Bigger Than the Sky

by Vicki Woodyard

  The Wind on Your Skin

  Peter always lets me know that to feel the wind on your skin is a blessed thing. Forget illness, sorrow, unsolvable human problems. He has known more than his share and carries his burden so gracefully. I have never met Peter but I don’t have to. He is a pointer to the real just as much as Ramana Maharshi or Nisargadatta Maharaj. The twinkle in his eye is a universal one. How blessed we are by people like Peter. How can you find him? You got me. I feel his love in every honest word that he writes.…

  “The only thing I have ever found that really works (for me at least) is just being. By which I mean sitting or walking through the grasses, not doing anything much, feeling the air and the sun, seeing the wide, wide sky, and just poking along. For me, what helps when pain comes is to scream as appropriate, then go on with the walk (or crawl depending on strength) through the grass.

  Talk of enlightenment, it seems to me, is for the healthy only, since they think that by hard work and strict discipline they can attain something. For those of us who are seriously ill however, all that seems like impossibly hard work. ‘Enlightenment’, ‘awakening’, and the like seems to me to be all just a lot of talk and hard work—really just a way of avoiding the wind in one’s hair, so easily available anywhere at any time, regardless of circumstance, without any effort at all. Trying to attain something more seems, well, uninteresting.”

  An Awakened Man

  You know you are writing about an awakened man when the fingers at the keyboard will only type the correct words. If I try and paint an inauthentic picture of Peter, I will be unable to see it into print. I did not experience his physicality but his transcendence. And thereby hangs a tale.

  For when someone has been shattered, bereft of the ordinary human ways of navigating the world, what and who they are will manifest immediately. The shell will crack and fall away, leaving us with the meat of the character.

  I did not so much as meet Peter but recognize him by his sheer simplicity. You can read his words again and again and never fail to feel renewed. The timeless world was his. In it, cats lolled upon his chest, robins scurried across his lawn and he hollered “ho ho” at it all. It was one huge joke to Peter. A doctor was a joke; a guru was a joke; his condition was a joke. He shared this with me, but also with many others. I can only say that his impact was enormous.

  I gave him my heart, which was so very easy. He gave me his, as well as his hand in friendship. He knew that I was filled to the brim with suffering; he had a way of emptying the cup so that we could simply talk. So we talked about Bob’s journey through cancer and his own—through various and sundry disabilities. He had disabling migraines and quite a few trips to the hospital as the emails traveled between us.

  When he returned from a hospital visit, he always had plenty to say - none of it good. He would report on how they prodded his helpless limbs and said dire things about his future. For him, doctors were quite useless; they had not one whit of power to heal him. This he knew. He was not bitter; he simply experienced his actual state.

  “My wife tells me that I have aged,” he reported in one email. “My beard is quite white now, but I am still a handsome guy. Ho ho!” He didn’t give a rap about his reputation. He had nothing to lose. And his way of being was that of a child who has discovered that he can play and nap whenever he likes. What a life....

  Faltering Steps

  Our friendship was a rope running from my computer to his. We did not discuss spirituality all that much. I would give him reports from the front, about sitting all day in the chemo room with Bob. He would talk of resting and watching robins run. Between us there was such gentle humor. His simplicity untangled my knotted-up heart. I could rest with him.

  I was honing my skills as a writer while my heart was breaking and my body was exhausted. Writing was deep solace for me. For Peter, it required extraordinary self-discipline to complete an email. He would frequently write, “Got to stop and rest now.” Through his honest admission of fatigue, he gave me permission to rest my own mind and heart.

  His cats were his world; I still find that amazing. Although he clearly loved his wife, he never said much about her. Instead he taught me how he saw life. He lived it among his cats and nature. He got down on their level and let them be his teachers. He roamed the yard with them. He sat and let himself be their furniture. And I would write about how my life was falling apart. His had fallen together.

  We both faced grim futures. His would end in one last breath. Mine in the death of my beloved spouse. We were good soldiers, albeit weary ones. His light allowed me to take one step further into the darkness of watching someone die.

  Peter’s wife and my husband were our beloveds, but we needed space in which to give full attention to ourselves for a bit of time. I never thought of Peter as benefiting from the conversations we had. He was so wise.

  When I asked him if he would consider writing a book with me, he said, “Funny, a lot of people are asking me that, but I simply am not well enough.” And so now, years down the road, he joins me once again on the screen of my Mac. The beloved cannot leave; the beloved is revealed as the eternal Self that we are. Ultimately, we are all dancing in the dark, doing the best we can with what we have. Peter’s steps were faltering ones, but somehow that was exactly what I needed.

  A Message to Peter

  Vicki: Peter, you have the uncanny ability to open my heart and I have never met you. I am sure that I am not the first person to tell you this. Ever since you first told me about sitting in the sun with your cat, I have been enchanted by such a simple teaching—given so effortlessly. Since you have been challenged by adversity, this is not true. This kind of effortlessness is embedded in super effort. I know you say that grace either happens or it doesn’t and I tend to agree with you. But if I tell you that you are gracing me, you will deny it.

  Nevertheless... every time I hear from you, my heart opens like a door into the place that I really live. It is warm and spacious and caring. Irony can breathe here, but it is mostly gentle. Wit with wisdom, warmth with candor.

  You say that you are moving, but where would you go? I think that someone like Ramana said this…and I hope that it is true… that you are totally here and now, always. It is my hope that you will let me share some of your insights with others. Most of us are still living with a closed heart, with a sense that the “me” is fragile and filled with suffering. Talking to you is to open the heart, trusting that the space left open will be occupied by ease.

  I hope that you know I mean business. This is not an idle whim, but an inner certainty that you have something to share as easily as your cat does when she is sunning herself with you. So let me hear from you…may I let some people listen in on our conversations?

  Always, Vicki

  Nothing to Cling to

  Dear Vicki,

  I went through a hell that was horrible when I first started to get so seriously ill. I lost a lot of things. Career, friends, health, loves, ability to read, and …well, more than most folks can ever imagine in their worst dreams. The hospital had said there was no hope of recovery, ever.

  Turning to spirituality, philosophy, learning, advaita, non-dualism and so forth did not help in any way. Turning to people who said they were awake was a joke—I found nothing there that was helpful or even particularly compassionate. I did discover one small thing that seemed to help a little: as much as possible I did my darnedest to not look to the past or the future. As the losses and suffering started to mount up, I did this with more and more intensity. And then even more… one day something died. I do not know how to say it, other than to say I no longer had a sense of a “me” at the center of things anymore, or anywhere else for that matter.…

  I am not sure why I am writing this to you now, or if my own experience can be of any help at all, or if it just sounds silly or a tad flakey? Yet it does seem that there is an intensity that can happen sometimes wh
ich shows us so very clearly, and yes, sometimes painfully, that there is nothing to cling to any more .…

  Peter

  Breaking

  Inwardly I was breaking up—or was I breaking down? Outwardly I was shaking, trying to hold everything in place. It felt like planets were falling from the sky and I was either dodging them or trying to hold them up. It was a miserable, miserable descent into hell. All of the teachings flew in my face and mocked me, or so it seemed.

  I had been raised to be a good little girl and I did my best to keep up the facade. Your husband is dying. Be a good little wife. Go with him to the doctor, take over the jobs he used to do, continue to maintain a good home and never let ‘em see you sweat. I didn’t.

  Writing soon became my salvation. I knew how to write. I did not know how to watch a fatal disease unfold in front of my eyes and then sleep in my bed every night. For I was nurse as well as wife. Towards the end he was my child and I was his parent. But I could write.

  I was an embedded reporter from the chemo room. I sat patiently there for hours while Bob was hooked up to an IV. I loved the courage of the patients and their families. I realized I was more practical than I gave myself credit for. The only thing that really stymied me was driving. Some days I would have to let Bob off on the ground floor and then try and find a parking spot in a crowded garage. One time I just couldn’t remember where I left the car and the security guard had to put us in his van and drive us around until I said “Oh, there it is.” And yet I was a force of nature seven days a week. Of course I was exhausted. In my despair one day I cried out to Bob, “You would never take as good care of me as I am taking of you!” It was the truth but it was coming from a very dark place. I was losing myself as well as losing him.

  I stood by him and wrote. I watched him be valiant. I listened to his stories of childhood because he needed to sum up his life. So we sat at the kitchen table and talked, while our son listened with a breaking heart.

  Today I had an earth-shaking cry. It did me so much good. I cried for every moment of those five years. I cried for the hard ways in which I have learned my lessons. Yesterday a plumber treated me like a nutcase for telling him he had installed my bath tub faucets backwards. That is what brought on the tears. A jerk—but he led me to the place I needed to go.

  I know how to write. I know how to express things in an intuitive straightforward way. I am not sure I know how to love myself. That is the last lesson and the hardest.

  ICU

  Vicki: Bob was in ICU and has been in the hospital for a week.

  Peter: Oh Vicki. I am so sorry that this has appeared. The ICU is no fun at all.

  Vicki: I am weeping copiously… out of control.

  Peter: Well, this is certainly understandable. Fear is seldom easy. My wife has spent some time crying too. Last night we watched a comedy show together and she laughed a lot, which made me laugh too, which started the cats off and Maple and Alexandra and Sandra snarled at them and a generally good time was had by all.

  Vicki: This joy you experience—I am unfamiliar with it.

  Peter: I have attached a small mp3 file which I made for you today of me playing a toy flute. It’s got lots of mistakes as one hand seems to not work as well as it used to when doing the fingering plus I tend to lose my breath, but hopefully you will enjoy anyway.

  Today too I had some trouble staying upright, scaring my wife, ho ho! But trying to change the changeless seems like a lot of work, so I look at the trees and the sunlight, and smile and grab for a nearby wall, ho ho!

  I watch Alex run and tumble with her brother...there is a fullness and an ease so wonderful and so joyous. I wish with all my heart that Bob were not ill. Ah Vicki, we savor this breath in all its beauty. Who knows what will come next...?

  Peter and the Cat

  As long as I emailed Peter, his cats were the topic of much of his conversation. He spoke of Alex, the black and white cat, the most. She it was who lay on his chest and purred to him of impermanence, you might say.

  I had told him Bob was doing better and this is his reply:

  “This is good news indeed. I hope that he continues to do so. This life seems to be touch and go from moment to moment. It is my own experience that pain, whether psychological, physiological or whatever, is very fleeting unless constantly recreated. I watch the robins pulling worms out of the safe warm earth so that their nestlings can fly high and strong, even as the cats stalk them for dinner. Perhaps the only permanence is in the gentle quiet in which it all appears to happen.”

  I say, “My writing has been going unusually well.” He replies, “I think a book would be a lovely thing, and of great help. I have a feeling that you may wonder about an ego rising for a while during the process? It seems to me that no matter how sweet ego or imagination may be, nothing sticks to the sky in which they appear. Perhaps that which is not what one is, cannot stick to what one is. So whether an ego appears to rise or not, may be in fact of no import at all.”

  At another time Peter said, “When I was young I lived in a parking lot. Finding ways to avoid freezing to death at night was an adventure. Finding food was sometimes fun, too. I met people that most people in this society ignore, and who had little chance of finding help—when illness took them they were done. I feel that who made it and who did not did not depend at all upon who they were inside. The idea that an idea could have saved one and not another seems to me to be an idea!”

  Peter’s Birthday

  This is Peter’s reply to my wish for a happy birthday.

  “Thank you! The rumor of birth is an odd one. How we cherish the experience that we were born, have grown up, and are now somehow the result of all that.

  Little Maple (the universe’s most perfect being) moves more slowly than I seem to remember, but he tells me that he is ageless. This makes sense to me, as his eyes are brighter than the sun.”

  Vicki: I wish you hadn’t gone and gotten sick.

  Peter: Lots of illness for much of this life. So be it. I could do without the discomfort though. I look marvelous (said with Billy Crystal voice), so that’s something at least.

  I spoke of having a copy of I Am That, by Nisargadatta. Peter replies: “Have you seen Prior to Consciousness? Very lovely. Cancer came to Nisargadatta too, as you know. A dear friend used to say that our lives are but a moment, an eye blink and they are gone. I think she was right.”

  “Let’s meditate together,” I suggested to Peter. He said, “Perhaps let Alex be with us as well. Gentle Alex fills the sky with quiet. Her touch is with you always, and her eternal delight as she rolls in the grass is yours as well. How could it be otherwise?

  She is the true presence in us all, manifested in cat form but unmanifested in eternal perfection.

  She also likes to eat grasshoppers.”

  Always, Peter

  This, Too, Shall Pass

  Wednesday was a nightmare. I got a new dental crown, which meant that I couldn’t go to the doctor with Bob. Turns out that his disease is gaining the upper hand again, unless there has been a mistake in the lab. Tomorrow they will repeat the test, in hopes that it was wrong. In the meantime, his doctor will confer with someone about what to do next—if the chemo has quit working. To tell the truth, I am quite wiped out. I have run the emotional gamut and come up empty. I cried, talked too much and finally fell into bed exhausted.

  Peter writes: “It seems you were asking how I have been doing. That’s lovely of you. Sorry not to write, but I have been keeping pretty quiet with everyone. I have thought of you, though, and wondered how you and Bob are doing. I really hope Bob is better, and am keeping my fingers crossed for you both.”

  Ah, Peter, I hate to write and let you know. I have been trying to come out of a serious period of fear and discouragement since his last chemo failed. There are always lessons to learn and they are never easy when it involves life and death.

&nbs
p; Bob received a high dose of chemo yesterday and is quite ill from it. We didn’t sleep last night and as we sat together this morning, the thought came to me: I do not need to know the future. I only need to know the now. An overturned glass, a sick dog, chemo nausea—sleep deprivation. This, too, shall pass.

  Who Is the True Guru?

  Peter and I sit by the fire of our mutual sufferings and warm ourselves as they burn brightly. He tosses in a log occasionally and so do I. The gist of it is that when you are being broken and there is no fixing you, what is left to do but be where you are? It is Peter who has been my guide to what is. He always says “Ho ho” after making a comment on his broken body. He never speaks about the details of his illness; only saying that he grows weaker and less able to write.

  He knows me in a way that a person meeting me face-to-face never can. I tell him about losing my child, about going through chemo with my husband, and he understands. Last year when we had to put our dog, Christy, down, I asked Peter how old his cat, Alexandra, was. “She is younger than springtime,” was his reply. Then he wrote, “Actually she is seventeen or eighteen, I forget.”

  We hit the send button on our little fireside chats, knowing that one day a silence will arise and Peter will have nothing left to say. In one sense, sorrow is the true guru, and when it burns away the dross of the self, only holy ash remains. I would like to think that someone would wander by our campfire and smear a bit on their forehead. Whether they do or don’t will be of no concern to Peter. He would just say, “Ho ho.”

  Peace Descends