Death is something that eludes all understanding, one can only speculate what happens in the moments just before and after that last sigh. And even now after I've experienced so closely the death of someone I loved dearly just a year ago today, I have no better explanation of death than I did before. Now all I have are the memories of a great man who comes to mind frequently and the occasional feeling that wells up inside me that I recognized so regularly in the eyes of my classmates two years ago.
Some say that dying is our soul transcending into another life, place or time and I like that idea, because transcendence sounds peaceful. Actually, the first time death ever touched my life I was seven. My great grandmother passed away and I remember my mom trying to explain to me what dying was like. At a loss for words she described to me a hand, which was to represent our soul, and on the hand was a glove, our body. When the glove gets too small or too worn down, our soul needs something bigger, something warmer, perhaps a new glove altogether, or perhaps just the freedom to feel the air around it. So I've gone through life with this picture painted peacefully in my mind, imagining death to be a lot like a hand free, the ability to finally touch and feel and experience life for the first time outside the perimeters and confinements of a glove. What I didn't know was that when a soul is finally free to experience whatever lies after this life for us, you're left here still constricted to your glove and ignorance; unable to understand the peace that said soul has transcended into.
So really it's not death that eludes us, because we all know that it's inevitable, we all know that eventually as those before us, we too will part from this world. So dying and the event of death itself are both well understood, but the question of what happens after death is what remains and is a concept which is to be interpreted uniquely by each individual soul. The event itself can be comprehended, your body is only made to last so long and eventually it wears out, that's the easy part, that's logic and science we can all wrap our heads around. What's not so easy is learning to go on in the absence of a life which you've always known to be there. It's walking into my grandparents house and realizing that no matter how long I wait or how many more times I walk in he's never going to be sitting in his recliner. It's the empty chair during early breakfast and hearing his voice echo in my head and on the answering machine even though he spoke his last words more than a year ago now. This is what's hard, what's scary, because there is no answer, no logic; there's only the absence of a great man; people talking about him in past tense, a widow wandering through her days making an effort to stay busy and catching glimpses of him here and there. I'm left asking myself, if this is what it feels like after the end, what's the point in beginning, in living at all?
What death has taught me is that living is the opportunity to give.
And in his life that's exactly what my granpa did. Since his death, a year ago today, I've grown closer to this man, I've come to know who he was, what he stood for and what he was trying to say all those years we spent arguing in the kitchen. I've heard story after story from complete strangers telling me of my granpa's wisdom, of his legacy and I've been floored in moments of grace and aw as I've felt his presence surround me during times of need.
In the weeks before he died, my granpa carried around a small index card in his wallet, it read; "After death your soul lives on, your soul you know, is you in others."
So even now as I sit here with tears rolling down my cheeks and an ache in my heart, I know he's okay. I'm surrounded by him every day, whether it's in an Alanon meeting, sitting around a campfire in Goodland, or listening to my brothers belt out Johnny Cash; I see him and experience him in others and I am comforted, because if nothing else he lived and no matter how many years may come to pass nothing can take from us that which he has given. I know that my granpa is at peace, wherever he is and I trust that someday when the glove of life is lifted from my soul, I too will transcend and though those left behind may mourn and miss me; I hope that they can understand it's only a mere veil that separates me from them and that I will remain forever around and in them in everything I've given to this world.
Still missing you,
Your Pretty Girl
Rest In Paradise.
