Courage

Ina May Gaskin says in her book, Spiritual Midwifery, that the antidote to fear is courage. She’s quoting her husband, sixties’ guru Stephen Gaskin. For information and history, look up The Farm: http://www.thefarm.org/

At one time, I studied to be a midwife. Of course I sort of went the other direction and became a hospice nurse, but when I was pregnant with my three children, Spiritual Midwifery was my go-to handbook. I learned to ride the wave, surf the contraction, and that the antidote to fear is courage. It’s a pretty amazing book.

Anyway, one of my father’s dear friends just died. He was actually a few years older than my dad, but they’d been friends for a long, long time. My dad’s friend had just been to meet with his priest when he felt a pain in his back. He drove himself to the hospital and he learned that he had a dissecting aortic aneurysm. His choices were pretty grim - surgery and the significant risk of brain damage, kidney failure, blood clots and death - or he could do nothing and die. He decided against surgery. He lived for sixteen hours after his diagnosis. His kids all had time to get in to say goodbye. His friends came to say goodbye. He had a final visit with his priest and he died.

He told everyone - I’ve lived a good life, it will be all right. He laughed and joked and died peacefully.

I think it must be like knowing that you will face a firing squad in the morning. That’s courage. But the thing is, he fought in WWII on the beaches in Normandy and he saw his friends mowed down right and left. He said once that he never understood why it was they died and he lived. That sort of thing changes a person. He faced death then, he faced death now and he triumphed. Makes me very sad and happy at the same time.

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