“What If” Thoughts During COVID Lead to “What Matters?”

Facing thoughts under the surface saying: Focus on your life’s resolutions now just in case you get sick and die due to COVID-19.

by Claudia S. Gold

Hard to Avoid Thoughts During COVID

Death. There, I’ve said it. So, it is about ten heart-beats away — the knowledge that it is possible I could get COVID-19. (Of course, not everyone dies from it and I believe I had it in December, only went to the ER once, and survived). Many more people have survived than died. But more than 660,000 have died related to the pandemic worldwide. This is the article that’s been simmering in me but which I finally dared to write. But its beginning led me to an unexpected ending.

Creative works planning

I didn’t want to write that I’ve wondered about my stories and novels — including the spiritual fantasy about healing from sexual assault that I’ve been working on for twenty years. In case something happened to me — who would help publish these books? Who cares enough about them but me?

Do I provide stimulus style sums in my will to ensure that some benevolent friend will fix them up to be well-published? Who likes my excavational writing enough to see that it is published - James Tichenor, the most supportive and decent man who edits my poetry with a compassion-dipped pen, and publishes it it in “Tokens” magazines? I only feel it would be less a burden to send him my poetry, and even then, why put those stacks of responsibility on him, or for my other books, on anyone?

And then I wonder, do I quickly edit and finish all fourteen books or at least the three I consider most important to leave as a legacy, in case. It is hard to choose which to work on and the thought of finishing three is overwhelming. It looks like I will need to create some micro-movement wheels.

I learned about micromovement wheels from author and teacher Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy (SARK). She teaches people to draw a circle for each project and divide it into sections like pieces of a pie. In each sectiion you write the tiniest step possible towards your goal. Examples of micro-movements might be: Have an adventure on your two minute walk. Or: Take your novel off the shelf. SARK sometimes has ten wheels going at once, and makes them fun and colorful.

Emphatic messages from Spirit/angels/ancestors?

Frankly, I have been hearing from the Spirit world more these days, and wonder if the veil between us is thinner now, with more people in their homes, not buzzing around, not creating a distracting hum. Maybe our ancestors, our angels, or Higher Selves feel compassion for us going through COVID-19 fears, uncertainties and adjustments and want to bolster us with helpful guidance.

I keep these messages/confrontations close to my breast, or, if I tell a friend, I re-word the messages to cloak them. I remember hearing of Native American who would write a song from a sacred message and sing it only to themselves, over time. If I talk about the message I heard too much, or tell the exact words, the impact might evaporate, and I won’t learn from it, be energized from the power behind those clear words. So often what I’ve written has been so pertinent to me and I’ve forgotten to give it its holy due!

But I will reveal to you that I think my dear friend Eileen who died a few months ago might be kicking me in my codependent butt and saying, so to speak: Focus on your journey and get on with it!

This scares me a little. When I’ve felt intuitive nudges, and heard messages before, they were gentler; I think only a dear friend would dare to give me the recent more emphatic message. Or maybe the angels are spread thin and don’t have time to sugar-coat now.

I’ve written out one of the intense messages that I received in half sleep or meditation, and my priorities to address it, and hung it on my bedroom wall. With some hesitation at parting denial and distraction, I read the words to propel me to be purposeful: to call my 92 year old mother, to edit one or more pieces of writing, etc…because - you never know. Because it’s a stressful time, I work on my whimsical spiritual fantasy book and edit the conversations of amusing, wise gnomes, bunnies and owls.

Are there any creative projects you are working on completing? Have you felt promptings from the Spirit to get real and complete creative projects that matter to you? Do you wonder, if something happened to you, what would become of them?

Planning for children, grandchildren

The other thing I haven’t wanted to face is writing my will. I typed one on my laptop late one night when my denial waned. It happened after listening to an on-line talk which guided me to tune into my body given the current pandemic. But I haven’t written my will in my handwriting with a signature in the light of day. I forget the will project even though I went to an on-line workshop for writing a will according to my Baha’i faith.

With similar avoidance, although I am only a phone call away to Santa Cruz where a woman could help me write a trust, I haven’t searched for the piece of paper with her phone number. It seems that I subconsciously flip over these death planning activities when writing my “To Do” lists.

So who would I leave behind? My daughter is growing from a young adult to an adult, my grandson growing from six months old to in a couple of years riding a tricycle. Is it time to make a “To Do List In Case”?

Do you wonder or worry about unfinished matters with your family? At least, if not using some new automated on-line technology to re-create my voice and talk to people from beyond, I can leave a thank-you note, surprise or an “I love you.”

Fear of uncomfortable, painful death

Frankly, I am afraid of certain types of death, such as death by suffocation. I once was trampled amongst others when our junior high (middle) school locker room doors were not all opened and a stampede broke out. It was scary.

Torture does not attract me either although I am so inspired by people who surrendered to torture and death in awful ways so as to not recant their faith. In early mornings I sometimes read about them, with awe that they chose Spirit/Truth/Unity of our Planet over their tender physical bodies, their families, their unpublished poems and books.

Thinking about life and death as a spiritual practice

“One who is supposed to be a warrior considers it his foremost concern to keep death in mind at all times, every day and every night, from the morning of New Year’s Day through the night of New Year’s Eve.” This is a Samurai principle translated in Code of the Samurai: A Contemporary Translation of the Bushido Shoshins and referenced in the article “Lessons from The Samurai…”

Unexpectedly, we have been ushered into the Samurai awareness of death without having to go through Samurai training (though it might be a discipline worth checking out, especially for keeping a calm mind). I saw the Samurai-like present awareness and spiritual focus in clients I enjoyed working with as a social worker at the Pediatric Family Center at Long Beach Memorial serving parents and children with HIV. (This was in the years when HIV was considered a terminal illness and not currently, when with advanced treatments it is seen as a a chronic illness).

A quote from Native American spirituality, with earth touching wisdom gives another facet of guidance on how to live and prepare for “The Great Mystery.”

A man’s life is short. Make yours a worthy one. — Lame Deer

The following quotes from Baha’u’llah are reassuring for when that time comes, a time over which I may have no control:

Know thou of a truth that the soul, after its separation from the body, will continue to progress until it attaineth the presence of God, in a state and condition which neither the revolution of ages and centuries, nor the changes and chances of this world, can alter…It will manifest the signs of God and His attributes, and will reveal His loving kindness and bounty.

…the soul is a sign of God, a heavenly gem whose reality the most learned of men hath failed to grasp, and whose mystery no mind, however acute, can ever hope to unravel.

Human considerations

As inspiring as the visions of the after-life are, I still like to put clips with faux red roses in my hair and eat delectable felafel with lots of tahini as I did yesterday at Pita Fresh.

I can’t say much more. I’ve barely eeked out this much. Death is considered such a dreaded thing in American culture. I just want to book the ticket at the cheapest fare. I’d like to “say when”, and the when be when I am finished my books, although that would eliminate this jump-start opportunity which activates me to nurture and grow my books with more focus.

While writing to you and to me I’ve begun to get nervous that thinking about death will bring it on like reading about menopause in Gail Sheehy’s book Passages brought on hot flashes — the only time I had them during menopause.

Integrations

As if to highlight the theme of unexpected environmental events, a 4.2 earthquake in Pacoima, California just shook the condo. It barely phased me in my sleep, because I am a Californian used to earthquakes. Embarrassingly, this seems like a metaphor for these little earthquakes in my consciousness during this time which I can choose to sleep through or not. As I look up the statistics of the earthquakes — as it was a series 2.4, 1.5…and — a second ago, a jolt of the building with a 3.9, I notice it is July 30, the birthday of my late husband John Fanning, who died 14 years ago, before finishing his life-work, his novel.

But one thing John knew was to be kind and gentle to co-workers and family, and, in the end, that may be the most important thing of all. One woman who I took my mother to see speak about her near-death experience was Reinee Pasarow. Reinee, who wrote a book about her experience, described bringing a glass of water to an unpopular boy, and talking with him, at a camp for the disabled where she was counselor. This stood out, in her near death experience as the crowning achievement in her life. (I just read that Reinee passed away in January).

I felt part of the presence and wisdom John radiated from the time I met him was from having faced death and going through the pains accompanying stage- four Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, enduring regimes of chemo, radiation, autologous bone marrow transplant.

Another synchronicity illumining this topic appeared on my phone while writing this article. I received a text and video from super coach Brendon Burchard about how it takes a “big demand” to get us to carry through with our deepest dreams. “We need something bigger than our impulses to keep us focused. We need something bigger than how we feel to keep us disciplined,” he texted. In the video, he gave the example of how term paper or work project deadlines fuel us into action. His examples gently nudged viewers to use time to its fullest now to power their dreams, rather than getting distracted.

As scary and worrisome as this pandemic can be, such a demand can whisper to us over the shoulders of the newscasters citing total COVID deaths locally or world-wide. Between the speeches of our presidents, governors, mayors, epidemiologists and public health leaders we might hear this beat, this heart-beat to fulfill what we know we were created to be, and take actions, however tiny, toward what we sense we were endowed to do and share in this family, on this planet.

In memory

Without missing a beat, the “What if?” turns to “What Matters” this morning as I put finishing touches on this article. I learn from my insurance company that my therapist Lillie, who had “disappeared” six weeks ago, has died. She was feisty and supportive and I will miss her. Her Black life matters to me.