It seems to me as if my life is at something of a crossroads right now. I figure that for the sake of my own inner clarity it would help to spell out some of what all is going on. Perhaps putting it all into writing could help with you, dear reader, understanding more of where I am coming from as well. These are my hopes, at least.
It all started for me around September of last year (2023) when a client at the group home that I was working at was sent to the hospital, and then eventually was released from the hospital and put on hospice. I saw the hospice program operating up close in it's full compassionate glory over the course of a few weeks, along with seeing various relatives and former staff coming to visit the group home to be present for the dying process of this client and to say their "good-bye" to the client. Eventually this client passed away on September 22nd. That happened to take place during a shift that I was working, so I saw this client die in-person. This was the first time that I have ever seen a human being die in real life. Later on that day, I spoke with my father on the phone where I told him about what had happened. Little did I know, that phone conversation would be the last conversation that I would ever have with my father.
A funeral took place shortly thereafter for this deceased client. I attended this funeral, as did my wife Liz, my coworkers, other clients, my boss at that time, as well as some of my past bosses, and of course various relatives of the client. I found that funeral service to be very nice, very touching. It was a respectful good-bye to a person whose life touched many.
The day after that funeral took place, another event took place that was organized by my employer where I got to see many different people whom I worked with before in various different group homes in the past. It was at this event that I found out about the death of a previous client who I supported at a previous group home that I worked at. This client passed away on February 28th, 2023, but I only found out about it at that event in September. This client died in a rather horrific manner due to the negligence of the staff and management who were supposed to be caring for him at the time. I did some investigating into the manner, and found out that no funeral, memorial service or obituary was ever had for this person. I then visited the group home in person where this client lived and died at, a place that I had worked at for over four years. I confirmed that this person did indeed die there, right before I was kicked out of that house due to not receiving the permission of the management to be there ahead of time. This happened on October 7th, at the same time that the Hamas attacks on Israel were taking place.
The war between Israel and Hamas that started on October 7th, and the subsequent genocide of Palestinians by the Israeli military has horrified me, enraged me, and left me feeling increasingly untethered from the social / political / economic world that we live in. After all, if both major political parties in the U.S. support this, and U.S. taxpayer money goes to support this, and everyday people are able to successfully block this all out from their conscious awareness, just like they do so many other atrocities that take place across the world, then... Then what?
I was personally very shaken up by these events. In the days that followed, my mental and emotional health deteriorated, culminating in a breakdown at work where I just lost it and cried in front of my boss and coworkers. I sought the support of a grief counselor, which was quite helpful for me at that time.
Then on November 10th my father passed away. I found out the news about this while I was at work, and upon hearing the news I just left my workplace mid-shift (after getting the consent from my other coworker on duty) and went home, booked a plane flight to Phoenix, Arizona (where my father lived and died), and Liz and I flew out to the next day. We got seats in the back of the crowded plane. I was seated next to a crying baby. Both of us were crying during that flight.
While there, Liz and I were able to work on my father's apartment and clear it out & clean it up, such that by the time that we were done it was all empty. We were able to arrange for a cremation to take place, and we viewed and said good-bye to the body. We retrieved, sorted through and dealt with the possessions that he had with him at the medical facility that he passed away at, and we sold his car. We informed his neighbors of his passing, and we settled up with his landlord. I feel incredibly grateful for the support network that came together to support me during this difficult time. Friends and relatives in the Phoenix area itself, as well as people further away, were of great help to me in numerous ways. A number of people in my father's apartment complex itself also spontaneously offered their assistance in the enormous task of clearing out my father's apartment. I feel quite moved by all of this.
Upon returning back to Minnesota, I discovered that another client at the group home I worked at had been hospitalized while I was away in Arizona. Shortly after returning, he entered hospice. Unlike the previous client, this one was moved to his family's home in another town for him to go through the dying process there.
In December of last year I went to Michigan, where I stayed at the home of my aunt and uncle, saw my mother who flew in for the holidays, and saw numerous other relatives from both sides of my family. Shortly after arriving in Michigan, I discovered that the client who was on hospice passed away on December 12th. I visited the grave sites of various deceased relatives, saw the newly cremated remains of my father and I had a number of intense personal conversations during that time. I felt a lot of grief, experienced a lot of intensity, and went through a lot of mourning. I also got really sick during that time as well, and by the end of that Michigan visit it took all the energy I had to go out and see relatives for various family events. This was perhaps the most intense holiday time period I ever experienced, due to my mental, emotional and physical state at that time. After returning to Minnesota from this trip, I went to Urgent Care to see a doctor, due to my concerns over my illness. Eventually I got better.
The following few months I did much reflecting and introspection about my life, due to my experiences over the previous few months. I had a number of different insights as a result of this, one of which being that I no longer felt like it is in integrity for me to continue doing caregiving work in a traditional mainstream group home context. The idea behind having people with developmental disabilities residing in group home settings was to help with integrating these folks into local communities, to have them meet and interact with a variety of different people and to engage in a variety of different activities. The reality that I encountered, time and again in these group homes, was that the clients would stay within their homes and only leave to go on medical appointments. I would take clients out of the house to do various things, but I was usually the only staff who did this. People would applaud me for doing this, but were also not inspired to do the same thing themselves. I began to yearn for social environments where having clients engage in a variety of different activities with a variety of different people was integrated in with the very model of the institution.
I then remembered the Camphill movement, of which I was a part of years ago, and I started to appreciate it more and more for having the qualities that I was looking for in a healthy caregiving social environment. I then decided to quit my job. I had worked at this job for nine and a half years in total, and in multiple different group homes run by my employer, and now, I finally feel done with it. I had reached my limit.
My last day employed working at the group home was March 12th of this year, 2024. The following day, March 13th, I started a ten-day silent Vipassana Meditation course in Illinois. I had a lot of past experience with these Vipassana Meditation courses, both as a student and as a volunteer, but it had been about ten years since I previously was involved with these. This particular course turned out to be a very intense one for me, I got in touch with a lot of grief through the process of doing this course, and I was lucky enough to have a teacher guiding that course who was very supportive in the periodic interviews that we had. I left that course feeling much lighter and more grounded with my Vipassana Meditation practice.
While driving back home to Minnesota from Illinois I received a phone call from Liz where I found out that Liz had seen a doctor and that an unidentified "mass" was detected in Liz' abdomen area. After receiving both an ultrasound and an MRI scan it was determined that it will need to be surgically removed. They do not know if it is cancerous or not, they will only be able to tell that once it is removed and they can examine it more closely. The date for the surgery was scheduled for April 23rd, and it will take up to six weeks for recovery from the surgery afterwards.
Shortly after returning to Minnesota, we went back to Michigan for my father's memorial service and the burial of his remains. I wrote a eulogy for my father that I read out loud at his memorial service, which I am including for you here:
In my first memories of my father, Randy Mayes, he was the master of this majestic and wonderful world called "McMahon Auditorium", which was the municipal performing arts center for the City of Lawton, Oklahoma. I would run around, play, and explore all over that enormous building. Occasionally my father would stop whatever work-tasks he was doing and show me rooms and spaces in that building that I was previously unaware of. The awe and wonder of that place seemed infinite. My father would also introduce me to different people, both local and from far away, who would pass through the McMahon Auditorium. I saw plays, dances, operas, concerts and art exhibitions there, all organized by my father. And when he could, my father would introduce me to the performers and artists who were the honored guests of the moment. One of my fondest memories there as a little boy was when my father once took me to see a traveling theater troupe who were on a cigarette break together outside behind the building, and I got to sit in on the casual conversation of these performers. I was so thrilled by that, I felt like I was a real grown-up then, just hanging out with other grown-ups who just so happened to travel the world performing spectacular acts to large audiences.
My father's influence on Lawton extended well beyond the McMahon Auditorium as well. For example, my father helped bring a number of different sculpture art displays to Lawton at various public locations. My father also helped create the annual International Festival for Lawton. That festival still exists today, introducing many people to the arts, crafts, foods, music and more from different cultures all around the world. I attribute my attending that festival every year back then as being something that helped encourage in me, at a very young age, an appreciation for the diversity that can be found in people from all kinds of different countries.
When I was eight years old my parents divorced, which I believe was the biggest heart-break in my father's life. Through that difficult time my father was able to eventually rebuild himself, he went back to college and got an MBA degree, and he found jobs in other places. My father worked in many different places, all across the U.S., but regardless of where he worked he always had essentially the same role: he was the manager of a performing arts center. He was one of those rare people who worked in the same field throughout his career that he went to university to study.
I got to know many different parts of the U.S. through my father, both through visiting him over the years at the various places he lived at, as well as because of various road trips that we would go on together from time to time. I remember that together we visited all of the major battlefields of the American Civil War, we also visited the Alamo in San Antonio, saw Times Square together in New York City, we hiked some of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, and we visited the ancient buildings that are on the sides of mountain cliffs that the Ancestral Puebloans built long ago in Arizona. These are just a few of the places that we went to together.
Underlying all of this was an appreciation for learning about the world and the universe around us. When I was little we had a subscription to National Geographic magazine and together we would look through different issues and he would read to me what was said in each article, explain to me whatever concepts I did not understand, and answer whatever questions I had. We talked about matters related to history, geography, space science, politics, biology, religion, geology and more. I think that so much of my own interest in these different topics today stems from the foundation that he created through those conversations I had with him at a very young age.
Our conversations continued too after the divorce, each weekend we would have a conversation over the phone, regardless of where he was living. As the Cold War ended and new periods of history came about for the U.S. and the world at large, my father was there as a regular presence for me in my life, explaining and commenting on everything that was happening as it happened. Right up to the very end, to one of the last few conversations we ever had, my father was there, explaining and commenting on this weird and wonderful world that we live in.
It wasn't just my life, however, many people's lives were touched by my father. After my father's passing I reached out to as many of his friends & colleagues as I could, informing them of his passing, and I found people who live all over the place, having met him through a variety of different circumstances. People spoke of his kindness, his warmth, his willingness to help others. For example, one man from the Netherlands told me about my father giving him a cane when he injured his foot, back when they were both at Perdue University. Others told me of how he was a supportive presence for them as they went through difficult periods of their life. Through the variety of different places across the country that my father worked at, combined with the decades that my father worked in that field, my father definitely made himself known in the world of performing arts management.
And then to the end of his life as well, when my father was living in an apartment complex in Phoenix, Arizona, I found there a vibrant scene of community that my father was a part of. People there knew my father, cared about him, and missed him when he was gone. Before my father's health issues started getting really intense, my father also worked some in the Phoenix area public schools as a substitute teacher, and there too he told me about the different kids that he worked with, how he enjoyed being a part of their lives, and how they came to get to know him and were happy when he would show up as a substitute for their class. My father certainly did have a skill of being able to connect with different people from a variety of different backgrounds.
I admit that, as an adult, I certainly did have my difficulties with maintaining our connection. I know that this was difficult for my father, as it was for me as well. I appreciate that my father never gave up on our relationship, that he forgave me for my shortcomings, and that when I requested having someone come in to mediate a dialogue between us, he agreed. No matter how hard things got, my father was always open to dialogue with me. I always knew that he loved me, regardless of where we were at.
And up to the very end, even after he lost most of his ability to hear, I always had a hope, a kind of faith, that this dialogue between us would continue, that our conversations about the world would continue to happen.
But then, like all things, that too came to an end, when he passed away. I suppose that the conversations can still continue though, in a different form, through maintaining an interest and curiosity about the world around us. Through getting to know different kinds of people. Through asking questions. I think that this is one lasting gift that my father gave me.
I do miss him. I do love him. May he rest in peace.
After Michigan we went to Indiana, where I met up with an old friend whom I had not seen in many years. From there we went to a cheap motel in a small town outside of Cleveland, Ohio where we saw the solar eclipse in the path of totality. I saw it with Liz in a field next to a farm and the shore of Lake Erie. It was amazing! Here is a picture of me there wearing my eclipse glasses:
This all brings me to where I am right now. The big thing that I am waiting for is Liz' surgery that is coming up. That is the main focus of my attention at the moment. This is because that surgery, Liz' recovery from it, and the discernment of whether or not Liz has cancer will determine much of what I do and where I will go next. I had many ideas on what I was going to do before Liz' medical situation came up, and now I am left in a state of complete not-knowing.
Assuming that everything goes well, I do have ideas on where I would like to go and what I would like to do. I would like to travel around the U.S. and the world in general. I did this in 2014/2015, and I did the same in 2004 as well. So now my "ten year itch" is up and I would like to hit the road again.
In particular, I would like to travel with three different "guiding lights", if you will, that would inform my travel destinations. These three are Camphill intentional communities, Vipassana Meditation centers, and people associated with Nonviolent Global Liberation. These types of destinations are informed by my life's purpose, which is two-fold:
"To support the creation and proliferation of utopian anarchist communities."
and
"Supporting people who are in need of special care".
I have been able to get clarity on this Purpose of mine through working with the Vision Mobilization framework for a few years now.
I view Nonviolent Global Liberation, or "NGL" for short, as being the closest group/ideology out there that I am aware of that is working towards what I have in mind when I talk about utopian anarchism. I view Camphill communities as being the best model that I have come across so far that supports people in need of special care in ways that are truly holistic in outlook and integrated in approach. And I view Vipassana Meditation as being the foundational practice to help ensure being grounded, self-aware, and equanimous through the infinite complexity, uncertainty and changing nature of life.
So this is where I am right now. I do not know where I am going, but I have more clarity on where I want to go now more than ever before. I feel much uncertainty and anxiety right now, but I also feel quite free and connected with various different people who care about me. Sadness and tears have been a regular part of my life these past few months, but so has empowerment, awe and wonder. I am indeed in a transitional phase right now.
