze fixed upon the horizon and clouds, until she re-directs my attention to the beauty of a flower or butterfly.

 

from Mark Twain’s “The Diary of Adam and Eve”

Eve – It is my prayer, it is my longing, that we may pass from this life together – a longing which shall never perish from this earth, but shall have a place in the heart of every wife that loves, until the end of time; and it shall be called by my name.

But, if one of us should go first, it is my prayer that it shall be I; for he is strong, I am weak; I am not so necessary to him as he is to me – life without him would not be life; how could I endure it? This prayer is also immortal, and will not cease from being offered up while my race continues. I am the first wife; and in the last wife I will be repeated.

 

Adam (at Eve’s grave) - Wheresoever she was, THERE was Eden.

 

 

Marnie has been my All – my Alpha and my Omega; and if she goes on before me, I shall be the most wounded Adam that ever was.

 

Everything that forms in nature incurs a debt which it must repay by dissolving so that other things may form.

                                                                                                                             (Anaximander)

 

For, you see, now my beloved wife’s life is in perilous danger. Four months ago she was diagnosed with adenocarcinoma lung cancer, and after going through the various tests and scans, it had been determined that her cancer was not curable, since the cancer has already traveled to her skeleton and other parts of her body, leaving palliative pain control as our sole option. Successive series of heavy radiotherapy on the lung mass and tumours on bones and flesh have been undertaken to try to stem the onslaught of cancer, our attempt to buy time from the inevitable.

 

While Marnie faces into the Valley of The Shadow and seldom flinches, I, still healthy, swoon on mere thought of the abyss.

 

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Transitions

 

So we'll go no more a-roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart still be as loving,
And the moon still be as bright.

 

For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul outwears the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.

 

Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a-roving
By the light of the moon.

                                                (Byron)

 

I shall endure in Marnie, not in myself (if, indeed, I am actually anyone at all); strangely – when looking into the future – I can locate myself less and less, for I’m yet unable to project myself alone. Years ago I sometimes partially separated myself from our conjoint persona, as I moved into studies in consciousness, the miracle of light’s conversion into life, and to meditations on the primal energies implicit within information across time. Always my findings were offered firstly to her, and it was as though she immediately and intuitively grasped what I had discovered, and she encouraged me to go further and deeper into the mystery.

 

One day she’ll be gone from me, and I’ll have to continue the quest alone, with no one present to accept my quest-baubles. Then my life will have lost its counterpoint, its harmony, and I may fall away from the life-long search for meaning. I am apprehensive of that approaching time, when the savor of everything that I’ve struggled to understand may be lost to me   seem pointless and fall into oblivion, or into the Greater central mind which – without my Marnie’s sustaining force – will cease to inform.

 

Perhaps all our conjoint life has been but an illusion or dream; perhaps we two have dreamt our life – and each other – into existence. It has been said that each self only discovers itself in the presence of others – that we are each a mirror to each other. With the loss of my most significant ‘other’, I wonder if the better part of myself will not be lost with her; hence it is with some terror that I apprehend finding myself empty, an illusion, as there may really be very little essence in myself when Marnie – the greater part of me – is no longer present, giving flight and purpose to the dream.

 

They sit together on the porch, the dark

Almost fallen, the house behind them dark.

Their supper done with, they have washed and dried

The dishes–only two plates now, two glasses,

Two knives, two forks, two spoons–small work for two.

 

She sits with her hands folded in her lap,

At rest. He smokes his pipe. They do not speak,

And when they speak at last it is to say

What each one knows the other knows.

 

They have one mind between them, now, that finally

For all its knowing will not exactly know

Which one goes first through the dark doorway, bidding

Goodnight, and which sits on a while alone.

                                                                             (Wendell Berry - A Timbered Choir)

 

 

It is my belief that – when we mortals exit the differentiation of temporal physicality - we are enfolded back into the One which all lifeforms have as Source. This is the natural path that all procreated ones are on, and the One from which all life rises knows how difficult it is for all of us, and abides with us to see us through. Every step through the Uncertain Vale is a step toward the ultimate freedom from estrangement, a step toward love.

 

Modern physics informs us that the universe is a unity – that ALL is undivided. Even as we mortals appear to live in a world of separation and difference, beneath the surface of things, every object and event in the cosmos is completely woven up with every other object and event. There is no true separation.

 

Before, these ideas were abstractions for myself. Today they are realities. Not only is the universe defined by unity, it is also – I now know – defined by love. And although my Marnie and I may soon be temporally separated by death, it is my fervent prayer that our love endure, and guide our souls as one forever.

 

As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter.

(Max Plank, founder of quantum mechanics, in a 1944 lecture, near the end of his life looking back)

 

As we can learn from the ancient myths of Lillith and Adam, and later Eve and Adam, there is a distinction between the state of the solitary one, and that of the conjoined entities. Elements when commingled within Life’s span, belong to the embrace of Life. It is as though Life has her own ulterior program running, and this program comprises a sustaining bond that underlies the woof and weave of society; an eternal bond that – once having been melded into place – endures as a template into which the elements of later generations are poured.

 

Tell me not in mournful numbers
Life is but an empty dream.
For the soul is dead that slumbers
And things are not what they seem.

 

Life is real, life is earnest
And the grave is not its goal.
Dust thou art, to dust returnest
Was not spoken of the Soul.

 

Let us then be up and doing,
With a heart for any Fate.
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

                                      (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – A Psalm of Life)

 

 

 

 

                                                                                        Posted January 7th, 2013

 

Addendum August 22nd, 2013

 

Marnie was ambulanced to Barrie Hospice on June 15th, and having been informed by the Barrie Hospice nurses that Marnie was close to death, on Friday, June 21st I told her that I must notify our four children and their families of the apprehended imminent demise of their Mother, and encouraging all to exercise their primal right to attend before their Mother's passage. Although she hadn’t been able to communicate for some days, the nurses had indicated that she would probably be able to hear me. As a result, the family attendance at Hospice across Saturday afternoon and into the evening was deeply emotional, as each in turn arrived at Barrie Hospice, talked with me and then each in turn spent private time with their dying Mother while the rest of us conferred together in the atrium or in the library. Shortly after 9PM Saturday night, we all gathered together in Marnie's room and the Hospice nurses brought in enough chairs to seat all and we commenced sitting in communal vigil. Marnie had been beyond verbal expression for two days, yet as I'd talked with her during the days and nights, I'd sensed that she'd heard me and understood, as often her hand had fluttered and tensed or relaxed in mine as I talked.

 

So now, with the others observing, I again took my Marnie's hand in mine and resumed our 'dialogue'. I told her that "we won't be able to go out and dance together tonight as planned, since the visitors have arrived” ... and then I told her who was present in the room, including our 10 month old Great-grandson Bryson .... “but, my Love, we two will surely hold each other and dance again on other nights.” Her hand had been tensed ever since I'd told her the prior day of the plan for the email outreach, and as I now talked with her, her hand relaxed and a tear rolled down her cheek. A very few minutes into our dialogue, Marnie's laboured gasps stopped. I admittedly choked somewhat, but then she commenced breathing again and I resumed talking with her; I expressed my deep gratitude that she'd enriched my life as friend and lover and true mirror across our 53 years together ... I told her that she "must leave behind her wrecked body and now go ahead of me and rest up for a while, and then I'd follow and then we'll surely find each other again, and love and dance again, for true love never dies” ... and then she just stopped breathing and her hand went limp … I could find no discernable wrist nor carotid pulse … at my nod, our daughter summoned a nurse who examined Marnie with her stethoscope and then confirmed that my beloved was now at peace. My spirit soared in gratitude for my Marnie's release from suffering ... yet my body writhed and convulsed and I choked and my eyes wept greatly, perhaps foolishly fearing they'd never again be able to feast upon the sight of her for whose beauty those eyes had always hungered.

 

Marnie's sudden transit from suffering to release stunned and shook all of us very deeply. The above pageant wrote finis to her stark 10 month journey of suffering, an inexorable path of personal bravery in the face of existential horror, eased through compassionate palliative medical and lay support, and now ultimately brought to conclusion.

 

The Angel of Merciful Death took my beloved Marnie at 9:20pm on June 22nd, 2013. Her body was cremated and since then her ashes have been lovingly scattered along our former hiking trails at pre-arranged sites having meaning only to the two of us.

 

Earth, Ashes and Dust – from such our bodies arise, and return.

 

In 2005 as I had tried to crystallize an insight, I’d had sent her the following note:

After an intensive 45 year experiment in marriage to one person, I’m intrigued with the realization that an unbreakable link develops between those who have loved deeply over time, to the extent that they become individually imprinted on each other's nervous systems. So much so that when watching a movie alone, or when meeting other people, one can’t help but sense how the mate would feel if personally present. Functionally, having access to another’s personality in this way extends one’s own discriminating capability and the breadth of one's experiential understanding.

 

Since her death, I’ve increasingly realized the extent of my personal loss – not in the sense of the loss of a possession – but in the actual loss of a great part of myself, and although I often sense the love and guidance of her consoling Spirit nearby, the personal wound has been very slow to close. 

 

 

The soft bonds of love are indifferent to life and death. They hold through time so that yesterday’s love is part of today’s and the confidence in tomorrow’s love is also part of today’s. And when one dies, the memory lives in the other, and is warm and breathing. And when both die — I almost believe, rationalist though I am — that somewhere it remains, indestructible and eternal, enriching all of the universe by the mere fact that once it existed.                    (Isaac Asimov - It’s Been a Good Life)

 

 

 

 

 

Keith and Marnie Elliott’s “REMEDY” Site

 

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