Eulogy for Mom

My mom passed away Tuesday of last week. She was only 70. It was completely unexpected. She was healthy and active. She and my father spent the day riding their bikes around Muncie, attending an ice cream social and a concert. In the evening, she went to a friend's house to set up a computer for them, and had some kind of heart attack. The problems started around 6pm and she was gone by 8:30pm. So she had a wonderful last day and didn't suffer in passing.

Her obituary can be found here: Kathleen Kiefer Keil, 70, 12/28/1941-08/07/2012

Anyone who didn't know my mom may think that things said about her kindness and generosity are exaggerations of family and friends due to her passing, but anyone who knew her at all knows that she was truly one of the most compassionate and authentic people you could ever hope to meet. Hundreds of people came to pay their respects, many waiting in line for well over an hour to see her and tell us their stories. Fr. John said that maybe only 20% were from the Church itself, as Mom had touched so many communities. Dad spent time with each visitor, and Ed and Ben and I received many hugs and kind words. I felt like we were getting back from all these people a little bit of the love Mom had shared with each of them.

Each of Dad, Ed, Ben, and I said something at her funeral, which was held at the St. Francis Church in Muncie, of which she was a founding and continuing core member and where we went on Sundays when I was growing up. Here is what I had to say, reconstructed from the same notes I used then:

A long time ago, when this hall was much smaller, there would often be banners hanging around the walls. One set which made an impression on me for some reason declared various appellations of Jesus: 'Prince of Peace', 'Wonderful Counselor', 'Lamb of God' "who takes away the sins of the world". That was my mom. She sanctified everything she encountered.

Now I'm working with Buddhism, where they emphasize qualities like compassion, generosity, loving-kindness, and sympathetic joy. That was my mom too. You could take any list of virtues or positive human qualities from any tradition, and my mom would exemplify those.

I want to call attention to just one quality now: Peacemaker. As an example, an event that has had a large impact on me. When I was a teenager I got into some stupid and illegal things. Eventually the time came to face Mom and Dad. What I remember is that Mom wasn't angry or disappointed with me. She was just concerned for me and wanted to understand why I would feel like doing those things. Wow. A human can be like that. Always caring, always understanding.

So I would like to ask each of you to please choose some positive quality that you identify with and just engage in that activity a few times, mindfully, thinking of my mom. Please dedicate a few acts of kindness or generosity or understanding to her memory.

In this way, we can help to spread and continue her boundless energy for love and peacemaking throughout all the communities that she has touched and throughout the world.

I think that would be the best way to remember her: to carry on in her spirit.

Thank you.

So I would also like to encourage any readers of this to do the same. Whether you knew my mom or not doesn't matter. Just please do a few good things mindfully, and if it makes sense to you, dedicate the merit of those acts to my mom.

Farewell Xena

Edward took this picture of Xena looking out the window of his room. However much I proclaim not to believe in any kind of afterlife, I cannot help but see this as Xena looking out to her next, bright destination. Her size relative to the picture seems to represent the distance she is traveling. I don't feel like the darkness of the room represents any darkness in her life, just that the destination is so much brighter. May all beings everywhere be safe, well, happy, and at peace.

Xena's cancer went from invisible a month ago to sizable lumps on her face and throat, and it was getting harder for her to eat every day with one side of her mouth looking very sore. When you looked into her mouth, there was a hole where her teeth had been that looked too big to fit in the space on that side of her head. This is where food would get stuck whenever she ate, and it would quickly be a smelly mess if it wasn't rinsed out right away. As always though, she was calm and patient with all of this, allowing me to do whatever was necessary with minimal fuss. She probably could have gone on for a few more weeks, but I thought it was better for everyone if I was there to make the decision and to be with her when the time came. Xena passed away calmly on Monday, April 30, 2012.

We seem to take euthanasia for granted with pets but go to any extreme to keep humans alive no matter what. I've always thought I wouldn't want to be kept alive artificially if it got to a point where I could no longer appreciate life. Similarly, I like the idea of Xena passing before her life is nothing but suffering. I recall reading Nietzsche on dying at the right time, which when I read it now isn't as congenial as I remembered it, but nonetheless serves to raise the question of dying while one is still vital, rather than waiting to wither away. But then you have to actually end things when there's still potential left for some quality of life, and one is therefore abandoning that potential. This lost potential is particularly difficult here because Xena couldn't tell me her opinion, I had to decide whether to 'take' it from her. Additionally, the decision was pushed up because of my departure for Sri Lanka. If it were not for that, I would have waited longer. But as it was, if we waited someone else would have had to make the decision, which is a lot to ask of anyone. And Xena wouldn't have known as well whoever she was with at the end.

I've only ever had one other pet 'put to sleep'. That was my cat Antigone, who suffered organ failure when she was only five. I was living day-to-day then, driving an uninsured car with an expired registration in LA because I couldn't afford anything, and by the time I took her to the vet, she had stopped eating, and the vet said there was nothing to do but let her go. I adopted Lagi and Xena a few months later, when the emptiness of my apartment outweighed the sadness of the loss, and it no longer felt disrespectful of Antigone's memory. Lagi passed a couple of years ago, at about 14, of some similar organ failure. We didn't even know he was sick, he just started gasping one day, and was gone I think by the time I ran crying in to the vet's office with him in the carrier.

Xena's death was different because I knowingly chose the day and time. No matter how much I'm convinced it was the best course of action given the circumstances, that part still made it feel wrong. When someone's death is 'premeditated', we are especially harsh on the perpetrator. It's hard not to turn that same harsh judgment towards myself, and it's even harder not to feel like I'm “getting away with something” if I don't judge myself so. Maybe part of it just that, when I think of her and experience the pain of missing her, it's easy to confuse that pain with a judgment that I've done something wrong.

Farewell Xena. Say 'Hi' to Lagi. Lick him on the head for me.

Reflections on Xena

My cat is dying. A little over a month ago, Xena was diagnosed with a cancer on her face. At first I couldn't see anything. By now I've seen some of her teeth fall out, leaving a gap that I have to rinse out after she eats since food gets stuck in there. Her eye started to bother her, and she scratched it so badly that we had to have it removed. Other than that incident though, she seems mostly unaffected in her mood and demeanor. The reason I'm writing about this is that I've never really had to watch someone die before. All my previous pets, as well as all the humans I've known who died, all died fairly suddenly or at least out of my sight. But I can see Xena deteriorating. I interact with her injuries on a daily basis. I know she will be gone soon.  I find that this makes me appreciate her at a whole new level. When she sits in my lap or curls up on me in bed, I'm much less likely to take her presence for granted than before. She has lived with me for almost 16 years now, and I feel much closer to her now than I did before I learned of this cancer.

Of course, one of the things the Buddha encourages us to pay more attention to is the fact that we're all subject to aging, illness, and death. So from this perspective, I've always been watching everyone die. But even though I've heard many times that I should reflect on this as a way to appreciate my own and others' lives more, I've never really been affected by these thoughts the way Xena's situation affects me. I suppose that's mainly because, when I do this, I never really take seriously that anyone I know is going to die. It always seems morbid or even shameful. Even though I claim not to believe in magic, there's a lingering superstitious sense that somehow thinking about people or pets dying will have an affect on the world. As if to imagine something is to wish for it, and to wish for it could affect the probability of it actually happening.

I'm not sure how or if I can use this experience with Xena to improve my appreciation of other living beings, including myself. But I do have a better sense now of what I'm aiming at in practices such as the meditation on the five remembrances. I can imagine what it might be like to have an enhanced appreciation of all the living beings in my experience similar to the enhancement that I've experienced with Xena. One more reason to appreciate her!

Another thing that I have been reflecting on with Xena's decay is what I can see of her response to it. As I said above, she mostly seems unaffected by what is happening to her. While she was clearly annoyed with her eye for a little while there, she has otherwise mostly been her normal, loving self. I like to think of animals as 'just living' in the sense of not struggling with their experience the way most of us humans do. If you go back to my first post, there seems to be no 'second dart' for Xena, just her direct experience of whatever is happening.

I can imagine a human, even myself, in similar circumstances being unable to enjoy what life they have left. "Why is this happening to me? What did I do to deserve this? Why won't I be able to do all those things I still want to do?" etc. Whereas Xena just climbs into my lap with her missing teeth and missing eye and purrs. Of course, she probably doesn't understand that she is dying, but she certainly knows she's got a lumpy face with missing teeth and one eye. That would be enough to put most of us in a dour mood.

This is something I'll have to explore more later, as I'm not sure I'd want to say that we'd be better off without the capacity to reflect on our experience. But in the meantime I'm happy to observe and appreciate and take inspiration from Xena's example.