i've had to contemplate afresh what death means. is it an end? a beginning? a completion? or breakdown of normal function? what is normal? what is function?
my grams' sister, whom i adore and sadly have not been in consistent contact with lately (about three years, how time flies) has just slipped into a coma.
i am now left with a choice between celebrating her life, though it is not over yet, or lamenting my failures as a grandniece. i would rather admit my failures and acknowledge her life. her number still etched in my cell phone, unused. she wouldn't be the first one.
when i dropped my cell in water recently, i didn't care so much about the phone, it was the numbers. losing something irretrievable.
death is kind of like that. but do we lose them? are they irretrievable? i'm not sure. it certainly feels that way. but my grams is as real to me today as she was yesterday and ten years ago.
though i cannot touch her. this is the dilemma. do we need that physical certainty that those we love are with us, to believe? or can we trust that wherever they are or end up when they leave us, they are able to come and go from at will.
are they hovering about us as a cloud of smoke lingers unseen around smokers? every fibre of their clothing reeks of the smoke. their presence is easily distinguished as a smoker. and this isn't the most pleasant image, but i used it once pertaining to my then take on god.
so much has changed, everything, in fact. yet, nothing has changed. and this latest bout with mortality has arrived when i have no grief left to grieve. no sadness left to spend. i have only gratitude and respect for the one i love who may soon leave this world forever.
i cannot even get away from work and commitments to honor that life. so i will find the obliging rock that held me last time, and remember her there. she would like that.
and i have to remember, tears are valuable, regardless of what people think.
peace.
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I surely will never understand the sum of the ends and outs of these questions, but I must rely upon more than emotions to sustain my personal resolute-s. I see the needles of the pine fall willingly at season to bloom again in deeper green in spring. In the blooming, it also releases thick pollen that chokes, covers and puts distance between souls that long for its scented shade. As simple-minded as this sounds, to me at least I see it as life and death, more important the Great Beyond. As in all choices, I think it is our given right to choose our hopes though many are never realized. But in the death of winter, I, look forward without doubt of it’s coming, Spring. Therefore, me think, with that same hope of everlasting I choose the ever after that hangs in the balance one-way or the other. I’d rather it be without the pollen choking separation, yet the sweet shade of peace.
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