Sometimes it’s good to complain. To make an official complaint because that needs to be done to highlight a mistake, or negligence, or the like. The heart that does that can be altruistic, not vengeful. I believe this is what Edera, the wife of the late Iain Robinson of Little House In The Paddy, has done. Her letter of complaint is an altruistic act. I particularly like this sentence:- To keep my mind in peace I would like you to investigate Dr. A and require him to really reflect on his own practice.

There is an interesting comment to the post mentioned above in which the writer talks about grief. I’ve taken the liberty of copying it here.
I am glad you wrote the letter Edera you will be helping others. When I studied grief and loss I heard something different to those stages of grief that really helped me with my own losses – instead of seeing grief as a process from which we recover, it sees it as a process by which we develop a different relationship with the person who has died. This helped me so much because it gave me license to keep having a relationship with my friend but to see that just like in life that relationship changed as I changed. It was true I could not see them in a conventional way and I missed them because they weren’t in my life in the same way, but that I still had a relationship with them. Just as I talked in my head to those people when they were not with me when they were alive, so do I continue to do so now they are dead. This way of looking at it helped me see my grief as an on-going process of developing a different relationship with them, through which I have grown.
Written by Bay.

As in life so in death. Relationships can be testing. I can attest to that.

Blackberries. Releasing themselves on the vine.
This ‘going deeper’ is often misunderstood. One might think of that more as listening deeper. Being prepared to listen to what’s actually there, only more carefully. Then following with tender attention to detail. With expectations and outcomes, releasing. Work for you?

My whole system is booting down after all of the activity over the past weeks. The weather has put a crimp in my walking activities ‘though I am still getting out, but just locally. No striding across distant green hills.

Partly taken from an email to a friend who is having physical difficulties. A thought 4 u here.

The remains of Iain that didn’t make it into the fire box
And still there is the going on.

Train driver
Going on.

What is there to say? What left to say? What remains? What is next?

For me it is to rest, for Edera it is to fly back to Japan and resume her life there. Did we have a footplate ride on that big black monster, day before yesterday? Did we hear the whistle blow as the last of the ashes were thrown into the fire box? Was that winter rain this afternoon? A chill in the air this evening? Yes all of that, and more.

How quickly what has happened, even in this day, fades in the face of a dawning tomorrow. This is as it must be. All that remains is the echo of the whistle, the sight of a falling tear.

Onwards.

This afternoon I took up Iain’s ticket on a most improbably double-decker bus tour to Stainmore Summit and Belah Viaduct at the head of the Eden Valley. As the can-do driver said, often, this is probably the first double-decker to come up this road. That road was actually a single track lane winding it’s way up the valley between unfenced fields with cows and sheep gawping at the spectacle as we lumbered upwards. In true British fashion, when in adversity, the passengers became jolly, bright and participatory. Cheering the driver on through narrow gaps and rounds of applause too for other major achievements along the way. We were on this trip to view the now defunct Belah Viaduct, a major jewel in the Stainmore line linking Barnard Castle and Tebay. A most ambitious project in its’ day.

Earlier in the day we scattered a portion of Iain’s ashes on Tailbrigg hill. This was the same spot he had scattered his grandfathers ashes many years earlier. We got a fine dusting of our friend in the swirling wind!

Into the air Iain. You would have loved to-days trip. I was quite scared in places yet glad to be there in your stead. The new Stainmore Summit sign another grand achievement. It replaces the old one taken down after the line was closed in 1962.

Iain’s grandfather was a signalman on the summit.

The other day I was making light fun about the seeming obsession of these railway enthusiasts restoring the station and line. Mike the chairman of the railway company opened his eyes wide and said with good humour, It is your heritage my dear! Duly chastened, I now have a renewed appreciation of what the age of steam brought forth.

I’ve attended on a number of people who have been close to death or who have died and for whom I’ve cared for. Cared for their bodies and supported their friends and relatives. Grieving along with them. I’ve recited comforting words and performed ceremonies. There have been memorials, private and public funerals, ceremonies at a crematorium, the scattering and interment of ashes. There’s no claim here to being an expert though, I don’t feel like I’m a professional doing a job. No, each time I’ve attended or been involved around a death, as now, Zen Master Dogen’s words which come at the beginning of the Shushogi are with me. We sometimes read this paragraph at the start of a memorial. It points to faith, to practice and to sitting still in the midst of impermanence.

The most important question for all Buddhists is how to understand birth and death completely for then, should you be able to find the Buddha within birth and death, they both vanish. All you have to do is realise that birth and death, as such, should not be avoided and they will cease to exist for then, if you can understand that birth and death are Nirvana itself, there is not only no necessity to avoid them but also nothing to search for that is called Nirvana.

I buried both of my parents. The practicalities around the time of their death were different however when ever I could I tried to deal with everything personally rather than relying on the service of a funeral director. They both rode up the M6 to Throssel in the back of the monastery Volvo for example. In a coffin of course.

There is a movement towards home after-death care in America where people deal with their own dead. This article speaks of this. The Surprising Satisfactions of a Home Funeral – Smithsonian Magazine, March 2009.

While writing this post I remembered the following which brought on a smile: Once, early in my twenties, I remember racing around a P. & O. Liner grabbing bunches of flowers from public spaces. As the ship passed through Sydney Harbour Heads my employer threw the flowers overboard! (We were ships crew employed as photographers, but that’s another story). Ashes had been scattered at the ‘Heads’ on a previous voyage, the flowers were an act of remembrance. Obviously repeated at opportune times.

As Adrienne P. says at the end of her lovely piece of writing in the comment section of this post: …..lets live, lets remember, lets laugh, lets cry, lets enjoy the view from the rooftops.

Many thanks to Rebecca for the hint on the new approach to after-death care and to Adrienne and her comment.