From Where Comes the Laughter?

New heart arising!

In January I accompanied Eberhard to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, in the dead of winter, where he underwent an extraordinary heart surgery, a septal myectomy for left ventricular hypertrophy. It took awhile to get all these terms straight, but now it is fun to let them roll off my tongue.

It's a genetic condition in which the heart muscle expands over time and needs to be cut back to normal size by an exceptionally skilled surgeon. We were indeed blessed to have the A-team. As happens when such circumstances are being lived through, I was in a continual state of heightened awareness, no doubt in part due to the uncertainty of the situation.

The days were unrelenting; so much to learn and keep abreast of.  I hardly recognized myself when I looked into the mirror one morning. Who was that exhausted person with the dark circles under her eyes? On day six towards evening, the nurse was explaining a complication that we were facing. Eberhard was incredulous about the situation and, as I sat there taking it all in, focused on the details and simultaneously looking on from a great distance, laughter suddenly bubbled forth from somewhere within me. I succumbed to a laughing jag, moment after moment of unrestrained laughing much to the patient's annoyance. The staff kept their composure; I'm sure they have seen it all.

Sign on restroom door at Mayo

This outpouring of laughter was beyond any attempts of suppression, so I chose to call it a day and return to the hotel. I took my leave, still laughing as I made my way out of the cardiac ward. At the elevators, I ran into five kids who were visiting their grandpa (most likely, they had been sent out of grandpa's room), who were doubled over with laughter about whatever had happened there. They could barely imitate the words that had set them off, sprawled out laughing on the floor as they were. It was truly a wondrous moment, those kids and me.

That night I awoke in the wee hours, tossing and turning. I wanted to talk to Moshe, aka Mr. YooWho, my friend the levity master, clown-without- borders extraordinaire, who for years has offered his remarkable gift at the Zen Center.  From time to time, Moshe and I would notice each other on skype, connect, and laugh. And now my whole being needed to skype with him, but thoughts about the hour and heaviness of limbs kept me in bed. I soon settled into a lucid dream in which Moshe and I skyped and laughed up a storm. We laughed and laughed through the early dawn, when I finally fell into a deep sleep and then got up in time to head off to the hospital once again.

YooWho and me: why isn't he laughing?

I wrote later to Moshe to thank him for the laughter. And I told him that, although the Mayo Clinic has expert doctors, grand pianos in the foyer, stunning art, an exceptionally competent and kind staff, and a lived "needs of the patient comes first" mission, it, alas, has no medical clowning. Happily, he wrote a letter to them, and I hope it will produce results.

Those moments of laughter were critical to my healing. The laughter was, as Milton Berle once said, "an instant vacation" for me in the midst of the cardiac ward. When we finally did return home, Eberhard and I watched something funny every day. Our motto was: eat, rest, laugh.

Have you had your laugh today?

P.S. Moshe is teaching at ZCLA this weekend. Go laugh! And yes, Eberhard is doing quite well.

Pondering Andrew

Buddha and shadow.

There is this line in Alan Paton's Too Late the Phalarope that causes me to reflect upon Andrew and the strange intersection of our lives: To punish and not to restore is the greatest of all offenses. 


Andrew stalked the Zen Center for a very long year, breaking into buildings in the wee night hours, climbing with cat-like stealth up walls to reach windows and rooftops, and terrifying residents. He threw rocks into the windows, big smooth L.A. river rocks like the ones later found in a bag in his car. One night, police dogs found him hiding under the Founder's Altar. His obsession was the daughter of our founder, but unable to locate her, we became the next best thing. His behavior confounded our community.

We surmised that Andrew suffered from a form of mental illness and possibly an alcohol addiction. We learned the dismal assertion that the best one can hope for was that the stalker finds another target. We took to heart the warning of the district attorney's lawyer that we take this situation very seriously. "I worked with about ten people this year," she said, "and I will tell you that in each case you would never have thought the person capable of murder." But could Andrew possibly be such a person?

It took a challenging and stress-filled year of securing restraining orders and working with local agencies, anti-stalking experts, and finally the district attorney's office to stop Andrew. At sentencing, unkempt and clad in an inmate's orange jumpsuit, Andrew was led before the judge. In a firm voice, he assured the court that he understood clearly the terms of his three-year felony probation. He was later released into his brother's custody.

I don't recall when we placed Andrew's name on our daily Prayer List. Soon after Andrew was released to his brother, we heard that he was back on the streets, disheveled and in the grip of his tenuous condition. His situation was heart-wrenching not only because help seemed out of his reach, but also because it was an unsettling reminder of the fragility within oneself that can so easily unravel and descend.

A tree poem for Andrew.

On the first-year anniversary of the felony probation, someone threw a heavy rock through our picture window, sending shards of glass throughout the  room. On the second-year anniversary, nothing seemed amiss. On the third-year anniversary, nothing. Nothing, that is, until we learned several months later that shortly before the third anniversary, Andrew killed himself by jumping in front of a train.

I am pondering what it might have taken for Andrew to restore himself. I am pondering what our community and I could have done to create conditions for his restoration.

Further on in Paton's book, these words: There's a hard law ... that when a deep injury is done ... we never recover until we forgive. In spite of all that we endured with Andrew, no one held any lasting grudge against him. Perhaps he forgave us for not knowing how to help him.

Thanks to the Zen Center for offering a memorial service for Andrew this week. Andrew, may your next life be beautiful.