I was challenged with deaths, which I have struggled with a lot in recent years. I was able to use what I learned in therapy to stay in the present moment, which was emotionally and physically safe, to successfully attend my first funeral in ages. I felt accomplished after. I had confidence. It all happened at the right time too because I needed it when I looked at my phone one morning—I received an early morning text message telling me someone had died. There would be a funeral. 

 

By Holly Herring

 

A year ago I wrote about my decision to spend the next 12 months living in the now. The date the column was published was 11/23/2022 which would make the 1 year point Thanksgiving Day this year.

I’m not an avid celebrator of Thanksgiving, but I do try to think about thankfulness sometimes.

“Years ago I had a Buddhist teacher in Thailand who would remind all his students that there was always something to be thankful for. He’d say, “Let’s rise and be thankful, for if we didn’t learn a lot today, at least we may have learned a little. And if we didn’t learn even a little, at least we didn’t get sick. And if we did get sick, at least we didn’t die. So let us all be thankful.”

From Leo Buscaglia’s 1992 book, Born for Love: Reflections on Loving (page 102)

 

This reads as if it was written about my 12 months spent living in the now.

I worked hard on myself and on my recovery from adversity. I was accountable to myself for things I did and said. I paid attention to my thoughts. Living in the now meant facing my thoughts about letting go and saying goodbye. I did some really hard things—and I did them in the now. 

There was this technique I learned from my trauma therapist this year and I leaned on it heavily during EMDR at one point. I was having a hard time with a particular incident that occurred in my past.

My therapist reminded me that I was in the present and the event wasn’t happening now. Then she said to try to create some space between the me (of the present) in her office and the me (of the past) in the middle of a traumatic incident. She asked me if I could imagine myself on a train looking out the window at the event from my past as I move past it on the train tracks.

This made processing this trauma possible. 

I am thankful for everything I learned through that program and it all came about at the exact time and place it needed to. Things kept happening in those 12 months that tested my commitment to living in the now.

I was challenged with deaths, which I have struggled with a lot in recent years.

I was able to use what I learned in therapy to stay in the present moment, which was emotionally and physically safe, to successfully attend my first funeral in ages. I felt accomplished after. I had confidence. It all happened at the right time too because I needed it when I looked at my phone one morning—I received an early morning text message telling me someone had died. There would be a funeral. 

I had a close, intimate relationship with the deceased in the recent past.

Here I was, living in the now. He had been reaching out to me, trying to make amends for some time. I had thought a lot about the past but reminded myself I was living in the now. In the now alone I was safe and secure. In the past with him, I was not.

Regardless of what had occurred in the past with his friends and with his family and how that affected where I stood with them in the present moment, I knew that to mourn properly and deal with this I would need to attend the funeral. 

To be healthy in the now I needed to honor the past.

30 minutes from the funeral start time, I was contacted by a dear mutual friend of the deceased and I. Our friend had moved out of the area some years prior to win a battle with his own demons, the same demons listed as the cause of death for my former partner. Our friend wanted me to be at the funeral and he had flown in for it. I had already dressed and prepared for this and told him as much.

We were to meet there—me and my friend from the past would meet up in the now. Images, reminders of adventures and shared jokes, flashed through my memory. 

Recognizing I was now an outsider in the sanctuary for this funeral, I sat in the back on one end and kept to myself. I watched a slide show of photos running on a continuous loop on a large screen. It began with images of the cute little innocent boy he was in his childhood. There were photos next of him with family, then there were photos of friends and his adult life. I watched and recognized a few faces in the photos. At the very end, a photo flashed that had been taken at an event the two of us had attended and I had been removed from the photo.

I closed my eyes and told myself “I belong here too”

But in that moment I questioned if that was true. As I opened my eyes I noticed someone in another row had turned and was looking directly at me. It was our friend and he saw me hurting. I reminded myself that in the now, my friend and I were here, honoring our dead. My friend came back and sat next to me. 

In that moment I was safe, and loved, sitting with my friend who I trusted.

I felt my hand inside my friend’s hand and I looked up to the front of the sanctuary where the deceased was laid out to view. I reminded myself that he was dead, not dying. There was nothing scary going on. I was able to be aware of how his family dressed him for his funeral. I was able to feel good about their choices for his final outfit.

“He would have rocked that,” my friend said, and went up and said some words. We headed outside where several old friends of the deceased’s present were making plans to do this or that together. But, my friend said to me “Let’s go to Sunshine Kitchen.” We went there without any of those other people from the past. We ate spicy garlic edamame and caught up. 

My friend and I spent two weeks together before he flew back home.

We cried and we laughed. We shared things about the past and the present. I told my friend that I was getting better by living in the now and he wanted me to explain that to him.

I woke up the following morning lying in a pile of blankets on my living room floor and looked at my friend sleeping peacefully on my couch. I made a couple cups of coffee when my friend woke up and sat next to him on the couch.

We had this exchange:

Him: Coffee is what you drink in the now.

Me: Definitely.

Him: I thought about that last night—what you said.

Me: *confused*

Him: That’s how you slay dragons, or demons or whatever. Only in the now.

Me: Oh that. Yeah. I can only slay the dragons in front of me.

Him: I moved away to get the monkey off my back. I could only fight one day’s demons, not all the demons that kept popping up from the past.

Me: I can see how that would be true for you. For me—I am my own demon. No matter where I’m at, there I am. So I live in each moment. It’s all I can manage. 

Him: I’m glad we are living in the moment today—together. 

“Let’s rise and be thankful, for if we didn’t learn a lot today, at least we may have learned a little. And if we didn’t learn even a little, at least we didn’t get sick. And if we did get sick, at least we didn’t die. So let us all be thankful.”

Today I am thankful for those 12 months of living in the moment, and good friends.

 

Photo: Pixabay

Editor: Dana Gornall

 

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