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Strange? Unusual? Endearing? Fun? Most kids today tend to avoid people of an older generation. It's like a rule to think that adults are uncool. Well there is always an exception...
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 Ever few years my mothers birthday, November 27th, would always land on Thanksgiving Day. This is that year. Sadly for us, she passed away on October 12, 2014. The four of us kids were able to be present with her at the time of her passing, 6:15am on a Sunday morning. I spent the last week with her on the earth loving her. After having spent the previous 9 years caring for my mother, I had moved my mother back up to northern California to live close to her other 3 children. Chrislaine, my middle sister, had taken on the role of primary caregiver and my mother was now living in a nursing home down the street from her house.  Mom had been diagnosed with dementia at the age of 59. I was just 25 at the time and the reality of her imminent decline was surreal at first. She had been diagnosed with a brain tumor that was affecting her memory and emotions. A portion of the brain tumor was removed and the remaining portion,which was located in the brain stem region (too risky for the surgeon to operate on) was treated with radiation. One of the major side effects from the radiation was that it burned the fluid levels in her ears and she no longer had equilibrium and was now a fall risk. The realization that she was going to need regular support, someone to take care of her, was unimaginable at this stage in my life. I wanted her to hold off on needing help for at least another 15 years (thinking if she can wait til i’m old and in my 40’s - then I’ll be ready to care for her). I now consider someone in their 80’s to be young. I have also been able to realize that regardless of your age, whether you are a daughter, spouse, niece, grandson or neighbor taking care of an aging loved one is hard regardless of which role you play in their life. We decided that we are going to celebrate her again with lifetime family and friends from our growing up years. In honor of the beautiful Maud Grace Pamphile we will be having a party this Saturday evening, hosted at one of our neighbors homes who still lives across the street from our childhood home of 20+ years. Taking opportunities to remember all the goodness that she embodied with all of the good people she brought into our lives. We're gonna have fun celebrating and reminiscing and literaly strolling down memory lane.
 I have taken every October for the past 8 years to rest. I literally pair down my schedule to just the basics; turn off the TV for the month, cancel most social engagements, minimize work events, pare down my workout schedule, pull out the books that I never finish, find my crochet basket of half done creations and allow my body, mind and spirit time to rest, repair and regenerate. The juicer comes out, all processed food goes away and I focus on nourishing me for the next 30 days. This is my favorite time of the year, I like to call it the ‘calm before the storm’. Summer has ended, everyone is adjusting to their new schedules, it’s almost as if things get put back into place for a moment (I say 31 days) before we begin the frenzied pace of heading into the holiday season. My intention for the 31 days of October is to allow my body, mind and spirit opportunity to reset itself. My cleanse plan consists of eating raw foods, juicing, fasting (no food), and then reversing the cycle to taper my way back up to eating cooked foods. I incorporate a kidney, liver, gallbladder, lymphatic system, heavy metal and parasite herbal cleanse. This break from most all of my compulsions (food (processed & cooked variety), TV, internet, eating out, shopping) prepares me mentally, physically, spiritually and emotionally to move gracefully into the holiday season rather than at a breakneck pace. I give myself permission to ‘be’ for 31 days. Each years month of rest gets better.
It takes much courage and surrender to choose to remain in peace and allow your mind, body and spirit to rest while in the midst of life’s storms. I was fortunate enough to spend my mother’s final week on earth with her. Since her passing on Oct 12, I have been struggling to find my rest. The revelation that I needed disengage from “caregiver mode” was the first step towards me sleeping through the night. Over the course of this next year I will be walking out my healing and exploring ways to rest in Gods love. REST is the conversation between what we love to do and how we love to be. Rest is not stasis but the essence of giving and receiving. Rest is an act of remembering, imaginatively and intellectually, but also physiologically and physically. To rest is to become present in a different way than through action, and especially to give up on the will as the prime motivator of endeavor, with its endless outward need to reward itself through established goals. To rest is to give up on worrying and fretting and the sense that there is something wrong with the world unless we put it right; to rest is to fall back, literally or figuratively from outer targets, not even to a sense of inner accomplishment or an imagined state of attained stillness, but to a different kind of meeting place, a living, breathing state of natural exchange… Excerpted from ‘REST' From the upcoming book of essays CONSOLATIONS: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words. ©2014 David Whyte To be Published in late November 2014
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