The Death of a Friend: Karma Yoga, Non-Attachment, and Truthfulness

by Nina

At Home with Buster

I had sad news on Friday, January 9: Tama Blough, the woman with terminal cancer for whom I was fund raising—and who happened to be one of our readers—died that morning. Although the news was sad, I was comforted by the thought that Tama died at home, in the company of her beloved cat, Buster, and tended to by the caregiver we had hired with money that I help to raise. (And thank you so much to everyone who donated. It has been a profoundly moving experience to see so many people rally around a friend in need.)

You might recall that I wrote a post Karma Yoga Opportunities about why I decided to take on the task of raising money for this woman who learned she had terminal, non-treatable bile duct cancer and who was also destitute. It was her wish that she be able to die at home rather than in a hospital, and I decided to try to make that wish come true. Because there was no one to take care of her when she needed 24/7 care and also because she was no longer able to work to pay her living expenses, the thing I needed to do was raise enough money to pay for all of that. But the question was: exactly how much money would be enough?

It was actually stressful to try to estimate the total amount of money that would be needed. While I could look at predictable expenses such as her rent, utilities, food, and so on, as well as the typical hourly rate for a caregiver, I had no reliable estimate for how long she might live and for how long she might need paid caregivers. 

Obviously just thinking about how long someone might or might not live is stressful in and of itself, but trying to make impossible estimates for how much money might actually be needed for various scenarios was even worse. What if we used up all the money we’d raised (over $20,000) and she was still alive and needing care? Or, conversely, what if she died more quickly than expected and we had a lot of money left over? I had some private conversations with her elderly mother and the friends who were helping me raise the money about these possibilities and we made some contingency plans. And I had to face the fact that if we ran out of money, she would have to go to a hospital, where her health insurance would cover the final costs. 

I’m bringing this all up because when you’re helping someone who is dying, obviously you don’t get all wrapped out in hopes for another possible outcome. But you can get wrapped out in your hopes and expectations for how the whole process unfolds. And in this particular case, I obviously had a strong attachment to making Tama’s wish to die at home come true. However, as you can see, I really had no guarantee that things would work out as I hoped. So I often reminded myself that I was doing my best, and because I had no control over the outcome, doing my best was all I could do. So when Ram wrote his post about karma yoga last Monday (see Altruism (Karma Yoga)), it struck me that my situation was a perfect example of what he meant by saying: 

"Selfless service requires an individual to perform any service without attachment or expectation, and remain unaffected by the results of such service." 

Of course, I didn’t do the “without attachment” thing perfectly, either. But, again, even with our efforts at being without "expectation" or "attachment," all any of us can do is our best.

I’d also like to say that Tama bravely faced her death with truthfulness (satya). As I wrote in Meeting Death at the Front Door, I feel that being honest about death and dying is the only way for us to die the way we say we want to. You have to face the truth yourself. You have to tell your family the truth. And you have to insist your doctors—and your loved ones—tell you the truth. And Tama did all those things, sometimes even with humor. So I thought I’d end with this story about her that her friend Joe Allegretti shared on Facebook:

My last conversation with Tama was in early November, I think, when she told me about the diagnosis. At one point, she was talking about how she had been hoping for months that she'd be able to get out of SF, move to another city, figure out a way to reinvent herself. The employment situation and everything else was really hard on her and I totally understood her wish for something new. Finally, she summed it up by saying, "I wanted a reboot."

Then she said, "Well I guess now I'm gonna get the BIIIIIIIG reboot." We both immediately laughed a lot.

And Joe's sharing of his story led to this beautiful one from her friend Drew Zeigler:

One of the last interactions she and I had was when my dog had gone missing and she kept popping in and making lovely hopeful comments to me, so I reached out to her. Her response was, "Well, just because I'm dying, that doesn't mean I can't still have compassion for others." 
 
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