Date: Thu, 18 Jul 96 16:20:01 EDT
From: Kevin Jones <100621.17@compuserve.com>
To: Subscribers to the maili <TWC-L@halmarax.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Comments on TWC-L
>From: Kevin Jones, 100621,17
>TO: "agno429@acs.bu.edu", INTERNET:agno429@acs.bu.edu
>DATE: 17/07/96 00:41
>RE: Copy of: Re: Comments on TWC-L
Dear Anthony,
> i wouldn't be so bold as to speak up.
I would.
>the person who is to die in a week, has much more on their minds,
>than anything i would say.
Like, in the majority of cases, being shit scared.
>at one week, i have no qualm with the thought of a person
>finding peace through hallucinagen.
There's always less time than we think. You may have been fighting this for a
few years and BANG - it's suddenly here. I suspect, handled correctly, in a
ritual and (appropriately) religious sense it might help them greatly. I have
suggested some cautions about the idea though.
>I"m not one to heal.
I am. It's what I do, rather than what I do for a living.
>i think it's better if a person heals him/herself.
Totally agree. Most people don't know they can though and need a little help of
some sort.
>people make their own internal choices.
For good or ill. Oftentimes without knowing that they make them. It may bog up
their lives or their health. It has to be respected, even if you don't agree
with it. You can only help if someone wants it.
> practical help is the morphine, and bluntly saying that death is
> natural.
Death may well be natural. The majority of the population would shit in their
pants when faced with it. To me, it's an old friend and adversary.
I have been in the position of watching a very close friend (female) writhing
round a hospital bed in sheer agony despite huge doses of morphine. It went on -
and on - and on. And there was nothing that could stop it.
>epiphanies aren't always practical. epiphanies are the stuff of magic.
And magic exists - and can be used if you have the will, knowledge, ability and
wonder. And above all, love.
> "The real magic lies not in seeking new landscapes but in
> having new eyes." -- Marcel Proust
Proust was right, but probably not in the manner he meant!
>i say that a person doesn't need hallucinations in order to find
> the new eyes of epiphany. -- that is my 'anything else.'
No they don't - if they are are on the path anyway. 99% of the population isn't
in the same ballpark! That has to be borne in mind. I'm looking at it from the
practicality of a healer - you could be dealing with anybody. I might have to
help a complete stranger die - he might be 17, have gone out that night for a
piss-up with his friends and got knifed. Wouldn't be the first time I've seen
someone die on the streets. Sod specific ideas like hallucinogens - I'm open to
anything that will help me help anyone from a terminal cancer sufferer to
someone bleeding their life away in the High Street. That's what I have to face.
And I don't give a shit if I have to use Craft to do it!
.
>somethings take time.
Which they may not have. Given time, I can think of several methods other than
drugs - but it takes some intensive learning and practice. Then again, I've
known someone diagnosed with bowel cancer in January who was dead the following
July. Doesn't give you much time.
> i think a person who is terminally ill at 2 years,
> is fully capable in seeing death with new eyes. not eyes of fear,
>but with a calm understanding -- either philosophical or spiritual.
I know someone who is terminally ill and has been for the last 5 years who is
still afraid, occasionally gets very depressed and has spent an entire morning
holding onto me and crying their heart out. They've got guts - despite thinking
that suicide might occasionally be an option. That's mainly because they know
what's waiting for them. They do have both philosophical and spiritual ideas -
but unless you qualify as the equivalent of a saint, it doesn't stop bouts
(lasting months) of absolutely mind-numbing fear, total panic and depression.
And there is no way out - except your worst nightmare.
Those are the people I have to help. I have to somehow get through this lot,
through the opportunities lost, through the lack of future, through the lack of
hope of any kind, through the sense of being abandoned both by the medical
profession (to quote one woman 'they're just leaving me to die') and everybody
else (amazing how many people don't want to know when they find out you're
dying!) and through the sense that nothing is worthwhile anymore, that there is
no point to starting anything because you are going to die - soon. That the best
option might well be to retire to bed, swallow the bottle of codeine or morphine
that was supposed to last you the next month, follow it with a good scotch and
just go now, thus avoiding the pain, the paralysis and in, one case, dying of
suffocation 'cos the nerves supplying your respiratory muscles no longer work.
Been there, seen it, done it, got the tee-shirt. It's what being a healer is
about. Patching things up for people - bodies, minds, lives. Stopping dreams
from dying, giving a bit of hope and making things easier. It doesn't stop at
the purely medical - and Christ do you run across some things!
Kevin