Keeping the Dream

I’m sorry I didn’t post yesterday. I missed it. I’ve really come to look forward to sitting here on a daily basis. It’s become a lovely daily ritual, and it just doesn’t feel right when I skip a day.

Yesterday was a day of preparation. In just a little over an hour, I pick up my nephew. We have a special relationship, he and I. I was his mom’s sister…still am, as far as I’m concerned, and she was the world to him. We see her in each other.

I look at him and remember how much she adored him, how hard she fought to stay here.

He was seven when she passed away.

You know, when she died, in trying to explain why, a spiritual teacher of hers said to her husband, “She wanted to give you the highest.” And through my grief and tears a resounding thought came through - What a crock!

Death had to drag her out of her body, and there’s no doubt in my mind Death has a few extra scars to show for it.

Few people would fight so tenaciously, cling to life even when one of her own doctors was telling her to quit, because he couldn’t stand to see the pain she was in. A doctor, no doubt, who has seen a lot.

It was hard to witness. But she said she made a promise to her son that she would do whatever she could to stay. And she did. Way beyond what anyone would think possible.

I suppose it’s comforting to think that when something you don’t want happens, it’s for a good reason…or was meant to be. But it isn’t to me, and it especially isn’t when it doesn’t honor the real passion or discount the tremendous effort that person put into attaining something…and failed.

My sister did not want to go. She didn’t want to suffer either. There was no grand purpose in it for her. And she never would have broken her son’s heart for anything. I was with her as she was losing her battle. I held her hand, climbed into the hospital bed at times, to hold her as she was wracked with pain. I know why she put herself through that. It was to stay long enough for the tide to turn. It didn’t.

What she was was true to herself all the way to the end. That is the inspiration in this story.

Not some hyped up explanation as to some cosmic purpose.

I don’t know why she had to die at this time. Even that statement implies there has to be a reason for everything. Maybe that blank needs to be filled in by us. It goes without saying there’s a lot I don’t understand, especially where suffering is concerned. I don’t understand why my sister died to not see her son grow up and my abusive father lived to have another set of kids.

But I still believe in Justice, even though it doesn’t always manifest here. And I still believe in Grace, even though it’s sometimes absent in the lives of those who deserve it the most.

There is no greater way I can honor my sister than to not become disillusioned.

My not understanding doesn’t determine my belief in hope or in something better or more than what we see. But that doesn’t mean I invalidate the experience of the suffering or pretend that what is clearly unjust and sad isn’t, just because it doesn’t fit into what I need to believe.

So no, I can’t tell you in the great scheme of things, why my sister died. But I can tell you what reason she didn’t die for. She didn’t die because she was in cahoots with some cosmic plan to express some noble idea of love as sacrifice, or because suffering and early death is the mark of a truly great soul.

If achieving that stature required the breaking of a child’s heart, never mind her son’s, she would have been content to enter heaven as the lowliest one.

Cancer took her, when she didn’t want to go. She never would have abandoned her son…and she didn’t.

If I have anything to do with it, he will know that.

On my birthday week, I want to talk about death. Somehow it seems fitting. Not because I’m depressed, but because I am encouraged and feel stronger within myself than in my youth.

My growing fine lines, the appearance of more white hair and whiter white hair, the change of the texture of my skin and the slowing of my metabolism do not trigger a panicked desire to run in the opposite direction. That happened over a decade ago for a couple of years. I’ve moved to a place where I feel the desire to stand with my feet planted firm in the ground and look at what awaits me straight in the eye.

Ronni Bennett, one of my all time favorite bloggers, made an awesome post not too long ago entitled “On the Advent of Our Death“. My approaching birthday at the beginning of the 2nd “half a century” of my life makes me contemplate this reality, that seems to move closer to me with each passing year.

She writes,

Ageism. However wrong it is, however much individual pain and debilitating consequences result from it and how many people are harmed is, to a degree, about fear of death.

She includes a number of quotes about death down through the ages from the book, “Light on Aging and Dying” by Helen Nearing.

I was not only thrilled to find out about this book, but the author’s life was simply inspirational. She was a fascinating woman who left an incredible legacy along with her husband, Scott. Perhaps, when you live a life as rich as this, you are less afraid…perhaps not. I don’t know.

I do know we do associate death with aging, but really, death doesn’t discriminate like people. It has no preference for old age, like we have no respect for it. Far too many children become well acquainted with Death, embraced in it’s arms through the courtesy of starvation and indifference.

And Death is a gracious guest. Whenever invited by human cruelty, Death will enter and take a life, take a dream, take someone’s last hope. There’s the death of esteem or self worth. There’s the death a child experiences when abuse descends upon her innocence just as sure as any Grim Reaper.

But Death isn’t a solitary, for wherever Death goes, Life goes too. Like the inhale to the exhale, Life emerges from Death like the Phoenix from the Ashes or the Pegasus from the Medusa. Just because the living can’t follow the dead, doesn’t mean there’s no place to go, and just because the spirit lays crushed under snow, doesn’t mean the ice won’t crack in the spring.

I like the Zen philosophy about death, as a continuum and as a teacher. Being mindful of it is a great humbler of pride and the foolishness that follows.

How many bad choices have I made in my life because I thought I had all the time in the world? Perhaps wisdom is the beginning of realizing we don’t. But for now, I will not fear the closer proximity to Death as I grow in years, because measuring time is an illusion, anyway. This could be my last post or one of thousands more. I don’t know. And neither do you.

What I do know is that for whatever reason, I don’t feel alone, and I don’t mind if among the angels, Death is one of them.

~ ~ ~
Book referenced in this post: