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About Us
A Tribute to my Uncle Morris
This afternoon, I was on the radio show of our dear friend Lynne White of Court TV fame, Henican & White, on NYC's WOR radio. I had to pull over from my drive down from seeing my uncle start his dying process and I wanted to, even though my cellphone made the sound of my words a bit weirder than they already might have sounded to the uninitiated. I was talking about the meaning of Halloween, which comes from All Hallows Eve, a time when the veil is supposedly the thinnest between the world of the living and the place where those who've passed over exist. We put on costumes to remind ourselves that our undying spirit puts on our body of flesh and eventually takes it off. But the essential nature of Halloween and the many holidays like it or based on death is to remind us of our basic nature: we live until we die and we should not fear death. The candy is to remind us that there is still sweetness in life even though we will all leave life eventually. I don't want to sound like those who bash our nation and our culture but you have to admit that for the most part our nation and our culture is not good with death, viewing it as some kind of failure instead of a transition as rich with noble symbolism as birth and all important life passages, even more so because of what it means for those of us who are not yet at the point of departure. I often think that the crazy behavior of so many people is their own way of coping with - usually avoiding any thought of - death. And so at times, in our fear and panic that we can't cope with life, let alone death, we all act out like monsters more scary than any Halloween mask or movie.
Written October 10th
My uncle, Morris Harth, is very close to the end of his life in this world. I am quite emotional at the reality of his passing. He has been suffering in unimaginable pain for years and I keep reminding myself that soon this brilliant, cultured, gentleman who was a father to me shall be released to the place where we're all going; the place we all fight like hell to avoid going to.
Those of you who've read my other blogs know that I am psychic and somehow "get" information from and about the dead. I know beyond doubt that we all live on somehow. However, I know just like a philosopher with a toothache abruptly comes to know, pain trumps wisdom. All my vaunted beliefs fall away from me like a dropped bath towel to reveal my naked sorrow and the feeling of powerlessness and failure that accompanies those who are touched by death.
My uncle Morris is my mother's younger brother by a year, the "baby" of that star-crossed family. My maternal grandmother committed suicide when they and my aunt Rosie, the oldest, were still teenagers - she was so selfish/crazy. I am amazed at how selfish crazy people are, and the other way around, too. Anyway, she leaves them alone, my grandfather having died in a fight to unionize the ladies garment workers union or pick whichever story you want to believe from the several they've told, leading me to believe that his death was even more horrid to them than my grandmother's.
My aunt took care of my mother and brother as teenagers after the tragedy and it stuck. She never married, but spent a good portion of her life attached to my mother, living across the street from us when I was a child, talking my mother into divorcing my father, and then supporting my mother, me and my sister after that debacle, sacrificing her life and her life savings for us. She's a very kind person, though she is impossible to live with - I know!
My uncle had left the USA to live in Europe when I was a child. When I was fourteen, two years into living with my mother, between her self-committed stays at various metropolitan area mental institutions, my uncle offered to have me come visit him in London for the summer. This was 1964, the 400th anniversary of the birth of William Shakespeare and the year The Beatles took over London and the world. Carnaby Street was happening in all its glory. It was fabulous time to be in London, though less so if you were fourteen. More to come tomorrow. I'm feeling a bit too sad to keep writing right now.
Written October 31st, Halloween 2006
I just came back from watching my uncle die like a yogi. He's not dead yet but, like a yogi, he has decided it is his time to die and so he has set his beautiful, strong, lucid mind on the business of dying. My sister Karen and I were crying at the beauty of this great man, as were the "battle-hardened" registered nurse and social worker who told us "Your uncle just expressed what all of our dying patients feel but are unable to say."
Morris called Karen and me to Carmel in upstate New York because he thought he was going to be dead in hours but since my mother's side of the family seems to be blessed with basically strong constitutions, his blood pressure was 116 over 66 and he wasn't going anywhere, though he wanted to and said so in no uncertain terms. He had a Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) order signed and witnessed and made his feelings known in front of us and his doctor and nurse and everyone who asked him - he wants to die and end his suffering while he still has his faculties. He had them disconnect him from his dextrose and hydration and in a few days he's going to fall asleep and never wake up; never have colon cancer eating him alive again.
So I drove as quickly as possible upstate and found in the back of my 1995 Toyota Camry station wagon, a car we keep partially because it was the last car in which we drove Amy's mother Jessie Spicer Zerner prior to her death from leukemia, a cassette tape by Sogyal Rinpoche, author of "The Tibetan Book of Death and Dying." I've had it in this car since 1995 apparently, unwrapped, because US President Jimmy Carter is referenced as being in office by this great scholar as he lectures about the benefits of meditation as a preparation for the conscious death that is the goal of every yogi (one who is united with their true nature) and should be the goal of every Buddhist, though they're not into "should," but we all forget what's real! I was astounded to hear him say that many, many people say that they find this wonderful and valuable book in moments of great need for it, like when a loved one is dying! He considers these many "coincidences" the result of the power of his master teachers, who commanded him to translate what we call "The Tibetan Book of the Dead," but is really a book that is just as much about life. The Tibetans were once fierce warriors but embraced Buddhism totally and they've made death and dying their "space program" (pun intended!) They've studied it as intensely as they could and they've made great leaps of understanding. I don't agree with everything they say, or at least my understanding of what I think they're saying, but I respect them without reservation. Just as we don't know anywhere near everything about even our own planet and solar system, the Tibetans don't know everything about death and, like our "scientists" - the priests of our secular culture - they give us their best educated guesses. And so I listened to the tape on my solitary drive upstate and I did find comfort, though I have to say that, especially at such times, to me so much of all religious teachings that claim to know what life and death is all about are just words and guesswords at that - the Tibetan "bardo" levels of death, heaven, and especially hell. To me life is raw/beautiful beyond words and its end especially so. Not only do I talk to the dead, I can hear them - I heard dear Jessie say "Your uncle is going to die today" a day before I got the call he was back in the hospital - hey, time is not their strong suit on the other side. But even though I know there's life after death I would NEVER presume to think that I know what exactly are the mechanisms of death and life and where we "go" when we die and how we are able to "speak to the living. There's a whole industry of the book business about what's what with the other side and I say you can read them but NEVER think for a moment that ANYONE understands more than a fraction of what life and death are really about - NO ONE, not even the Dalai Lama and especially Sylvia Browne and her ilk. To presume to understand life and death is the greatest egotism possible and I pray that I will never fall into that final, most spacious trap.
It is all well and good to say that we should not grasp and be attached to anything but this is, to me, like saying that we should not die at all. We are all human and those who put any "master" or "saint" or "Buddha" or "God" on a pedestal are like baseball card collectors to me, prattling on about what miracle this or that person did when that exalted person they're trying to tell you about would be the first person to tell you that miracles don't mean anything at all in comparison to being kind and compassionate, something my uncle has always been to me.
Always remember that the Dalai Lama is not being facetious when he says "I am a humble monk, nothing more." No one is more than anyone else at the level of our essential being. We exalt people like I am herein exalting my uncle, as a tribute to their work and to our recognition of the majesty of life, itself, but we must never forget that there's no one here any better than anyone else, even my dear sweet uncle Morris Harth - I love writing his name.
And he was kind and compassionate to me and Karen even as he was dying and hooked up to a hideous tube through his nose that drained the waste from his blocked colon. His pain and threat to his dignity were the equal of any Buddhist demon from their conception of "bardo" worlds that supposedly the dead pass through as "tests" before they reach "nirvana" - I don't like horror movies or roller coasters, so I discount this stuff as mass market spirituality for the Tibetan dying public.
When dear Jessie died ten years ago I started to read the Tibetan Book of the Dead to her corpse while we waited for the undertaker's van but I stopped almost as soon as I started, realizing that this truly righteous person needed none of that nonsense done for her and I needed to think about her sweet being and my love for her, not read some other culture's cookbook of death in the superstitious hope that it would help her deal with their supposed demons. I'd seen her successfully battle her own demons and help me battle mine - much more impressive.
One purpose of death is to inspire us to the highest level of compassion and understanding we are capable of and Jessie's passing and that of my uncle Morris did just that, though I have to admit that I lost it big time with my crazy aunt Rosie, his sister, making the whole thing about her. My upbringing in a crazy house makes the crazy behavior of those close to me utterly familiar and terrorizing - my bardo? Sure seems like it and I didn't pass through it too successfully, but who cares? It's past and we got back to being alive and dealing with reality. What is really important is revealed by the death of a loved one of such great achievement.
As we said goodbye for the last time in this life today. I told my uncle Morris Harth how much I loved him, that I've never been more proud of him than I was about the way he was choosing to leave this life, that I'd be speaking with him a lot from this plane to where he was going - his sense of humor was intact when he, a lifelong devourer of the New York Times, told me that he wasn't interested in the news of this world, just the news of the next world.
I told him that he had saved my life, that I wouldn't be who I am without having been his nephew. I always called him on Father's Day because he had been a great father to me,more so than my own father. My uncle Morris was a writer and a brilliant man and that gave me hope that the intelligence I've always felt in my inner world was real and even had some genetic basis that could overcome the wounded and ignorant ways of my mother and father. Morris' ways won out, just as his wishes have now won out over those of his sister, my aunt Rosie, with whom he's lived and battled for decades, who would be happy to keep him alive at all costs including his living in paid - she's that far gone with fear of death and loneliness.
My aunt Rosie is crazy and she's going to be even crazier when Morris is officially dead. The dry run of the last few days allowed me to speak candidly from my heart to my uncle, for which I'll always be grateful, but it also showed me that my aunt may be too crazy to be helped, certainly at this point, because she doesn't want any help. I could bore you with the details but this blog is long enough as it is. Take my word for it, she's so selfish that she couldn't rise to the occasion of Morris' passing but did her worst to make the whole event about her and what was happening to her. I feel sorry for her, though she's brought it on herself.
But it wasn't about her, it was about my dear sweet uncle having suffered enough to say "No mas" to life. Spiritual teachings are filled with stories about the purpose of suffering being to push us to let go and I watched Morris do just that.
I told him he was a beautiful man, though I was looking at his disease ravaged body, and I will always think of him as a tough, smart, beautiful man. I am thankful that I was able to make him smile. I hope that when my time comes to do my psychic work from the other side of this veil of tears that I make my transition with half of the grace, good humor, and purity of my uncle, Morris Harth, former Manager of Corporate Information for CBS Corp during the time of William S. Paley; Editor in Chief of the New York Times Almanac during the seventies; American News Editor for Reuters when he lived in London during the sixties at the home of the Stukley's, 14 Chester Row, in Westminster, where I visited him in 1964 - a trip that changed my life for the better; Asst. Vice-Consul to Germany after World War II - he was fluent in German and French; graduate of the University of Virginia, where a lot of diplomats go to school to this day; US Army veteran of WW II (probably in the OSS intelligence division, precursor to the USA's CIA - he could keep a secret, that man!); son of Max and Clara Harth, brother of Rose Harth and Jennie Farber, and uncle to Karen June Farber and Monte Farber. Good bye Morris, as I said, I'll be speaking with you as long as I'm alive and afterwords, too.
I don't believe love dies but, if it does, it won't make any difference one way or another, so I choose to believe that love and the people you love do not die.Who's right? Who's wrong? Who cares? Let's all be as compassionate to each other as we can - except my aunt Rosie, of course (just kidding!!!), we who are in this little exclusive club called "We who are alive." That is the only fitting memorial and temple and gravestone that is worth anything at all.
November 5th, 2006
My uncle Morris Harth has finally left this plane of existence. He breathed his last at 3PM this afternoon, a day of a full moon in the sign of Taurus. November 5th is a special day to the Celts, being the last day of Samhain (meaning "Summer's end") which is celebrated from Halloween, All Hallows Eve, until tonight - the Celts began the new day at night because the night contained whispers of the new day that would dawn.
I find this particularly fitting for the day my dear uncle's suffering ended because he was an Anglophile and as I wrote above, my trip to spend the summer with him in Swingin' ol England in 1964 changed my life. I learned so many things from him - here's one: why British countries drive on the left. I's from the days when they used to joust and sword fight from horseback, you drove your horse to the left so you could use your sword on the right side of your body. Not many lefties then, I suppose.
I'd like to thank you for having read this far. Morris is a great soul now, the meaning the Hindu concept "Mahatma," like Mahatma Ghandi, another great soul. I look forward to speaking and listening to him until the day I die and beyond. Where? I'll try and let you know!
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