Equalizing

Many running thoughts this morning. I'm taking a Buddhist course right now and for the past 3 months online. We were talking about equanimity and death. The depth and simplicity of equanimity hit deep inside yesterday. I remember when my grandmother was in the hospital and I sat in the waiting room. Maybe 2011, 2012?

Hospital Waiting room....An older woman and daughter listened to a doctor explain the medical situation of a loved one. The patient was in a deep coma from a stroke. The older woman was the ex-wife of the patient. Gleaning the pieces of their story together from the conversation...the patient left her in a mid-life crisis moment. The patient dumped her, the daughter, all the accumulated ties. He ran off with his secretary (yes, very cliche). He bought a sports car and started lifting weights. And then he had a massive stroke and was trapped in his body. The secretary left him, the sports car was parked at home. All the gym buddies and supplements and new clothes that went along with the mid life crisis were gone. He lived at the "Peak of Existence" and now he was a prisoner in hell...in the blink of an eye, the sudden loosening of a blood clot, Now the muscle-clad man was trapped in a garbage bag of human filth and tubes. 

When he needed help, the ex-wife was called. The one he hurt, the one he betrayed, the one he threw away. The ex-wife and daughter were there. They stood there accepting the call, talking with the doctor, retelling the story of betrayal. And now they were deciding on his fate...and there was not a HINT of animosity. There was not a trace of anger (or they hid it very well). This was a sudden emergency and it was like they were a family again. 

It would be logical in a worldly way to think 'fuck that guy. Leave. Call the secretary and let her decide...let the sports car decide...let all his gym friends and his club friends decide.' They stood there and it became very clear that they were still...a family. There was something so viscerally potent in just their presence. It was like the mother and daughter standing there deciding to be bigger than the past, bigger than they way they might have felt. 

 Over a decade later I have forgotten a lot of things but this story remains. Even in recalling it, I can see the mixture of emotions flashing across the wife and daughter's face...like a slot machine with different feelings whirling past the screen before settling on...love? Equanimity? 

Death is an equalizer. Birth is an equalizer. Sickness is an equalizer. Dying is an equalizer. 

And yet we spend most of the time between death, birth, sickness, dying, and pain thinking about our differences. The rare few moments when we're not plagued by obvious dullness or pain or anxiety or neurosis or just common everyday worry is spent distancing myself from everyone who will experience these things in the same way.