Life as a river

Reflections on life, death and edges

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Image from Unpsychology 10 Edges by Lesley Maclean

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Unpsychology Magazine’s 10th anniversary issue is on the theme of EDGES. The magazine is published in digital and print formats, with some of the pieces and collaborations appearing here, on the Unpsychology Substack. You can download a FREE copy of EDGES from HERE, and order a print copy from HERE.

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Introduction

This piece was first published in Issue 10 of Unpsychology Magazine in the summer of 2024. In it, I explored ‘edges’ in relation to my father’s ageing and my response to it. Subsequently, Dad died at the end of September the same year. Here, I’ve updated the piece with a postscript taken from my Substack piece Internubbing.

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Life as a river

WHEN I FIND MYSELF IMMERSED, there are no edges. This story. That ocean. This evening. That space. This community. That city. This body. That story. I find myself in these named existences. They seem bounded and clear.

Immersed, however, there could be flows and echoes to a life. Time is a ‘now’ that repeats endlessly — until it ends. And begins again — though there are no tangible perimeters.

Can you show me the boundaries of a day?

When I sat beside my ageing father’s bed the other morning, it felt like a moment that might have a significance. Perhaps, a moment before another moment that, in turn, will be an end or transition. I prepare for an inevitability that hasn’t come yet. In any case, his mind does not register the time before or the time after. Now he is in a moment in which he might recognise or not. Recognise me, or not...

I return home from seeing Dad, and sharing time with my friend of fifty-plus years. Travelling, through familiar moments that have never happened before, into the next immersion. New tangles of experience follow but they are not occurrences as such. They have no skin or membrane or wall, these moments, no separation from the world. And when a future moment is feared or anticipated, in reality it does not register; there is nothing to pass through. It is over as soon as it touches the consequence.

I return to the tangles once again. They carry all there is...

Connection implies separation. Even immersion does. And it does feel like that sometimes — to be separate and special, or else isolated and alone. Our culture is built like that. Some people even make philosophy out of all this — socio-ecological myths that speak of stories of separation or their non-dual binaries. As if there is another story we could return to that won’t be separate, that will be pure, beautiful and natural. As if there ever could be...

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LIFE STORY AS GROWTH:
born as potential; growing to learn;
learning to grow; negotiating stages;
finding talents; searching for soul; being
authentic; being enough; doing stuff;
moving on up; soul mating; portfolio build-
ing; potential reaching; meaning making;
goal arriving; secret unveiling; world
saving. Wanting. Needing. Dying.
Travelling on into some eternal future.
Spirit.

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Meanwhile the wonder rolls on. It is always still here, always is and was. It is phenomenological. It is what it is and was and always will be. No meaning is necessary. Nothing is required to change; the change will come. I can choose to respond — or not. The choice will make a difference, but will only ever be a stitch in the Universe. My Dad’s life, a stitch too. Significant. Insignificant. Ultimately, existentially ordinary. All the lives, all the stitches, each a tiny part of the wonder...

I remember thinking there were things I needed to get through. Ages. Stages. Development. Bits of learning that would stack up and build a story: my story. An authentic self to be found. A soul to be made. Things. Separate things.

I remember thinking there was a world to be saved. That I or we could save it...

And all the time, the experience of life just flowed. Not in a good way, always. Sometimes the flows were like raging waters, at other times calm - imperceptible eddies — but always shifting with the infinite flow of the world. My perception is a self-centring illusion. Yours too. There is so much intelligence and sentience flowing outside of us. So many other lives; so many mysteries. So many standpoints.

Perhaps, there is no real meaning in any of it? There are shapes and patterns that flicker and hint at something whole, or even transcendent. Cohorts of sense-makers grasp at these to construct their own illusions. Their stories have beginnings; they speak of separation, yearn for connection. Their failure is in this need to find meaning. Their words cast spells on the world, and beginnings, endings, tasks, frameworks and goals emerge. Their stories imply this direction — or that. They want to name God. Or Nature. They want to believe. They want to write a story with a glorious ending; a perfect metaphor; the ultimate ‘whole’.

I ‘want’ too, sometimes. Often. I am human. I lose myself deep in stories. I read fiction that takes me to new worlds that never existed and never will. Imaginings. Often, the worlds mean more than the stories. Dreamlike, what is evoked seems as real as anything.

Recently, I listened to an audiobook about the science of the language of whales, and the book touched me in new ways.¹ It leads me to new immersions, new flows, new places for grief and wonder to find a home. I choose to flow with this story for a time, and it gives me hope — takes hope away — moves me on - holds me back — tangles me up.

This life is a peculiar tangled thing. My Dad is nearing the end of his own journey to the ocean. And there are no edges to be found...

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LIFE STORY AS RIVER:
born as a trickle somewhere high; rivulets
tumbling, joining, merging; deepening; flowing; 
eroding; carrying; enabling; life-giving;
life sharing; rushing downstream; leaping
upriver; going with the flow; swimming
against the current; finding islands in a storm;
flooding with life; drying up; surviving
drought; broadening out; enriching; a conflu-
ence of waters reaching the ocean. Breaching
the salt. Sedimentary to the end. Ripples.

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Postscript

Extract from Internubbing published HERE on October 29th 2024

“My Dad is nearing the end of his own journey to the ocean. And there are no edges to be found...”

At the end of September this year his journey ended, and I was right, there were no edges. There were transitions that felt a bit like edges, but nothing that could be described as having outside limits, lines or boundaries. He moved from this bit of his existence to the next, and then he simply wasn’t alive any more. Even that seeming edge was really just a shift into something else. A state of mourning and grief and then a celebration of his life for those of us who loved him and grieved his loss. A materially different (and partially unknown to us) state of existence of his body, self and/or soul. And for me a sense of absence: a peculiar combination of something that will both be forever missing and a blessed release.

I wasn’t with him when he died, though I was on the morning he moved to his final home. In the hospital, we waited for transport to take him to his new place – a lovely nursing home in North Shields – a stones throw over over the River Tyne from South Shields where he was born and grew up. Understandably, he seemed confused and unsure. He’d had a difficult few weeks after a fall and had become very poorly. His memory had been fading for the past five years, though his storytelling spark sometimes still shone through the clouds, even as the narrative sense seemed to be falling away. In the ward, however, we’d been chatting a bit and he turned to me with momentary lucidity and said, “I just want a room with a bed so I can go to sleep”.

This wish came true for him when he moved to his final home in Room 9 at Princes Court. That evening his beloved niece Ella and I sat beside his bed as he talked animatedly. The stories still came, though the sense of them had almost gone. For the next few days, he mainly slept as Ella and I sat with him for a couple of hours each day. He didn’t eat or drink. His bed looked out on a lovely garden. He had family pictures on the wall. He seemed largely peaceful and content.

For me, that week was a strange, sad and lovely time. I said goodbye to him on the following Sunday, and knew I wouldn’t see him again. That was hard, but I’m pleased that his daughter - my sister Jude - was with him when he died twelve days later...

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1. The book about Whale communication I refer to is How to Speak Whale: A Voyage into the Future of Animal Communication by Tom Mustill. It’s an amazing book and it’s not an exaggeration to say that it changed my perspective on life and language. I listened to it as an audiobook read by the author. Highly recommended… Here’s an article by Tom Mustill with some insights from the book: https://nextbigideaclub.com/magazine/speak-whale-voyage-future-animal-communication-bookbite/37027/