Memorial Essay

This is the short essay I wrote and then read at the memorial gathering we had for my mother:


Ellen Mary Irving Kiernan, 1928 to 2014.  My mother.  Her name means light and she was an incredible light to our small family and to the people she met and touched.  She was an exceptionally bright woman all the way through from her childhood to her old age.  That innate intelligence shown brightly in her keen curiosity in the world around her.  She watched, she listened, she read and reflected, she talked and she created.  She was a vibrant woman, an honest woman, a good woman.  I am so proud of her.

She grew up as a child during the Great Depression in New York City in the Bronx.  Her family was small, just her mother, father and brother and like so many others of the time, they did not have much money.  She wore home made clothing made by her mother, but longed for fine store bought clothes and shoes.  When she was a bit older and she went to work, she saved her money to do just that.  In this way, she followed her father, who also had fine taste in good quality clothing.

But her focus as a child and young adult was not clothing so much as school.  She excelled at her school work and was a hard act to follow for her younger brother, Bob, though he, too, was very, very bright.  Their parents were good about taking advantage of all that the great city of New York had to offer.  They went to museums and parks and beaches.  Mom and her brother soaked it all up.  By the time my mother was five years old she progressed from a serious envy of her cute little brother that her mother adored to becoming his friend and protector.  They loved to read, listen to music and play outside and as they grew up together they bonded as a team and stood up from time to time to their parents, especially their father, who could be unjustly critical and tough.

Her father died when she was in her mid 40s and when I was 12 years old.  I didn’t get the chance to know him as a young adult and my mother was mostly unwilling to talk about her relationship with him growing up.  Whatever unresolved conflict she had with her father, she always maintained that he was a hardworking, responsible man who loved his wife.  Still, it was obvious to me that he left his mark on Mom and helped to cultivate some core aspects of her personality.  Whatever critical attitudes he took with his daughter, it was clear that he was very proud of her intelligence and skill.  It is because he prodded and challenged her to excel at her school work that she worked even harder.  She learned to assert her point of view in an honest, direct and intelligent way and came to value her mind and her unique spirit.  Most likely she suffered because, like any young person, she needed love and kindness from her father more than criticism, but she endured and she got stronger.

It is my feeling that my mother was at her happiest living here at Cypress Cove in the last 15 years.  She no longer had the responsibility of caring for her children or her mother and my father’s mother and so she was free to live in a way that was most comfortable for her.  The pace of her life was relaxed and she bonded more closely with my father.  Her favorite spot in their apartment was looking out the windows of the living room.  She loved the view looking out over the water and watching the wide array of birds with her binoculars.  She also loved all her thriving house plants and never failed to take care of them.  In my mind’s eye I still see her reading, writing, singing, talking to others with such a cheerful attitude and walking the grounds.  She had this uplifting energy about her that was motivated by a keen curiosity and an innate kindness towards others.  She never failed to do her part to help out.

She taught me from childhood to be very honest, polite and tolerant of others.  I think I valued her direct, intelligent honesty most of all.  She did not lie; she did not manipulate me.  She always stated her opinion and perspective plainly and she continued to be respectful of me even when she disagreed with me.  And when I made poor choices and got into trouble, she was there for me, as was my father, and provided a safe haven for me to stay in when I needed it.  She was not just my mother, she was my friend.  But it was this strict adherence to honesty that came to define me and my personality as well.  She passed on this ability to have the courage to be honest with myself and others and that has saved me on numerous occasions and has given me a foundation of joy from which to work.

My mother was an atheist, as is her brother Bob and my father, but I am not.  I’m the only one in our family who believes that there is some kind of higher power or higher order that is involved with the life on this planet.  I truly believe that my mother’s spirit continues in some way and that she is just continuing on her journey somewhere out of my reach.  I will miss her and I will never forget her.  I feel truly blessed by the time we spent together.  May you be well Mom.   May you find happiness and the root of happiness.

Adam & Eve

Adam & Eve

Why was Adam scared of Eve?
Why did he point his finger at her
In front of God?
Why did he make her the guardian
Of the Fall
And tell their children that
She could not be trusted
At all?

What did he learn
When he tasted the apple
From the Tree of Knowledge in Eden?
How did he see
The world around him
And this woman
Beside him?

Maybe they didn’t have enough time
Before the Fall, before the Fall
Time to get to know each other
In Friendship without all this pressure

The pressure of knowledge,
The pressure of pain,
The pressure of seeing
That they were not exactly the same.

Why was God is such a hurry?
Why did he take so little time to work it out?
Why did he test his creatures
Before they were ready?
Why did he seal them into their fate
So completely?

Play Song

Song: "Down"

Down

Take a few steps back                
And soak up the view.                          
Look for the path                              
That winds down the mountain.          
Down, down, down, go down.   (x2)          

To see the view from the valley  
Where the farmers till their soil    
To get your hands all dirty      
In the freedom of the toil.    
Go down, down, down, go down.  (x2)    

It’s too high up here    
And I can’t fly down.    
I’ve seen what I came to see,  
I have looked all around    
And I’ve carried my heart with me
Through the journey        
And now there’s no where else to go  
But down.    

Put one step in front of the other    
Hold fast to your heart    
Keep it together  
You can work your way down
Through any kind of weather  
And once you hit bottom,    
It will get better and better.  

Go down.      

Play Song

Rest In Peace Mom

A song for my Mother on the day of her death.    Click Here.


Mother, Mother

You have died
The only mother
I've ever had.
You lived a good, long life;
You were a mother and a wife
And a friend,
A friend to me.

You'll live on
In my heart and beyond.
You've made your mark
On this earth
When you put your loved ones first
When you walked the extra mile
Now all I see is your bright smile.

Mother, mother
You have died,
Now you're on the other side
And that mystery
Awaits us all,
But we know in our spirits
That we're more than ashes and dust.

Mother, mother
You'll live on
In my heart
And beyond.

Another Song For My Mother

Home

In the backseat of the car
On the way to the beach
You sang folk songs to me.
I was just a child
But I loved you so much
I thought about your mortality.

With my head in your lap
And your face like the moon
You sang with such joy
I felt truly at home,
At home.

I was following your footsteps
On Westhampton Beach
Long Island, New York.
It was the 1960s in the summertime
And you were making crazy patterns for me.

I followed your lead
And the sweet simplicity
From the salt in the air
To the sound of the sea,
You were there for me.

Play Song

My Mother, Ellen Mary

I think my mother is in the end stages of her life.  Early in August she had a heart valve replacement operation.  She survived the operation, but she awoke in a demented state.  We have all speculated that she didn't get enough oxygen to her brain during the operation. Now, almost 5 months later, she stopped eating and continued to sleep a lot and so she has a feeding tube connected to her belly.  It will be my father's decision whether to remove the tube or not within the next week or so.

As my uncle wrote to me a couple of weeks ago, it is a terrible irony that my mother, with her sharp, agile, knowledgeable mind, should end her life in a demented state.  I feel empathy for her because I've been in that lost place during the acute stages of schizophrenia.  It's a place where you cannot connect with others and where you are just getting by.  It's a place of isolation within the confines of insanity. And so, I cannot reach her and she cannot reach me.

I'm relying on the faith that I've nurtured over the years that each of our lives are witnessed from beginning to end and beyond by higher forces.  Not just witnessed but guided and comforted when we reach out in our pain and confusion.  My mother is not alone.  And when she does let go of this life, I will hold on to her spirit within my spirit.  She helped so much to define me with her intelligent honesty, her humor and her kindness.

Here are two songs I wrote for her:

Go With The Flow Mother

Go with the flow      
Mother, Mother      
Leave the misery    
Behind you;      
Let go of the shell    
That confined you.  
The times of sorrow    
Will come,      
But turn your face    
Towards the sun,
Go with the flow  
Mother

Mother, sweet Mother  
Has your time come?    
Mother, sweet Mother    
Are you going to move on
Without me?    

Go with the flow  
Mother, Mother    
Don’t resist your ending  
Walk into your new beginning.    
The times of sorrow  
Have come,  
Now turn your face  
Towards the sun,  
Go with the flow
Mother  
Go with the flow  
Mother  
Go with the flow.  



Passage

Where are you now?
Lost in a place    
Where I cannot follow you
You know I’ve been there, too
In a place where
Angels fear to tread
But I know they do    
They did for me and now you.  

Hold on to your spirit Mother    
Make the passage quick to the other side
When you get there, watch over me;
I will remember you with so much pride.

Songs For Mom

Click to hear.

Faith: The Bigger Picture

The truth cannot be contained within a scientific theory, though many people take comfort in the belief that it can.  Then again, many people also take comfort in a belief in faith which demands no tangible proofs.  I place myself somewhere in the middle, or perhaps I should say that some scientific facts form the groundwork for an exploration beyond the facts.  The material world and the spiritual world are not divorced in my world view.

It is human nature to struggle with not knowing.  The biggest struggle we face is coming to terms with our own mortality.  We commonly accept that we will die, but we don’t know when and often don’t know how.  The danger in being alive is that there is always the chance of physical injury or illness or, worse, death itself.  If we walk through our lives preoccupied with this shadow, we rob ourselves of the joys contained within life.  And so, even the most committed atheist, who relies heavily on the truth in facts, must walk out the door carrying inside himself, or herself, a degree of faith.

What can we do in this place of not knowing, this place of faith where we suspend the knowledge that we will die and place in its stead the belief that we will continue to live?  We commit to living moment by moment, day after day.  I think all of us, without exception, put our faith in something larger than ourselves be it the world we live in and our encounters with other people and places and experiences or a faith in some kind of higher power watching over us and guiding us through all our encounters.  We do not exist only for ourselves, but in relation to the world outside our physical bodies.  Even at our earliest physical beginnings, we were in a relationship with our mothers.  We have never been in isolation.

The biggest mystery is not death, the supposed end point of existence, that implacable, unknowable experience.  The mystery is within our spirits, that is our everyday lives and process of living.  We live without a memory of our conception or our birth and so we don’t really know where we come from. We don’t understand the fundamental elements of how or why we came into being on this planet. We’ve learned some facts about the means of sexual reproduction for human animals, but the facts leave out so much and can’t reveal the precise moment we began to exists as a life force.

What does it mean to exist as a life force?  It is more than just blood being pumped by our heart into our organs, animating ourselves to continue breath by breath.  Our life force is contained within our awareness.  So much of our bodily functions are involuntary and accomplished without awareness, our hearts pumping, our breath in and out, the digestion of the food we eat.  It’s as if our bodies are on automatic pilot thereby allowing us either to rest in, or be restless within, our consciousness.  Our consciousness is greater than our bodies and has more in common with the space around us, the intangible, the vast, something with nothing to hold onto.

And so, with so much freedom we get frightened by the power of all the choices we can make and do make, with the present and potential consequences of our actions.  Beyond our instinct for self-preservation, the fight or flight reaction to negative stimuli, we have the ability to rise above our reactions by learning to pause and reflect, to take stock of our present lives and our pasts.  We rely heavily on memory, but because we all have lived such rich lives with so many moments, so many thoughts and feelings, only some memories get recorded.  There is a process of selection or editing out the parts of our lives that are not essential to our underlying spirit, the thing that motivates us to keep on going.  Our experience is too vast for us to be in conscious control of just what we remember and what we don’t remember.

This leads us back to the mystery of our spirits.  What is this unconscious self that selects what to store and what to release into the flow of our ever flowing lives?  I truly do not believe that our selections are haphazard, but how do we know what is essential to know, and remember, when we proceed so often not knowing the deeper nature of our thought processes.  Something within us does know that our lives have this greater meaning, even when we are so very doubtful about ourselves.  This inner self is not so easily explained away by scientists and psychologists.  We can talk about the effects of neurotransmitters and label our psyches as divided into superego, ego and id, but we truly do not know the origins of this mystery.

This mystery leads us right back to faith and to sitting with a sometimes uncomfortable mixture of knowing and not knowing.  People are deluded when they affirm that they do not have faith.  Whenever we take something for granted we have faith, faith in our lives, faith that the sun will rise the next day, faith that the world is turning.  Whenever we reach out for a greater understanding of our lives and the meaning within it, we have faith.  Faith allows us to open up instead of shut down.  Those people caught within severe depression struggle desperately with a lack of faith and so they shut down and they shut down some more until they are cornered within their minds and left unbalanced, left hurting so badly that they turn to various escapes, including suicide.

What do they or any of us have left to work with?  Our awareness which is greater than our minds. You can sit somewhere in silence with no thoughts and be so very aware of all the details of your environment, be very much alive because of your awareness.  When you sit with your awareness you can feel the life force all around you.  The beautiful simplicity of our awareness often is contrasted with the misdirected complexity of our thoughts.  Thoughts can point the way to underlying truths, but they can just as easily direct us into accepting lies.  The fact is we learn through misunderstanding except when we persist in cherishing falseness.  Some people cherish falseness because they are, as yet, ignorant and other people cherish falseness as a means of disguising themselves and/or taking advantage of other people and situations.

All of us have lied consciously to others and unconsciously to ourselves.  We are probably the only potentially insincere species on this planet.  We are not always what we seem.  Because we have this great power to deceive and manipulate, we rely heavily on our false thoughts to motivate us to continue in the deceptions.  We play a serious game with our lives and others' lives.   The problem with believing in lies and lying is that it produces delusional thinking within individuals and worse, the acceptance of illusion over reality for the general populace.

When delusional thinking takes hold within people and spreads into a collective of people, true awareness becomes obscured.  Prejudices and lies partially color every culture on the globe.  And so conflict is born over and over again and a seemingly unending need to inevitably find scape goats.  It is an illusion that we can find justice through blaming and condemning others.  Justice can only be found through an unprejudiced awareness using thoughts to seek out truth rather than using thoughts to hide the truth or only partially convey the greater truth.  Good intentions towards all beings really does count, just as negative intentions really do distort reality and cause great harm to harmless beings.

In order cultivate good intentions towards everyone, you have to get very, very honest.  Those hardest hit by distorted thinking and compulsive actions are addicts.  Addicts move into recovery when they acknowledge that their intentions towards themselves and others are not good intentions, but rather self-serving and self-destructive.  If they can get honest about that and if they can hold onto that realization, they can begin the recovery process of deconstructing the lies that they’ve been living under for so long.  As the distortions in their thought processes begin to clear up, they naturally find that their intentions towards themselves and others returns to health.  Health reinforces the positive and the positive is non harming.

I know some addicts struggle with 12 step programs because so much of the program asks each individual to either reach for a belief in a higher power or deepen the faith they already have.  Faith demands surrender and surrender for many of us is a scary concept and a scarier practice.  Faith also requires that you believe in the essential goodness in life and in everyone.  Faith allows room for a bigger picture to emerge, one greater than our individual stories.  As I said earlier, I believe we all have faith to a greater or lesser extent; it’s how we get through our days and nights when things get rough. As we rely on it, we also take it for granted.  The gift of facing one’s addiction is that one stops taking faith for granted.  Faith becomes a rich and rewarding way of approaching life with openness, honesty and dignity.  I have found in my practice that when I have faith in others higher self and tell them so, that they relax, open, and in return have faith in me too.  A supportive bond gets created, the basis rests in trust and trust allows people to live together in harmony while facing the continuing challenges of daily life.

Recent Artwork

Pencil Portrait Of My Brother

Patriarchal Planet Earth

Sometimes we adapt to what is because there is no viable alternative.  I believe that this is what is happening on our planet for both the male and female of the human species.  We are still ruled by our biology.  On the whole, men are physically stronger than women and because of this advantage we have inherited a very ancient male dominated or patriarchal rule in nearly all of our societies.  Patriarchy echoes the natural world, the eat or be eaten world of predators and prey where the dominant animals rule over their group at the very least.  We have translated this natural tendency into a might makes right philosophy that continues to promote wars as somehow acceptable behavior.  But patriarchy goes even deeper than the ability to promote and support violent national conflicts.  It is interwoven into the fabric of our societies; it's in the way we govern, do business, educate ourselves, worship and more.  It's so all pervasive across the world that we've stopped seeing it.

Men should not be ruling the world, but then I don't think women should either.  The only really good form of governance is egalitarianism.  In order for that to happen there needs to be an infusion of women into positions of power in government, business, education, religion, etcetera.  I believe that culture is slowly moving in that direction, which might be why deeply patriarchal countries continue to severely restrict girl's and women's rights.  The old ways are being challenged and these countries are on the defensive, instinctually seeking to preserve themselves by attacking those that don't conform.  This challenge and conflict could be seen during the presidential election in the United States.  The country was given a choice to continue with a Democratic president who openly supported women's rights and gay people's right amongst other things or to revert to the more traditional patriarchal rule of the Republicans.  Though the country went with the Democratic candidate, the country is still deeply divided and there are many hurdles to go through in the next four years.

To me it is obvious that we can't go backwards; patriarchy does not work because the natural outcome is extreme overpopulation.  To be fruitful and multiply is no longer common sense.  If we continue doing what we've been doing we will become extinct one way or another.  Divide and conquer doesn't work either because we've divided up the whole world with imaginary boundaries that we take so seriously.  The new frontier is not in some physical location; if anything it is contained in cyberspace.  This is the era of globalization, the realization that we are not a collection of nations, but one people on one planet, a planet that we have been using selfishly.  Pollution is a fact and climate change is real and our resources are dwindling.

The question is, can we rise above our biology?  The testosterone level in men has dropped significantly in the past 20 years worldwide, which makes it appears as if our biological parameters are changing to include a different norm.  Testosterone levels in men who become fathers also get reduced which implies that nurturing behavior can affect an individual's biology.  Another change I've heard about is the rise of people who neither marry nor have children.  Could this be part of a survival mechanism for our species?  Reduce the births on earth, reduce aggressive, controlling, exploitative power.

The sense of a power structure begins in the family unit.  If there are fewer families the reasoning behind patriarchal rule will weaken and new approaches will be tried and accepted.  I believe many Americans, who are part of the vast Christian/Republican orientation here, focus so strongly on a male dominated family unit as the basic building block of their social organization.  And this is why they are so threatened by reproductive rights for women and the right to marry and raise children regardless of sexual orientation.  The additional fear of socialism is once again the fear of the family unit being undermined, subsumed into the general population.  If one's community provides good services --  food, shelter, education, work, transportation, healthcare and community service and friendship -- there is no real need for the strong father (or mother) figure to be the overall provider for the children.  Likewise, if there were peace on earth, the myth of the superhero or supernation would be exposed.

Before I began writing this blog, I did an internet search to see if there are any matriarchal societies today and basically there are very few and they are small.  What this means is that we have only patriarchal models to follow.  I am not trying to assert that men are "bad" and women are "good" when it comes to organizing and running human societies, but the bias in favor of male rule is so pervasive all across the globe that there is a serious imbalance of power.  Being animals, it is not surprising that we are territorial and protective of our home turf.  Traditionally men have done the hunting and the warring over the centuries.  On a small scale, this is not so terrible, but as a blueprint for an entire world it is divisive and destructive.

Women continue to be second class citizens and yet instinctually women are inclined toward social organization and mutual cooperation.  Where many boys are out sparring and establishing dominance and relying on competition, girls tend to stay closer to home, working in small groups, relying on verbal skills more than physical dominance and prowess.  Of course, there is cross over between the sexes, with some boys having an aversion to competition and some girls being drawn to it.  But generally speaking boys and girls conform to the roles set up by the patriarchal societies we live in.  The women who do choose to compete in order to gain positions of power must follow male standards and rules.  In a sense, they must convert themselves because they are investing in the only system available.

Right now, approximately a fifth of the US Congress is female and it looks as if that percentage will increase given time.  The question remains, will an increase of women in the US government significantly change the balance of power away from male dominance and towards a more egalitarian society?  I believe, if the numbers approach 30 to 40 percent, this is what will begin to happen.  Women in a minority position are less likely to challenge the status quo and some go so far as to reinforce it as a means of consolidating their position.  But when there are enough women to offer mutual support on sensitive issues, there is a much greater chance for the change in society to take place on a deeper level, often put into law.

Both men and women struggle; no one has it easy if you look at an entire lifetime.  I live in a poor county of New York State and I know the people around here struggle to earn enough income to support themselves and their families.  We do live in a patriarchal society, but that doesn't mean that the men here are powerful.  Along with the poverty, there are problems with addiction, obesity, child abuse and domestic violence.  I know from personal experience that domestic violence is one of the ways that insecure, stressed out men usurp power over their partners and children.  These men may not have much power or respect within their communities and so in their sickness and distress they bring a little hell home with them each day.  It's a vicious cycle.  We teach our children that violence is acceptable in certain circumstances such as in the police force and military and that it is a predominantly male activity.  But men getting into drunken brawls at bars is also fairly common and to a certain extent accepted.  And what about the fine line between sports and violent outbursts?  Violence portrayed in television and films has become entertainment.  There's just too much in our culture to support a boy or man in crossing that line into abusive behavior.

Boys are given mixed messages right from the beginning.  It's only been recently that I've noticed in films that leading male characters are finally allowed to openly cry when something upsetting has happened to them.  The message to be tough and not feel and express sensitive feelings is a damaging one.  When you stuff your feelings and become generally less aware and sensitive, it's a lot harder to identify with others and easier to cross into controlling, judgmental and even aggressive behavior.  In order to work with others in a spirit of tolerance that's willing to compromise, men have to be willing to feel their fear and sadness and their insecurity and let go of, at least for a time, the tough guy persona.  It's not men who have to step up and take on responsibility and rule this world by being tough guys, it's all of us who need to share the responsibility.  A little toughness goes a long way, but tolerance and fair play and humor goes so much farther and is the glue that holds the world together.  We are all in this life and this one world together.  Let's stop setting up impossible and unhealthy standards for men and women.  

Portrait Of My 86 Year Old Father