What I Was Doing While You Were Dying

I got the call today, a few minutes before I was to teach my first Introduction to Mindfulness Course for UT Dallas Faculty. I, this person about to teach tools for grounding, felt the earth shift. Molecules around me rearranged. I had to gather for the 40 humans arriving to my TEAMS Teleconference, greeting each other with “Good Afternoon” and “I miss you” messages to each other. 

“Donald is gone.” I hear in my thoughts. Followed by: “Keep going, teach the class.” I breathe: facing new challenges of an un-sharing screen, yet held by two colleagues who quickly found a way for my presentation to be seen. I, in turn, held a space for these humans in the only way I knew how: mindfully with lovingkindness and compassion. Dis-believing the outer weather, the news, the facts, I held a calm inside: “Donald is gone.” 

Last night through two more on-line sessions, I made mistakes. I held up my Family for the Family Walk in the driveway and mis-fired an email to the wrong person. I wasn’t holding it together at all. 

Sunday. That’s the day you died. I don’t really know yet what time: late afternoon? It was hot to be running. You drove to a beautiful part of Dallas, Oak Cliff, parked your car, and went for a run. Perhaps you were meditating or writing the next song of your play. You’d probably been doing that all day. Sometimes when I was with you, I knew you were deep inside the channel of mindfulness: I would slow when we walked. I would slow inside. This was your being. 

Sunday was a slow day for me: I taught Sunday School, wrote, worked on my Crow Museum planning, took walks with the boys: all of my molecules were stable, everything in its place. 

In this last year, you appeared to me as a new friend: easy, natural conversations and deep ones, too. On spirituality, pursuits, dreams, loss. We talked about it all, as if it was the last year of your life. 

I know how you liked your omelette. Your coffee. I know how you took care of ALL of the people we encountered. I know how you liked to drop into lyrical, musical theater dialogue at any moment. That was us together. 

We met over a Lazy Susan. At Nest. You sold me (at a very high price) a re-purposed French wine barrel lid-Lazy Susan. You swept through the store when we met encouraging me to see and enjoy. You were a Master of Retail. It was easy to love you. I left with a wine-barrel lid Lazy Susan. 

And then it warped. France to Texas humidity I suppose. Just as I expected, you replaced it fully and encouraged me to come back if there were any problems. You walked it to my car for the second time. You were a Prince of a Person. 

And yes, we both have our prince and princess-ly imperfections: we talked about them: our mountains we’ve crossed, the dark shadows we found. Yet, from that darkness you gathered so much seeing. And you told me so. You came to me at a time when I couldn’t see myself: you chose to light the world around me so I could. You are leaving us with so much: the poetry of your musical scores, so many treasures from the Nasher Store, the conversations that will never leave me, a friend, a brother. 

You went for a run and never came home. A tragic accident with a DART Streetcar. I can’t imagine and don’t want to. But it wasn’t so many things: it wasn’t cancer, or chronic illness, it wasn’t COVID-19. There is an edge of comfort in this. A tiny edge. 

I will look for you, in the bright face of Venus I saw last night at sunset, in the play of birds in the tree, the swelling of wind. I like to imagine you are close to me, shoulder to shoulder, as Kabir writes. I will hold the words of encouragement you’ve given me this past year as my treasure of this life. Thank you for taking the time to care in this magical, deep way that you did. 

Right before I found out you had died, I was in a different mindfulness class: my International Mentor Group for my Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program. I was gathered with Jake from Nottingham, Holly from Sidney, Monica from Basel, Helene from Tallinn (Estonia) and Andrew from Baltimore. After an hour together in practice and connecting, the instructor let us know he was going to shift topics to the next item on the agenda. I had to leave early to prepare for my class at UT Dallas.

The topic was to be impermanence and loss. 

I would miss the lesson, but found it again, poignantly a minute later when the phone rang. I will miss you, Donald Fowler. Thank you for your extraordinary life. 

“Are you looking for me?
I am in the next seat.
My shoulder is against yours.
you will not find me in the stupas,
not in Indian shrine rooms,
nor in synagogues,
nor in cathedrals:
not in masses,
nor kirtans,
not in legs winding around your own neck,
nor in eating nothing but vegetables.
When you really look for me,
you will see me instantly —
you will find me in the tiniest house of time.
Kabir says: Student, tell me, what is God?
He is the breath inside the breath.”

― Kabir