Returning to the Stars

Here is a little something special. Words from dad about one of his favorite subjects: God.

I taped this conversation between he and an ER doc sometime early this summer when Dad and I made a late night trip to Silverton Hospital because his blood pressure had elevated to a dangerous level. His greatest concern, in his later days, was that he would be incapacitated by a stroke—unable to think or do for himself.

Dad honored his indepence like no one I've ever known, and, until my sister moved to Oregon in June, he lived on his own, cooking, driving, getting himself to and from his numerous doctor appointments. And even with Shameem there, doing all her great cooking, he still made his sambar, and coconut chutney, he still went to the Farmers Market, still attended Tuesday morning medical lectures at OSHU, still read his New York Times, his Scientific American, always telling us about articles "you have to read," or shows on PBS that "you have to watch."

The articles and shows showed the diversity of Dad's interests: physics, medicine, genetics, cancer research, politics, war, Islam, history, fitness, music, art, mortality, geology, animal communication, brain studies, cognitive development—on and on the list went, but on top of it were always his questions about this idea we call God.

Dad was raised a Muslim, married a Catholic, he and Mom took me to a Unitarian church when I was young, and after a couple years of that, they both threw in the towel on the whole religion thing. For them, if there was a divine it was in the music they shared, the sunrises they would show me, the birds my father woke me up to hear, telling me they were singing in the sun. It was in smiles and laughter, it was in us, their children, and all the mysteries that surrounded us, abstract questions about creation and destruction that were much better satisfied through scientific inquiry than superstition or mysticism.

My dad would talk with anyone about these things—friends, nurses, doctors, people in the hall or elevator, his children and his one grandchild. His mind always nibbling away at the bigger questions of life and death and whether or not there was a divine. "If there is a God," he was fond of saying, "he's not a micro-manager." Meaning his daily worries, were certainly not something a creator would have an interest in.

In the end Dad died an atheist. It was, in fact, one of the final things he uttered that last day. Saying quite clearly that he did not believe there is a single creator. Instead, his conclusion after a lifetime of study, was there was no heaven or hell, no pearly gate to walk through. We are all just energy, and that energy will simply become something else. "And if I'm wrong," he said on that hospital bed, "I will deal with it later."

"If you are wrong," I said to him, "you will end up lecturing God."

At the celebration of his life on Sunday, one of his nurses repeated a conversation she had had with dad. During one of his transfusions she asked if he believed in reincarnation. His answer was yes. "I started as stardust, and I will return to stardust."

And so will we all....

-Naseem Rakha 1/21/15

Goodbye Dad

Last night, at 9:55, in a hospital room in Portland, my father took his last breath. I was sitting beside him on his bed. Shameem was standing beside him, my dear friend Nancy Boutin was with him. Nancy is a palliative care doctor and she knows about death, and she knew my father was making his passage. I, on the other hand, did not.

But my father has always been one to do things his way, and his death was no different.

He fell yesterday. He was heading home from the doctor's office, when something happened and he fell. He fractured his pelvis, he hit his head, he bruised his shoulder. When he arrived at his condo, the people there could tell he was confused and got him into an ambulance. Shameem was called. I was called. We both raced to the hospital.

I was there by 12:30. Eight and a half hours later he was gone.

The doctors don't know what took him. They only know that they were carrying out his explicit instructions to do nothing but provide comfort. My dad has been talking about his death for a while. He has been living with end stage kidney disease for more than a decade, and because he refused dialysis he had many other associated health problems. His big worry, though, was that he would be incapacitated, and require others to help him. He did not want that, and he did not want to trouble others. So when, at about 9:35, his breathing became labored, he was given 1 mg of morphine. "A whiff," Nancy said.

Nancy had arrived at my father's side at ten minutes after nine. She talked with his nurse, his doctor, and then us. She told me he was dying soon, and I cried out NO! I did not believe it. I knew he refused treatment for the hematoma he had suffered from the fall, but doctors said we had a lot more time before that would effect him. And there was a chance it wouldn't effect him. There was a chance that this time, like all the other near death walks my father has taken (Yellow Fever, Typhus, Malaria, the Plague, two horrendous car accidents, a broken neck, a brain infection, etc...) we would be shown a view of the ledge—but not taken over the cliff. Shameem and I had it all figured out. We would meet with his physicians in the morning, we would get them to his bed, and together we would urge him to rally.

"He's decided," Nancy said with a hug.

And he did. Less than an hour later he puffed out a few hard breaths then he opened his eyes and stared at something. I do not know what he was seeing. There were no words anymore. Not from him. It was just me and Shameem and Nancy, telling him we were there and that it was alright, and that we love him.

We love him so so much. So very, very much.

We were lucky, his family and friends. My dad was a jewel in the crown. Born in India in 1929 (we think, they didn't keep records) he came to the US in 1950 for his education. He defied his family, and did not return to be handed off in an arranged marriage. Instead, he married a woman he met in Chicago, a German American who shared his love of opera and ballet. He defied the dogma of Islam in favor of the tangible qualities of numbers, and science. He defied conservatism by remaining an ardent liberal, always open to the potential of compassion. He defied his doctors, who said he should have died years ago because of his refusal to get dialysis, a procedure he refused in favor of daily exercise and meticulous attention to diet. He defied stereotype, and defied the idea that fathers are somehow less: less nurturing, less present, less aware. My father was always nurturing, always present, always aware. He was always there for me and my sister and brother and son and husband. He was there for his friends, and his relatives in India. No matter what time of day or night. He was always pointing to something for people to notice and think about and question. Always teaching us that there are things we can do that are kind. Even in death.

Life is all in our brain, he said yesterday. Everything we see and think and feel, all come from our brain.

Right now my brain feels like it is locked in a futile struggle to grasp the enormity of this loss. It's just too big. For the rest of my life, I think, it will always be too big.

My father died yesterday, and I am proud of him for finding the exit he dreamed of. "The only way he could have done it better," my brother Amir said, "is if he was protecting children from some terrorist."

Dad would have laughed at that, and said it was true. We are a laughing family, my dad's laughter, something that always made me happiest.

Goodbye, Dad. I will love you and love you and love you for the rest of my life.

-your daughter, Naseem
January 15, 2015

To the Fascists who Kill in the Name of their Prophet

My muslim friends and family, I am sorry your religion has been hijacked by fascist groups of frightened and ignorant fools who have traded reason for fear and hate, and who kill those who dare question or mock Mohammed, the great and powerful, and who refuse to see how their violent actions do more to subvert the Prophet and his words than any combination of journalists and artists and writers combined. My Christian and Jewish friends and family, my Buddhist friends, my Hindu and Zoroaster friends. Wiccan, Jain, believers of all stripes. Non believers. Reach out to your Muslim neighbors. They are just as mournful over the casualties of this senseless war, as everyone else.

The slayers of faith clothe themselves in fear and lies.

Naseem Rakha - January, 7, 2015

Only Children Weep

Ferguson, Missouri - November 24, 2014 after the Grand Jury declined to indict Officer Darren Wilson for shooting and killing
18-year-old Michael Brown

"They've done it before and they did it tonight and they'll do it again, and when they do it seems that only children weep."  —Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

__________________

I do not know what happened in Ferguson, Missouri
August 9th, 2014

I only know it was the product of the same

Mis

shapened

Fear 

full

Hope

less

Blind-

ass

Assumptions

That have lead to
Hate
Rebellion
War
Led to black teens
lying dead on America's streets

Mothers screaming

And Ferguson now burns with anger

Justice not an ideal
but a jewel saved
just-for-us:

The insiders

The ones with the right addresses

The diplomas

And suits

And skin as white

and "pure" as snow

I do not know what happened
on the street of Ferguson, Missouri
August 9, 2014

But I know the decision to ignore it
feeds a story

that has not yet found its end

Naseem Rakha - November 25, 2014

The Everything of Everything

Me at the top of Abiqua Falls in 1994, in the midst of a battle to save the surrounding trees from being clear cut

It is my fifty-fifth birthday today. And for my fifty-fifth birthday, I plan to hike to the  base of Abiqua Falls. I plan to stand naked in its spray—I plan to pray.

And on this day, I will pray to find the strength I have been lacking. The focus. The patience.

Prayer, for me, is an honest reflection on the discrepancy between who I am, and who I believe I can be. It is the open acceptance of both my power, and powerlessness. It is gratefulness, expressed to no one but myself. It is the reminder to show that gratefulness in all my actions, everyday to everyone.

To live my gratefulness for the everything within every-single-thing.

-Naseem Rakha - November 19, 2014

Daring Adventure or Nothing

Oregon's first winter storm was predicted to hit yesterday, and I swear you'd think the sky was falling. Portland metro newscasters pulled out all their doomsday-ware: "Up to the minute Doppler Radar," webcams of soon-to-be-snow covered streets, lists of school closures and delays, and a scroll of Tweets about the storm. Their overall message: Don't panic. Stay home. Everything will be all right.

But I had my doubts about their predictions. My thermometer had settled at 37 degrees. This rain was not going to morph to snow, not where I lived at least, and probably not in Portland either. (It didn't.) So my dog Waldo and I got in my car and headed up to the mountains where I was certain I would actually see snow, not just hear rowdy rumors of its coming. I had promised myself early this fall that I would get out into the wild every week, no matter the weather. I find that there is no better cleansing then a good hike, and my goal is explore a new place each time. A new path, a new river, a new refuge. A new challenge. After a day out, I come home feeling ready to take on another fraught week of dealing the double whammy of menopause coupled with raising a hormonal teen.

So, I got in my car, and headed east up towards the Cascade mountains, and there, not far up the Santiam canyon, I found what I was looking for. Big fat flakes falling from a felt-gray sky. Pillowy clouds nestled on the shoulders of the foothills. Douglas-firs dusted like Christmas cookies. I followed the North Santiam River up to Detroit Lake, a summertime recreation area, where sailboats and jet skis slice wakes in a deep green reservoir created when the Corp of Engineers dammed the North Santiam in 1953. 

In winter, though, the 455,000 acre-foot lake is drained to make room for snow melt and runoff. In other words, instead of a reservoir, what one can see at Detroit Lake now is the old channel of the North Santiam river, and the remnants of a forest that once stood at its side. It's a surreal landscape of still water and old growth stumps poking through the freezing earth like tombstones. 

Waldo and I got out from the car and hiked down to this former forest, big, wind-driven flakes flattening themselves to the ground. We watched a White Tailed Kite skim the shoreline, deers huddle in a protected cove, a solitary coyote dart into the woods. After a while, the snow changed to sleet and ice began to seal our footprints. Back at the car, I poured myself tea from my battered old Stanley Thermos, gave Waldo a biscuit and we sat in the steamy vehicle listening to sleet pelt the roof: warm, comfortable, satisfied.

The day had not all gone perfectly. Before the lake hike, Waldo and I tried to get to the Stahlman Trailhead. It's located three and a half miles up Blowout Road, which is two and a half miles east of the town of Detroit. The road had not been plowed, and I did not bother putting on my chains, counting on my 4WD to get me through the six inches of wet snow. When I got to the trailhead, I tried to turn the car around so that it would be easier to leave after my hike, but my car lost its footing and began to slide sideways toward a ditch. Now I was blocking the one-lane road, and no matter what I did to try to go forward, I only made my situation worse. Finally, I got out the chains and was in the process of trying to get them on my back tires when two pick ups pulled up and out popped what I have to describe as two rather sketchy looking characters: middle aged men with long oily hair, battered beards, battered trucks, each one with a well equipped gun rack.

They approached my car and sized up the situation. Me. My over friendly dog. My sideways car. All of us far from anywhere. And then they told me to forget about the chains. "Get in the car," one of them said. "We'll get you out." And they did, each one planting themselves in the snowy ditch and pushing the rear end of my vehicle while I gingerly touched the gas and slowly moved forward. Their names were Rick and Rich, and afterwards we talked about the weather and the hills and the hike they'd just been on. I offered them tea, and they said sure, and we shared the cup from my thermos. "We saw a gray fox," Rick said. Their hair not oily but wet from being out in this storm. Out in this snow and cold. Out in this world. 

It's true, I know, I would have been safer if I stayed home. I could have worked on my novel. Washed some clothes. Read. I passed a jack-knifed semi on the way back home, and two cars planted deep in a ditch. I certainly would have been safer had I not gone up that road, and into that snow and ice—no doubt about it. But there is no way I would ever have been as satisfied. 

Helen Keller once said, "Life is either a daring adventure, or it's nothing." And while my adventures may not be all that daring compared the things you see on Youtube, or read about in one of Jon Krakauer's book, they are a hell of a lot better than nothing. 

-Naseem Rakha - November 14, 2014

Surviving the Election

It was election night. Early results were coming in from Rhode Island, South Carolina, New York. I woke up my dog and we went to the pond and sat, watching a storm roll in and listening to redwing blackbirds shout out warning. It was warm out. Too warm for early November. My memories of previous election nights are mainly of cold rain and wind slapping me hard while running from one political party to another trying to get in interviews and record speeches for a story for public radio.

Democrats typically would gather at some unadorned union hotel, often the Hilton, where there'd be dip with chips, veggies, squares of cheese, and a free bar with cheap wine and beer. Republicans would be blocks away, nestled in some Grand Barron of a place, dim lights, arched ceilings, filigreed pillars, and, of course, a cash bar with the hard stuff. At the parties, I would poke at balloons and phone in updates, while speaking with politicians and their supporters. When the results finally came in, I would tape the oh-so-predictable platitudes, while watching red, white, and blue clad people spout red, white, and blue clad tears or victory and defeat.

Now, no longer a reporter, I just stay home and give half an ear to NPR while they talk exit polls, approval ratings, and the death of the democratic party. This too will pass, I tell myself. This republican wave. This handing over power to a group of bullies who seem to have far more ideas on how to take down a country than build it up.

This too will pass. 

But it's hard, even for this former geologist—who still takes comfort in human's miniscule imprint on geologic time—to accept. We have given the reigns of Congress over to people, many of whom who do not believe in the science of global warming or evolution, people who wait eagerly to sell off our natural resources, who believe corporations are as human as the people they supposedly represent. These are politicians who work to make it harder to vote, not easier, harder to get a college degree, harder to drink clean water, or get health care, or earn a living wage. People who measure the character of a person by their commitment to guns and god, not intellect, nor compassion nor logic. These are individuals who serve the rich, and eschew the poor; and eat three square meals of fear every day, then fart it out all over the country on radio, on TV, in magazines, over the internet. They tell us it is not disparity of wealth we should crusade against, but immigrants, Muslims, Hispanics, the homeless, the disabled, single moms, Planned Parenthood and young black boys. Don't fear fracking, fear hoodies, fear Ebola, fear taxes, fear liberals, fear liberation. Don't vote Democratic—it is too close to the word demon.

It was during Iowa Senator-elect, Jodi Ernst's acceptance speech that I finally gave up my half-hearted election night vigil, and went to bed. My, this too will pass, mantra falling flat against her shrill words. "We are heading to Washington and we are going to make them squeal." The words lifted straight from the 1972 Academy Award winning film, DELIVERANCE, where deep in the hills of Georgia, toothless attackers force Bobby Tippie, played by Ned Beatty, to "squeal like a pig" while being raped. Of course, I am sure Jodi Ernst, who grew up castrating pigs and presumably making them squeal in the process, would say she was not referring to that movie at all. Not that that would make her statement any more acceptable. 

This too will pass, I tell myself. This woman. This partisan bullying. This unhealthy way we have of treating elections like gladiator games where the goal is to make the other team squeal, rather than reach out and cooperate to help the people in the stands, millions of us, waiting there, shouting out, hoping we will be heard.

-Naseem Rakha