Bedlam Farm Blog Journal by Jon Katz

I went to the Mansion Wednesday to see Kelly for the first time since our fund-raising campaign to get her out of the tent she has been living in for weeks because she couldn’t afford the down payment on a new apartment or double-wide trailer.

She is a certified nurse’s aide at the Mansion.

She gave me a great hug and said she was no longer worried about what people might think of her for needing help. She is relieved and happy. (I shudder to think of her in the tent this week, with all of the rain and storms and heat and humidity.)

In America, no one who works this hard and does such good work should ever have to live in a tent with her daughter and grandson. And certified nurse’s aides should not make less than McDonald’s cashiers.

Kelly is not asking for anything more, she just wanted to get out of her tent. I have been badgering her to determine any other needs.

I haven’t seen Kelly smile in weeks, she had a big wide grin yesterday.

She is getting ready to move.

“I just am happy to get to sleep in a bed soon,” she wrote me in a message. “Everything that everyone has done for me is completely enough,I can never say thanks enough…”

I told her she needed to brace herself for a little more help. Kelly does not like to ask for help, but I happen to know she needs some.

So far, we have enough money donated by the Army Of Good to pay the $1,600 deposit and two months rent required for her to rent a double-wide trailer.

A bunch of checks  arrived this morning at our Post Office Box, I have not yet had a chance to count them,  I told Kelly we will have some money to help her get some other things she will need – a microwave, a toaster oven, perhaps some kitchen ware.

Any check arriving through Thursday will go automatically to Kelly and her needs. Any check marked for “Kelly” after that will also, of course, go to her.

I got a $300 Visa gift card for her last night, and a Wal-Mart gift card (I don’t know for how much.) And I expect some more donations arriving tomorrow. We have enough money to help her thanks for your astonishing generosity.

If anyone wants to send more money for Kelly to get things for her new trailer, you can send them to Jon Katz, P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816, or via Paypal, [email protected].

But we have enough money to get her out of the tent and into  a new, clean, safe and dry place. This feels so good to me, and I am so grateful to you.

I’ve decided to get Kelly a 32 ” wide screen TV out of my own personal funds.

With a seven-year-old grandson living with her, this is not a luxury.

It’s just something I want to do. As I’ve said before, I don’t like only asking for money, i want to contribute also, and I do. I am certain we will have enough money to cover any other urgent needs Kelly has.

Thank you, Army Of Good.  You are better than good, you are great.

I was talking with a hospice nurse recently, we were both sharing ideas and feelings about death. And hospice nurses know more about death than any doctor or priest I ever met.

Her husband, she said, was always urging her to quit hospice and find other work. “How can you live in the darkness every day?,” he would often ask her. She said she told him she loved her work.

First, it gave her a feeling of true meaning and purpose, she mattered, she was needed.

Secondly, she said it was simply beautiful work.

The people she met were so often beautiful – open, acutely aware of life and perspective. She wasn’t living in darkness, she said, she was learning in darkness, her work was all in the light.

We understood one another right away.

Being around death is not only gloomy, being around death can teach us so much about life. People are often stunned by death, they just can’t imagine it could come to them, or their mothers and fathers, or the people they love.

But it will – that is one of the very few absolute certainties in lie.

No one is more motivated in their work than the people who work around death.  Hospice nurses are the real angels.

All around us, we see and hear from people suffering from a loss of meaning, a loss of purpose, confusion around boundaries, directions – darkness, if you prefer.

There is a language of lamentation around death, not just lamentation, but wailing and moaning.

Working around death is not just a lesson in sadness in suffering, quite the opposite. It is perhaps the greatest lesson about life and perspective.

I remember looking for the perfect pedestal to  stand on, a place where I could be secure and clean and pure, and quite above it all. Death was a great secret in the world I grew up in, a ghost that hid out of sight.

But all of the great spiritual masters begin their teachings with the idea that life is not perfect, and we are not pure. To me, that is the great liberating lesson of real faith.

I found this photo of Gus meeting our vet Suzanne. They were to become close friends with one another, soon enough she had to put him down. Like my friend Ed, he had an incurable disease and once we knew that, we looked for the quickest and most painless way to end his suffering.

How sad that we cannot do this for the people we love. Animals often lead the way for us.

And what is the great lesson of Gus?

Nothing, really, in my mind. He lived and died just like the rest of us, and I think the angels would roll over and laugh at the idea that the real  tragedy is that his life was cut short, that his death was worse than any other death.

I don’t ever feel that way about him.  The big question for me was always how could I be a good steward, how could I keep him from suffering needlessly. How could I make sure that he didn’t suffer for a single minute just so that I could be spared any pain.

Gus lived and he died, just like I will and you will. And while he was at it, he made a big splash and had quite a lot of fun it was a good run.

I don’t look for the perfect pedestal to stand on any longer, I am grateful for my life, every single day of it. The prophets wrote of the “suffering of  reality,” the sober feeling that comes when we see the world clearly, but not joylessly.

This is what the hospice nurses learn in the darkness.

Red and I had a conversation recently out on the back porch. We each, I think, told the other how much we loved them. Red and I don’t talk all that much, but I guess we really don’t need to. He is just my dog and I am just his human.

Lots of nice people are messaging me and thanking me and Maria for trying to help out at Bejosh Farm while Ed is sick. I appreciate, but the real thanks go to Ed and Carol for what they did for us. Ed came with his giant hands and saw and opened a path from our house to the woods we own out back.

He made a bench for us to sit on and dragged it all the way out there, over the bridge he built and the trails he cut. Last winter, Maria took a photo of me and Red sitting out on the bench  by the stream, mulling life together.

It will be a nice place to go and sit when I want to remember Ed.

The gray hen died suddenly a few months ago, as chickens are wont to do. We know little about the interior lives of hens.

But Minnie and the gray hen were good pals, they both loved to hang out on or around the fiber chair and were often spotted resting and napping together. Minnie does have any chickens friends right now, but she still loves be around the fiber chair.