SANCTUARY LIVING; ESSAYS BY DESIGN

ARE YOU PICKING AT THE SHEETS?

Excerpt from the essay, Picking at the Sheets from the book, SANCTUARY LIVING 

by Janene Kraft

When I was a little girl my Daddy took me to see my Grandpa in one of those places we all avoid.

Grandpa George needed the kind of care and attention that Grandma Zola was no longer able to provide. So once a week on Sundays the family would dutifully share our love in the only way we knew how, in a place where only love mattered anymore.

In an attempt to avoid the sadness and boredom that permeated the room, I roamed the hallways of the Home looking for something to get into. Darting in and out of other Grandpas' rooms, I was, admittedly, curious about their varying states of “near deadness.” Though there really wasn’t much to look at, one detail continued to catch my attention room from room. At first I dismissed it as a nervous habit, like biting your nails. Or maybe they were knitting, or believed themselves to be so. But the fidgeting wasn’t gender specific. Like some strange old-people ritual the manifestation revealed itself again and again in small dark rooms, in quiet, unoccupied moments. There, lying amongst the covers, with no one to bear witness, these ancient versions of myself were “picking at the sheets.”

I can’t tell you precisely when I realized what was going on. But I can tell the “knowing” has changed forever the way I view death…and life even more.

For all of us, dying is a process. For those closest to the end, that process involves the body’s intuitive sensing of the spirit letting go. This “spirit lifting” creates a sensation of floating, a detachment from the here and now both physically and mentally in great proportions. Yet while the spirit hungers to separate, the body wills itself to remain. Even while the mind is unaware the act of anchoring begins and the hands, in their last attempts to grasp tightly to the things of this earth, begin their final, desperate act of “picking at the sheets.”

You don’t have to visit a senior center to witness this phenomenon. In fact, the “picking” is closer than you know. Think about the last time you did something with deliberation and conviction. Was it last month or even last year? Now think about the last time you felt agitated, stressed and over stimulated. In the last twenty-four hours? In the past fifteen minutes? Isn’t it ironic that as full as our lives have become there’s a communal sensing that something’s missing. No matter what we do, it’s not enough. We feel displaced and detached from people and places, work and play. Our distraction is evidenced in the way we walk—head awkwardly jutted out ahead of our bodies as if on a frantic mission to find ourselves. And how we speak—incessant, preoccupied text-messaging acronym versions of ourselves. We have dined so long on the superficial that we don’t even know how to digest the real meal. And as our minds are invaded our essential selves are floating out of view. Superficial and Spirit cannot occupy the same space at one time. We are the generation of “pickers,” literally dying to be alive! In our frantic attempt to fill the void our neglected spirits have taken leave.

If you sense that something is missing in your life, chances are you could be right. But searching for it from the outside will never satisfy…