Nothing Special
the ordinary process of dying to everything
This essay was written almost two years ago and is being republished for reasons revealed below.
Like the world—and maybe because I’m living in the world now—I’m in a phase, a turning point, a something… where the consequences of many life choices are converging, and old issues clamor to be acknowledged.
Relationships are the most clamorous of all particularly the relationship I had with my mother. I acknowledged the anniversary of her death last week, but surprise(!) we are still in conversation and this postmortem connection has proved to be the most instructive of all.
Nothing special is a Buddhist concept that says being ordinary is enough. No need to be special. Everything we need to learn is happening right now. And it’s pretty amazing.
My mother, Helen Bernice Spain, died July 9, 2022.
Three months before, she had been in the hospital for heart issues. She slept for hours and when she was awake all she talked about was going home. She also had cancer and was out of treatment options, so once she stabilized, there was nothing left to do but take her home. She began eating again, moved around more, and her color returned—she almost seemed herself.
But a condition of discharge was enrolling in hospice because whether she rallied or not she was dying. Soon my brother, father and I were enmeshed in the ordinary, tedious, frustrating and astonishing process of dying. Astonishing like white birch trees against blue skies are astonishing; like a single blade of grass or drop of water is astonishing. It’s nothing special—we’re all dying—but it’s also everything, everywhere all at once.
Most amazing and unexpected at that time was my ability to be with Helen without the weight of emotional baggage. There was numbness of course but also a simple presence. I brought her what she wanted, and often anticipated her needs. I attended her in the bathroom, regarded her sagging, vulnerable body without pulling away, and answered her endless repetitive questions—What time is it? Do I have one more pill? Are you leaving tomorrow?—as if hearing them for the first time.
I lived hundreds of miles away in Boston, Massachusetts, so I was not her long time caregiver. That was my brother, the middle child, the peacekeeper. He had encouraged them to relocate to North Carolina from central Pennsylvania—willing to be the proximate son and sibling but not willing to get caught up in our mother’s angry, vindictive dramas.
When I got caught he made a point of telling me that he took care of all their needs but when he left the apartment he didn’t worry about them until he had to do it again. I respect how he chose to deal with the emotional complexity of being my mother’s son. He taught me a lot about healthy emotional distance. Our youngest brother moved to the opposite end of the continental US to get the space he needed. I respect that too.
Human relationships are complicated by our thoughts about each other and the things we believe about ourselves. We can’t know anyone if we believe our thoughts about them, even if they are the people we live with day in and day out. But isn’t that how relationships evolve, especially family relationships. Our thoughts about the person interact with theirs about us, and then we all think we “know” each other.
As my first teacher, Munindraji, would say, the thought of your mother is not your mother. It’s a thought. A thought of anything is not the thing, it’s a thought. So when we can relate to whatever emotional turmoil might be happening and the thoughts associated with them [by saying to ourselves], “Yeah, this is just a thought in the moment,” it gives us access to relating to it in a different way. ~Joseph Goldstein1
I believed I had mostly made peace with my mother by the time she entered hospice, but once the dying process began I realized I’d made peace with an idea about her that I could tolerate. During the nine day vigil I wandered in a timeless place, untethered to linearity. Like my mother, I was also in transition but with a different unknown destination.
I had lived through each of my grandparents’ deaths though I was only close to my maternal grandmother. The last death death vigil I had attended was that of a beloved cat. I understood death the way, a long time ago, I thought I understood childbirth before having my first child at thirty. I thought apprenticing with a homebirth midwife and attending over a dozen laboring women, that being a doula and co-founding a postpartum doula service that served hundreds of families prepared me for labor and birth.
It didn’t.
I had a midwife I trusted throughout the process but still… lying in bed utterly exhausted, watching the nurse weigh my firstborn from across the room, I furiously wondered, How do women do this more than once!? All those years attending women I had assumed they felt a certain way, namely, in control and above the pain, despite their screams, groans, sweat and exhaustion.
Death is another kind of birth. Attending my dying mother was a gift for both of us. A multifaceted gift.
…the thought of your mother is not your mother. It’s a thought. A thought of anything is not the thing, it’s a thought.
Besides being a passionate writer of this bi-weekly newsletter I am: *An essay writer and poet. *A teacher on Insight Timer. https://insighttimer.com/valeriespain, and Certified Mindfulness Mentor.
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NOTE regarding AI: I do not use AI in any part of my writing process: from conceiving and nurturing ideas, to editing drafts, to writing the final essay. All the imagining, writing and editing is the work of one human. We don’t need more content. We need heart-centered, human content.
From Tricycle Talks, “Liberation Through Non-Clinging Across Buddhist Traditions” Episode #136 with Joseph Goldstein. October 22, 2025.