SHE WAS BORN in northern India and has spent much of her life in Tanzania where she is living as an elder with children around the world. At eighty-two, she suffers from severe rheumatoid arthritis and has been falling more deeply into a chasm of fear. One of her sons, Pindey, lives in southern California. He has been practicing massage for over thirty years. I see Pindey twice a year when I go to teach at Pine Manor retreat center in Lake Elsinore, a spiritual oasis in the hills. It’s important to pause here to say what a wise, gentle, and humble man Pindey is. But that doesn’t quite reach his essence either. He is a conduit for all that is greater than us. He is a master at what he does, but it’s more than technique. The skill in his hands is guided by his large heart, which allows the Well of Spirit to flow through him. And so, his touch is both calming and healing. His wisdom is in his touch.
On this brisk November morning, Pindey tells me that during the summer he felt a strong pull to visit his mother in Tanzania. Their road together had been difficult through the years. And now, there was such a strong rush of Spirit that said she needed him. So he cleared his obligations and made arrangements to go, and off he went to Tanzania to find his mother one more time.
Pindey’s native tongue is Punjabi, but he converses with his mother in Swahili. He tells me that there are many words in Punjabi that can’t quite be said in English. Just as there are many compelling forces that call us which have no names.
It took Pindey twenty-two hours to fly from LA to Nairobi and then a few more hours to his mother’s side. Then he sat with her day after day—for a month—just holding her. When she would wake in the night consumed with fear, he’d hold her head until she calmed. When she’d wake in the morning in pain, he’d hold her and rock her until she calmed. He called on his years of mastery to love her without waver and without any talk of their history of difficulty. He simply stayed by her side and held her constantly. He’d sit and hold her when the nurses came and rock her long after the nurses left. When others said, “You have to rest,” he thought, This is how I rest. When others said, “You have to go home,” he thought, I am home. When others, meaning well, said, “You can’t save her,” he thought, But she can save me. And after thirty days, with no words, her heart had softened and, mysteriously, she began to heal. She seemed more reachable than Pindey could remember and was overflowing with gratitude, unsure how she could ever repay her son for never letting her go.
At this, Pindey wells up and says, “And she’s asking how to repay me.” He shakes his head like a bird lifting into the open after a storm. This story brings into view a profound lesson that arrives without words and yet, I am left with only words to convey it. Holding is one of the great medicines. Many of us will resist holding or being held for more than a minute and yet this strong-gentle son, who has daughters of his own, had the courage to travel almost ten thousand miles to offer his relentless care to another, day and night, for a month, with no expectation. And all that giving somehow made his mother well and him stronger.
So, regardless of what problem tangles your mind, regardless of what history impinges on your sense of worth, regardless of what seems insurmountable, we can cut through the tangle that living wraps us in, if we dare to hold each other longer than we think possible until our very nature transforms our condition. For touch heals. Holding transforms. And gratitude keeps us alive and within each other’s reach.
There are many compelling forces that call us which have no names.