S1, EP2 - where the sidewalk ends
When first told of her suicide, shocked, I asked if that meant I didn’t have to go to school tomorrow. Seventh grade just began. Is your mom dying reason enough to miss school?
“Of course you’re not going to school tomorrow” sister confounded.
Stairs, two or three at a time to my room. Hands and knees, grasping hard handfuls of pale yellow shag carpet, burning my knuckles. Shel Silverstein’s “Where the Sidewalk Ends”, with an inscription to me by mom, I wrathfully pegged in a brown paper bag, to be immediately discarded. I’ll show you how angry I am. I’ll throw out the one thing that makes me feel the most connected to you.
But I can’t remember feeling that angry, really. I felt like I should be. A confusing feeling of like, I need to perform here as I’m being watched. I’m sure there was some anger, but mostly I acted as if.
Truthfully, the hardest part was my mind trying to hold on to something as I was bombarded by phantoms of energy - tubes popping off of me, like Neo - emerging from the goo of a false matrix. The sidewalk did indeed end. The end of anything I was familiar with. And beyond, a bewildering abyss. I was that dog, scraping my nails against the shag concrete, hind legs air running, dangling halfway through a hole. Am I supposed to let go? Can I?
Pema Chödrön describes “groundlessness” as the true reality of being. No real ground to stand on. Like, seeing Krishna’s true form and begging him to shut it down. The mind cannot clock the speed of stimuli - a waking defilement of worlds dissolving endlessly into other worlds - streamers of mental DNA just fire-working out of my head. Because this is a rip in the veil and you’re not ready to peer through and see the brilliant horror of liquid fire love raging infinity - with you at its center.
A piece of sky
Broke off and fell
Through the crack in the ceiling
- Shel Silverstein, Where The Sidewalk Ends, p.31
It was a death, yes, but it was also a birth. Pema too said, “New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings”. What other choice is there? They are attached to another - imply one another. This is the bedrock of Yoga. There is nothing to hold on to. Try. You can’t. The current cannot be swam against. Trying is suffering and suffering will ultimately teach letting go. What does not last is not Real. Vedanta 101. At our very best, we can allow this impermanence. But not many role models in this regard. Recovery from suicide is a kind of purgatory. I was in need of wise guides, cunning enough to actually be effective. And being felt sorry for was not very helpful. So like an infant, I’d scream until my shouting would inevitably be heard by the right, compassionate ears.
And the teaching? I’ve been at the end so many times. We all have.
Amidst the tumult, I still was able to memorize and sing my Torah portion for my Bar Mitzvah.