Vietnam and the Transitions Workshop

When David and Jeff and I went to Vietnam in 2005 it was Jeff and my first time back in VN since the war. It was David’s first time to be in Cambodia. For Jeff and me it was not as emotional or cathartic as one might expect from men who had been in heavy combat with all the killing and dying that happened right there where we were visiting in 2005. Why?

(I can speak only for myself.)

After I came home from VN I would run something like a video in my mind at least once every single day. It had a title: “How Donohue Got It.” It was a replay of how my friend, “Lurch” Donohue was grievously wounded and I was beside him when he died in the dirt in a little clearing with bullets snapping past. The every day video gradually came to an end after I attended one of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’ Transitions Workshops. This was before hospice, probably 1976 or 77.

The workshop was in a former convent in San Antonio. There were 70-80 people there, with approximately 1/3 having a terminal illness, 1/3 having lost a loved one, and 1/3 being involved in the care of people with terminal illness (nurses, doctors, chaplains, etc.).

The process of the gathering was that first we went around the room with each person saying why they were there. People started telling the truth from the beginning. The truth was that we were all there because of our pain: the pain of being close to death, of losing love, of seeing people die, of disappointments, of judgments, and so on.

As the workshop unfolded, everyone had the opportunity to testify to their own pain and loss. Anger was a part of that – I remember that there was a mattress in the middle of the room and a 1.5-2 foot length of heavy garden hose. As we expressed our pain we were encouraged to express the anger through words and other vocalizations (groaning, screaming, crying, whatever) and using the hose to pound the mattress – it was very cathartic! Part of the process was also that when someone was crying, we were generally discouraged from comforting that person. The idea was that comfort could stop the experience of deep emotion and interrupt the path to healing; and that often comforting was as much for the comforter as it is for the comforted. Comfort came later. A lot of deep emotion was experienced and shared. We all got well beyond our previous comfort levels with respect to our own and to other’s pain.

I shared how Donohue was killed with the group and as noted above, the daily video subsequently came to an end. I’ve come to realize it wasn’t Donohue alone I’d been grieving for; it was all of us, the living and the dead.

I also shared my sadness that it had been years since I had been truly high in the moment in reality, such as in entheogenic journeys (amazed to discover how much of an issue this was).

 

There were breaks for food, sleep, and meditation sessions with Stephen Levine. The rest of the time people were telling their stories, letting go of the pain. We went from about 8 in the morning until 2-3 the next morning. Sometime in the night of day 3 I broke through to the present. I stayed in that state of vastly expanded awareness (high in the moment) for the rest of the 5 day workshop.

40 years after the war and almost 30 years after the workshop I went back to Vietnam. I went back to Dodge City, back to where 1/9, “The Walking Dead” got its name, to the river, to Hill 55, back to where Donohue and Laws and Georges and others died. I laid down one last time in the dirt by the padi. Later I held hands with an old communist fighter (he was about my age) and drank an orange soda and then a shot of rice liquor – “To Vietnam!”