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179 f r o m g o u r d s e e d v i g i l n o t e s I did not stay up till the end with my mother the night she died. And here is the shame from another vigil I did not make it completely through, though shame is all wrong. I told myself I would go from seven p.m. to seven a.m., tending a fire, to watch and listen, and I didn’t make it. Sometime after four, propped up, looking at the fire, resting my eyes, suddenly it was six. The sun not yet up. I immediately sat straight and began reading Ramana Maharshi, hoping for some sort of spiritual hit by dawn, though knowing the shame for falling asleep is the same as the satisfaction of keeping a vow. I felt refreshed by those two hours of dreamless doze. Refreshment is a large service the universe offers, and gladly accepted. I heard, toward the ragged end of my vigil, what I took as a degrading sign of failure, the toilet left running, unjiggled, upstairs, the tank with a balky gasket that needs coaxing, or it won’t re-fill enough to stop re-filling. I once came back from two weeks away to hear that desertedness in an empty house. • • • 180 f r o m g o u r d s e e d But now some sweet exhaustion absorbs the sound with more than forgiveness, and hears in its continuous emptying a faithful pouring-listening that never sleeps. ...

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