Good morning beloved reader,
Right now I’m spending a night in the Revolution Hotel in Boston — perhaps part of why I wanted to share this is just because I adore the name of this hotel😁 After having traveled on airplanes for 24 hours from Sydney, I arrived at Logan airport in the evening of “leap day,” a bit too late to travel up to New Hampshire. Tomorrow it’ll only be an hour bus ride to Nashua, where Jamie will pick me up, but I’m grateful for the privilege of being of being able to break it up with an overnight in a hotel where I can take a shower and rest. And at the moment I’m jet lagged and awake at 2:00 a.m. which is 6:00 p.m. in Sydney, so I’m taking the opportunity to finish this Substack post.
I wrote this following section while visiting “down under.”
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Sometimes I’m blown away by the blessings in my life. I feel so much gratitude for being able to spend this time in Sydney with my 86-year-old mother. And perhaps what I am most grateful for is the fact that she has done so much inner work, she’s a joy to be around. To me, she embodies an ease of being and a palpable sense of love in the essence of her presence.
Sure, she has her “muck,” and like the Lotus flower, she blossoms because of, not in spite of — like her tendency to be judgmental, which I inherited, and which has been a fun one for me to become aware of 🤪 And I observe the difficulties that an aging body presents — she walks with a wheely walker or uses walking sticks. But she’s also a model of how I want to age, on all levels: body, mind, emotions and spirit.
My 50-year-old sister told me that both she and Mum did some work with a therapist, and the therapist told my sister that because Mum has done so much inner work over so many years, there is no fear of death left in her subconscious mind, which means she will most likely die a very peaceful death.
How can more human beings become aware this is possible? To do enough inner work so that there is no fear of death left in our subconscious mind.
How can we make more people aware that this is what aging can be like?
Not the endless struggle against accepting what is, but an awareness and acceptance that every single human body will age and die, and it’s possible to make meaning from this experience, and to live in the mystery with joy and delight.
When Mum and I were talking about acknowledging that we all will die, but we don’t know exactly when we will die, she said to me:
“I know I’m a ‘frequency holder’ like Eckhart Tolle describes,
and while I’m still here in this body,
perhaps it’s because the world needs this frequency right now.
And when it’s no longer needed, maybe that’s when I will leave my physical form.”
My 50-year-old sister, who says she feels privileged to be in the role of a caregiver for Mum, is overseeing the building of a granny flat, adjacent to a house my sister bought and is renovating in Bulahdelah — an Aussie country town with an Aboriginal name, 3 hours North of Sydney and where my mother and sister are moving to.
One Sunday, before we drove up to Bulahdelah for a visit to see the progress on the renovations, I walked the spectacular coastal path from Bondi to Bronte with an old friend.
When I arrived home Mum was getting into the shower and was struggling with getting her leg over the side of the bath. In her new home, my sister has designed a spacious shower which will allow ease for an older body — we can learn through our parents what an aging body needs.
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I enjoyed some more synchronicities on this visit to Australia. Just after Qantas flight 8 touched down in Sydney, I turned on my cell phone and saw the newest email in my inbox was a comment from my favorite Australian Substack writer:
Then on the eve of my departure from Sydney, my inbox showed another email from Michael, his post A Night at the Regal Theatre, to which I commented, “You make me smile more than any other Substack writer I read, Michael! … I’m also enjoying the synchronicity of the fact that I’m reading this on the eve before I fly back to the Northern hemisphere, so it seems that I read your writing upon arrival in, and departure from oz😁”In one of Michael’s recent posts about a friend of his, he wrote, “I have seen how his whimsical nature reminds others not to take themselves so seriously.” I commented, “And Michael, you may be amused to hear that for me, reading your writing represents that same energy of rascality, whimsy, "infectious magic" and tongue-in-cheek delight.”
There is something about the Australian culture that nurtures this capacity of not taking ourselves so seriously. This was somewhat captured in the old movie, Crocodile Dundee, but this visit back to oz reinforced this delightful trait, making me want to cultivate it more in myself too.
Australians often use the word “larrikin” which somewhat reflects this quintessential Australian attitude that Michael’s writing embodies.
From Wiki:
The term larrikin was reported in an English dialect dictionary in 1905, referring to 'a mischievous or frolicsome youth.'
And:
Today, being a larrikin has positive connotations and we think of it as the key to unlocking the Australian identity: a bloke who refuses to stand on ceremony and is a bit of a scallywag. When it first emerged around 1870, however, 'larrikin' was a term of abuse, used to describe teenage working-class hell-raisers who populated dance halls and cheap theatres. Crucially, the early larrikins were female as well as male.
Scallywag is another delightful word I don’t hear spoken in this country but is defined as: “a person who behaves badly but in an amusingly mischievous rather than harmful way; a rascal.”
And now my dear reader jet lag is catching up with me and I must sleep some more.
I love how both you and your sister have developed a curiosity and compassion about your mother’s aging process, rather than always looking at it as an obligation. And what a blessing that she has no fear of death. This was a lovely piece to wake up to. ❣️
Welcome home Camilla!