On Being: Compassion
An angel doesn’t always show up with wings. It glows in your darkest hour, whispering the divine messages meant only for you, once you open your heart to it. I met one and she gifted me a lesson on compassion.
When no longer separate from those around us, we experience a complete moment of compassion.
Mark Nepo
Daryl’s maternal grandmother passed away in September 2017. She lived till a ripe age of 92 before she was put on palliative care to relieve her suffering during the last of her days. It was a pity I did not have many opportunities to interact with her over her last three years. Her outward appearance, like most elders of her age, was an adorable Ah-Ma. Yet in her, I witnessed the embodiment of strength and benevolence.
She loved flowers, and I enjoyed getting her flowers occasionally. To me, it felt like one little thing I could do to bring some light to her day. I was grateful for that chance. Whenever she smiled while admiring the flowers, it brought me as much joy as well, or maybe more, to know that my little effort could bring joy to another.
In Ah-Ma’s last three years, she was admitted into the hospital almost once each year. Each stay, lasting two weeks to a month, was a period of distress for her and her family. Her lungs had weakened and couldn’t work at a sufficient rate to expel the carbon dioxide in her body. Other complications like a weakening heart and kidneys added to the stress. She had difficulty breathing on her own, a mask was required to push oxygen into her almost every day and night. The mask would feel extremely uncomfortable if one doesn’t breathe in-sync with it. As a healthy person looking through it, claustrophobic, it was hard imagining how it was for her. Coupled with her dementia, there were moments when she woke up in delirium, frantically pulling the mask and tube off her. The nurses had to resort to tying her down, which aggravated her emotional state.
One of the nights before Daryl sent me home, I asked if he would like to drop by the hospital again. I wasn’t sure where that came from, but I had a sense the trip would put him at ease. So we went. Back in the ICU, Ah-Ma was having a difficult time sleeping, struggling to get the restraints off her. A painful sight, it was hard to bear.
Instinctively, I searched for the small pillow that Daryl’s aunt brought earlier, placed it diagonally over her chest, and patted her on the left side of her chest lightly. The Heart Sutra chant was playing softly in the background, and I patted her along with the chant’s rhythm. Ah-Ma calmed down gradually, my breathing too, steadied with the rate of my patting. It was as though everything with a rhythm in the room at that moment was beating synchronously. Our breaths, the rate of the air pump, my patting, the Heart Sutra all singing the same tune, matching each other’s beat.
Breaths. In-sync?
A foreign and new sensation.
“I felt pain and suffering, was it mine or Ah-Ma’s?
“My hushes to comfort, was it for myself or Ah-Ma?
“Was I holding her or was she holding me?”
These questions raced through my head that night after Daryl had dropped me home. I replayed that scene in my head, attempting to comprehend what I had experienced in the ICU.
“We were one,” my soul whispered.
Warmth radiated from my heart.
That moment in the ICU, there were just Ah-Ma and me in a bubble, glowing. Our glow enveloped the entire room. That moment, we were simply two souls, connected, breathing as one—com-pati.
There’s no you, nor me.
Just us, no separation, feeling into each other’s pain, suffering together.