Love and Immortality
"The moment you left this life was the moment I knew you'd always be with me in spirit"
I was not there when my father left this earth. I could not hold his hand or look into his eyes. I could not reassure him of anything or release him from worry. Worst of all, I could not become aware of anything, as he was in the hospital. I was thousands of miles away both physically and perhaps mentally.
I did what most human beings do, when they are not told a story. I asked questions, the questions led to more questions and before I knew it, I had all sorts of narratives, moving images and stories in my mind. Because I did not say goodbye, it meant I would spend a "lifetime" thinking of the goodbyes I did not get to say.
“I think perhaps I will always hold a candle for you – even until it burns my hand.And when the light has long since gone …. I will be there in the darkness holding what remains, quite simply because I cannot let go.”― Ranata Suzuki
I guess it was a way to keep me sane or to keep the guilt at bay, to torture myself but for all I know, it could be his spirit haunting me as he and I were left as an unfinished story.
I lost him more than a year ago now. I think about him more than the week after I heard about his passing. Perhaps it was because I threw myself into the whirlwind of activity. It was perhaps easier to bare or perhaps time was a comfortable medium for the distance needed to see the situation.
Whatever the reason, it is now up to me to craft the end of our story. Or is it? Perhaps it is not the end. Perhaps it is just a new beginning.
Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.Norman Cousins
I now no longer need cars, airline tickets or my feet to cross the distance between us. If anything, I know where to find him. My mind still struggles and goes back to the same patterns of looking for him in the folds of my mind.
I search the past, yet I know he is in the space of silence between every beat of my heart.
“Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.”― Jamie Anderson
As breath, body and story unites, the spirit comes to life and we come to share our life through the expressions of our human experiences. Our society eagerly excepts happy, cheerful and pleasant messages but often leaves us hanging with the things in between.
“When we lose someone we love we must learn not to live without them, but to live with the love they left behind” – Anonymous
In between the loss, trauma, pain and the happy ending, there is a lifetime of thoughts, feelings and human experience that is worth more than the outcome itself.
I often feel guilty and ashamed at such times and almost want to apologize for wasting your time with my "weakness" or "silliness". I know what they are, intimately mine and yet, I refuse to hide away and ask that you too refuse to walk alone.
“The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?” – Edgar Allan Poe
I, like you, have trouble with words at times. I then use images and whatever means I have at my disposal to cope, reason, analyze, accept and transform my predicament.
Whatever it is, I remind myself, that what my thoughts project are just holograms of the things that hide reality. As such, everything is just play. Just colors, forms, stories and sounds coming together as energy transforms them into an illusion I choose.
Such is the story of my life and as so, I chose it.
“If being a kid is about learning how to live, then being a grown-up is about learning how to die” – Stephen King
Death is a transformation. As I know it transformed my dad, it is transforming me. I can accept the fact that we have a spiritual bond and it no longer scares me to embrace it.
There is no death, only a change of worlds.Chief Seattle