The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss (73 page)

In any case, the doctors more or less threw up their hands. There was nothing more they could do, they said. They thanked Terence for making his contribution to science and sent him home. The tumor was now proliferating in critical areas close to the autonomic centers that regulate cardiac and respiratory functions. If he was “lucky”—the term sounded pretty hollow at this point—he would live six months. In all likelihood, his time on earth would be much shorter, closer to three or four months.

After that news, Palenque was out of the question. Terence had no energy and no longer any will to fight the thing. What he wanted was to go home to the Big Island, but even that simple wish could not be granted to him. Christy could not be expected to take care of him alone, in a remote place with no easy access to emergency care. She was willing to try, but Terence’s friends Jack and Ricci joined me in saying that wouldn’t work.

Jack and Ricci had a place in Marin, a nice suburban house they rented in San Rafael, overlooking an inlet of San Rafael Bay. They invited Terence and Christy to stay with them. It was there that Terence passed his final days. I respect Jack and Ricci for taking on a task that turned them into caregivers, guardians, and gatekeepers. They arranged for Terence to have access to hospice care if needed; they engaged a pain specialist to manage his pain medications as his condition worsened. They created and maintained a firewall to protect Terence from the many fans that, out of misguided love, were desperate to connect with him—and from several old girlfriends who wanted to reconnect. Betsy, another member of their circle, offered me the use of a studio with a spare bedroom in her house if I should need it—the first of many kindnesses she has extended to my family since then.

Terence was rapidly declining; within the space of a week he had lost the ability to walk with a cane and was confined to a wheelchair. About this time, Jack and Ricci arranged to have a farewell party for Terence. Some of his oldest and best friends were there, including Vanessa, who had played the role of the “responsible adult” at La Chorrera. Others from the early Berkeley days showed up, and Terence was clearly moved, as were we all. Everyone knew they were saying goodbye.

Throughout February and March, Terence continued to lose strength and energy. Klea, who had started her freshman year in the fall at UCLA, had transferred to UC Santa Cruz to be closer to her father. I returned to the Bay Area with my family in mid-March. Ralph Metzner had organized a conference entitled “Ayahuasca, Shamanism, and Spirituality,” sponsored by the California Institute of Integral Studies, and held at the Cathedral Hill Hotel in San Francisco. Metzner had just published and edited a collection of essays and scientific articles on ayahuasca, and the conference was in part a platform to promote the book (Metzner 1999). I spoke at the event, along with others in the Ayahuasca field, including my colleagues from the UDV study, Charlie Grob and Jace Callaway. Luis Eduardo was also there, as were Jeremy Narby and attorney Roy Haber, who was working to secure recognition for the Santo Daime under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. It was an excellent conference, one of the first on the topic in the Bay Area. Sheila had not seen Terence since before he’d been diagnosed, and Caitlin had not seen him since the previous summer in Hawaii.

We planned to go to Marin to see him after the conference, not exactly a joyful reunion, but an important one. The first day of the conference, March 17, was warm and sunny, and we were all standing around by the pool after breakfast, waiting for the program to start. Sheila, Cait, and I were talking to Luis Eduardo and Roy. I looked away for a minute and when I looked back, Sheila had disappeared; next thing I knew, she was emerging from the swimming pool, fully clothed and dripping wet, clutching a child to her chest. While the rest of us were standing around distracted in conversation, Cait had spotted a small child motionless at the bottom of the pool and had alerted Sheila. Sheila’s EMT training kicked in: she dove into the pool and rescued the little girl, laid her by the side of the pool, and administered mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Luis Eduardo stepped in to help and found that she had a pulse, so Sheila could continue with her mouth-to-mouth. The rest of us stood by watching, stunned. After a few minutes, the girl coughed up some water, took a deep breath and let out a lusty cry. Sheila had saved her life! It turned out it was Roy’s daughter, at the time about five years old. Roy and his wife were deeply shaken, of course, and extremely grateful to Sheila. The paramedics took her to the hospital where she fully recovered. By the next day, she was at the conference, dancing around. That frightening moment created a bond between Sheila and Roy that has continued to this day.

Following the conference, Sheila, Cait, and I went with Luis Eduardo to Marin to see Terence. He was confined to his bed, and the encounter was difficult for all of us. What words can one find to speak to a dying man? Cait, eleven at the time, became upset as it dawned on her that she’d probably never see her uncle alive again. We all eventually confront the proof of life’s brevity in the face of someone dear to us. That was the lesson Cait was learning as her beloved uncle tried to wipe her tears and reassure her.

After spending a night or two in Marin at Betsy’s place, we flew back to Minnesota. A few days later, I returned to be with Terence. Time was growing short. When I got back to Marin on March 28, it was clear that things had taken a dramatic turn for the worse. There had been a traumatic event of some kind; it appeared to me that he’d suffered a stroke that had rendered him largely paralyzed and aphasic.

In my absence, other events had occurred, the consequences of which I would not fully grasp until later. It seemed there had been conversations with Terence, if that’s what you’d call such exchanges when the key person cannot speak, about changing his will. The changes involved the distribution of some of his properties, particularly his cherished library. At some point, one of Terence’s friends had visited his house on the Big Island and returned with a photographic inventory of some of Terence’s possessions—mostly art objects like his Tibetan thangkas. Apparently at Terence’s request, another friend had called in lawyers over the weekend to rewrite Terence’s will. I didn’t learn what the changes were until after Terence had died. I was suspicious and wondered why I had been excluded from these conversations. Just prior to my return to Minnesota, I had asked Terence to name me the executor of his will. He granted my request, but it turned out to be a burdensome responsibility, as I later found out.

During this period, I was staying at Betsy’s and spending every day with Terence, a vigil I shared with Klea and Finn. It’s not easy to be with someone who is dying, especially when they are unable to speak. The time passed slowly. My cousin Judy and her husband Laddie, in the area visiting their daughter, came by to pay their respects. In a moment I described earlier in the book, our Aunt Tress, whom Terence had been on the outs with since high school, phoned to offer some words of comfort. I spent long hours by Terence’s bedside, sometimes reading, sometimes sharing passages aloud, often just sitting in silence. I talked to Terence, trying to overcome my anguish, to say something meaningful. It was surprising how hard it was to get these simple words out: I love you. I forgive you. I ask that you forgive me. That was what I needed to say. There wasn’t much point in trying to say anything more than that. I’m pretty sure that he heard me, though he couldn’t respond.

I was not at Terence’s bedside when the end came. It happened at 2:15 a.m. on the third of April. His children and I had been with him the previous evening. Around ten or eleven we said goodnight, and Finn and I went to our lodgings at Betsy’s. Terence didn’t respond to our farewells, because he couldn’t. Christy was the only one with him at the end. Suddenly, he came fully awake, lifted himself up from the mattress, and tried to say something. His face was transfixed in an expression of ecstasy. Then, he settled back, let out a long sigh, and was gone. Christy walked to the window and looked out across the bay; the sky was cloudless and clear; it was the darkest hour. As she stood and watched, a shooting star flared and faded in the night. At least, she said this happened, and I believe her, because I want to believe her. I know it was Terry in his crystal ship, kicking it into warp drive, accelerating smoothly into hyperspace. Just like we always said it would be.

The news arrived the next morning when Christy came over to tell us. I actually heard it from Finn as I was descending the stairs from Betsy’s studio. When he told me, I let out an involuntary wail, an anguished cry like a wounded animal. I have never made a sound like that, before or since. I couldn’t have prevented it, even if I had wanted to. Something reached into me at that moment and tore out a piece of my soul. After that, I was just stunned. We went back to the house together. It was like being in a dream; there was a strange, muffled quality to external sounds, almost like my head was wrapped in gauze. We walked in and there was Terence, on his bed in his room. His face expressed ecstasy and peace. My beautiful brother, my mentor and tormentor, was gone.

Chapter 50 - Into the Fire

In keeping with Tibetan Buddhist practice, the body of a departed spirit should be left undisturbed for a few days. The soul is at a critical point of transition, and this final link to the world of the living should be maintained, to let the soul take its leave in peace, and in its own time. Though we were not practicing Buddhists, similar practices are found in many shamanic traditions, and it seemed to make sense. So Terence stayed with us in his bed at Jack and Ricci’s place while I arranged for a cremation at the Mount Tamalpais Mortuary.

The ceremony on April 6 was simple and small. Finn and Klea did not attend, having chosen to honor their father in their own way. Only Christy and I, and Terence’s old friends Lisa and Erik, loyal to the end, were present. Terence looked good. He was lying in a cardboard casket, dressed in his favorite tweed jacket, with amulets and necklaces from his close friends encircling his neck. He looked at peace. We closed up the casket, which was elevated on a bed of rollers. The attendants slid it into the oven and closed the door. We retired to the chapel to wait. It took just over an hour for the cremation to be finished. There were no sermons, nothing formal. We sat around and reminisced, about the days in Berkeley and even earlier, the days in Menlo Park and Lancaster when Terence was just Terry and we were just happy hippies, unknown and obscure, full of hope and idealism, dreams and delusions. How young and innocent and guileless we were back then.

A year or so after the cremation, I had an Ayahuasca experience in which I relived the cremation from Terence’s point of view. In my vision, it was just a flash of searing flames and heat, and it seems right somehow that it should be that way. At least that was the vision of cremation that I was granted by ayahuasca. I have no idea if it matches reality or not, but I was grateful to share the experience vicariously with Terence. After all, we had shared so much in life, to the point where at times I had felt we were like one person. It seemed fitting somehow to be able to share this final moment of alchemical transmutation.

Even in the face of death, life, ever impatient, hastens us along to the next act. We are not permitted the luxury of indulging the impulse to pause and reflect. That’s how it seemed after Terence’s death. Even before Terence’s body was consigned to the flames, I was summoned to a meeting at the lawyer’s office for a reading of the new will, the one that had been crafted in secret and in my absence. Terence’s former will was a simple, two-page document that basically stated his intent to bequeath all of his possessions to his children. The new will was a ten-page, densely worded document with an eleven-page appendix specifying gifts of specific personal property. It had been drafted and signed on March 24, a day during the period when I had been absent. Nothing about it sat well with me. I wondered how Terence, in the terminal stages of brain cancer, unable to speak and perhaps not fully capable of clarity of thought, could have participated in the drafting of such a document when his only way to respond would have been to raise a finger or nod. It seemed to me that his children had gotten short shrift. In particular, the new will specified that Terence’s beloved library was to be placed in a trust under the curatorship of a wealthy couple, friends of Terence’s and benefactors of the Esalen Institute. Terence had promised the library to Finn and Klea in earlier conversations in the summer of 1999, one of which I witnessed. The revised will nullified his intent as he had expressed it prior to his apparent change of heart. According to the new will, the library was to be donated to the Esalen Institute after probate had been settled.

I was named as the executor of Terence’s will, as I had requested of him. I had no previous experience with legal matters of this kind, and I wanted to carry out my duties within the letter of the law. I was also still grieving; the will was read two days after Terence’s death, and I don’t think I was thinking clearly. Looking back on it, had I been thinking more clearly, and had I better understood my prerogatives and rights as the executor and next of kin, I would have contested the will on the spot, on the grounds that Terence had not been of sound mind when it was drafted. But I did not take such action at the time, and the opportunity was lost.

The probate process turned into a can of worms that dragged on for years. It caused me a great deal of stress as I tried to balance my fiduciary duties with my wish to heal some wounds and find closure. Other than his art and his books, Terence had no real assets, so in order to pay off his medical bills and other expenses I was forced to put the house in Hawaii up for sale. This was difficult because the property was part of a collective ownership agreement and had no free title and no insurance. It took years, but I eventually found a person who was willing to buy Terence’s “shares” in the hui. Though far from perfect, it was the best resolution of the matter that I could manage under the circumstances.