New Year, New Deaths
Hello Beautiful,
I’ve been thinking about death. I’ve been thinking a lot about my death. In truth, I always am.
I suppose I think about my death, in some way or another, at least once a day, perhaps on occasion even several times a day. I think of death often. So too I think of your death, also of the death of everyone I know. I think of how you will slip away from me, how you will shed your skin and disappear from sight, from all sight. It hurts my heart, I’ll miss you so much. Even if we’ve never met in person, I’ll miss you; this person version of you so unbearably much. I’ll miss having you here with me on earth. Even having to write of your disappearance as I write it now, makes a knot in my stomach tighten and churn. I don’t want death to occur.
I think too of the death of my husband, who is over a decade older than me. I think of his death, how he will die first, disappear before me. I think of the death of my parents, of my mother and father. I have seen those last moments, our last moments together replaying over and over, our final goodbyes, in my mind and I fear, so terribly, these moments of finality. I think of the death of my children, of the lives they will live beyond me, of their lives that will continue beyond my death, beyond my own disappearance. And it is unspeakable; the deep, ambiguous aching I encounter when I “think” of these losses. Beyond terrifying, beyond unimaginable; I search for a word but it does not come.
Death: (noun) the action or fact of dying or being killed; the end of life.
For me, from one vantage - Death: a permanent exodus, a departing, a detaching, one has flown where the other can no longer go, a most abominable severance, a violation of love - I cannot help but to think of it this way; Death as an intruder in the dark, a masked betrayal. But dear friend, beloved - I don’t want to be afraid.
Do you think of Death? Have you known Death? Has Death knocked upon your door, and taken, from within your own sphere, someone you held very dear? If not, if not yet - soon. Death will come and Death will take from you. A ghost, an apparition - it will not abide by laws of reason, by pleas or demands - it will enter. It will enter your home, slip in through the cracks, glide past your wants, your desires, silently overpower any barrier, and have whomever it has marked. You cannot protect any person, any human individual - not oneself, nor another; however precious - for whom Death has specified Time, for whom Death has prescribed Now. They will float, rise atop their earth form, and be carried away; their souls guided by forces and a master cosmos we do not fully understand; their flesh-made bodies listless, a remnant no longer inhabited.
Death is monster. How can we as humans not conceive the theft as such? Is Death not the ultimate crime:
When it takes your child?
When it steals from you, in the middle of the night, your mother, your father, your husband, your wife?
Twenty six-year-olds and half a dozen educators in an elementary school in a state called Connecticut, all gone in one sudden sweep; a mother and psychologically oppressed boy-turned-oppressor too, in a horrific act of violence? A school shooting? Is this not a most evil act conceivable? Did Death not visit treacherously, without right?
But I will not be afraid. We must find a way out of this, we must find a way out of this mess, this mess of death and its destructive wake; the aches and sorrows left dangling in our hearts, so much pain.
And so I think of it. I think of Death always, almost constantly. In every conversation, in every touch and exchange of vibration with every human I’ve ever encountered, with every encounter of every human still to come in my future - friend, I think of death, I examine it. And here is what I have found; a jewel uncovered, there all along, safeguarded within the heart, within the very same instrument of love that bears the burden of Death’s unstoppable transgressions:
Death - dear friend - is an illusion.
Here is how I know such Truth, the guise of Death - I feel otherwise; I feel through Death. My feelings are not bound by the limits of human death. Rather my feelings extend beyond, they pass through - like a beam of light through a glass prism - the wall of Death. I feel connected, through my heart, to souls passed on and even to all souls yet to be born. It is simply there; a knowing in the center of my chest - We Cannot Be Unstrung, We Are One. There cannot be any real separation. Separation of Who We Are - of that light sparking behind the lens of our eyes; of that which demonstrates the very presence of Life - cannot and does not exist; energy can disperse, move to other places, transform and shape shift - but it cannot be destroyed. Therefore Death, as we consider it, is false. This Knowing gives me hope; there is even more to feel, even more to know.
Isolated thinking, thinking in isolation from feeling - is flawed; limited to five senses - taste, touch, sound, smell and sight - thinking can grasp only the concrete, that which is tangible, material; and therefore Death, through the lens of thought-process, appears monstrous, finite, a villainous enigma. But what if the Grim Reaper were an Angel in Disguise? An angel come to teach of our potential? To carry us home when our soul can no longer be housed in a flesh-made vessel?
It is hard for me to remain in the swirl of Truth’s magnetism; an energetic force my heart can pick up on; as a device identify, translate, and transmit - for I am a Thinking Machine; I’m tuned to thoughts. I was taught, from the moment of my birth, to value the intellectual; to perceive, communicate and survive through the engine of the mind. I’m sure you were too, we all are. From our first words in the language of our geographic origin, to our final thoughts projecting as memories moments before we’ve single digits of breaths left to ingest - we are instructed - to Think. Through all our societal orders, we are instructed to experience and to value all of reality through the mind. I’ve therefore, very little practice in the capacity of my heart’s fundamental abilities. Isn’t that something?
Death is coming for us my friend. And with each new year, with each new day, new hour, new moment - it grows ever closer. We will disappear from this world, from this place; we will take a last breath. Let us think of this, let us remember it - so that when it arrives; whether it be quietly, violently, secretly, swiftly, or steadily slinking up our sides - we may recognize it; live our lives wisely and admit Death’s entrance when it “at long last” alights smiling, through the engine of the heart. This is where Death belongs; made plain, an Angel of Visibility, an angel delivering the gift of irrevocable connectivity. Our hearts know the way. A heart is quite literally designed to embrace and conduct the experience of Death. Let us dwell on that…
I could not love you more, in this new year and always.
Photo by Elijah O'Donnell