The Living and the Dead

March 13, 2016 — #death, afterlife, cancer, fate, peace

Meesie loves her massage

Memory and spirit linger after our friends pass into the next realm.  The spirit  is hard to define or capture during a lifetime, but after death the history of facts is distilled into an essence.  I don’t communicate, as in converse, with the dead, but I spend time savoring the essential qualities they represent.  This week a young woman who was our friend died from a raging melanoma in her bloodstream.  She dedicated her time on earth to healing animals and people with her massage skills.  When our dog was on hospice she helped our family immensely by providing love and care during her last months.

Isaiah 57:1-2
1 The righteous perish, and no one takes it to heart; the devout are taken away, and no one understands that the righteous are taken away to be spared from evil. 2 Those who walk uprightly enter into peace; they find rest as they lie in death.

I feel the loss of her presence on this earthly plane, but have a strong assurance that she has gone to a sweet rest.  Living had become too much for her, perhaps because she gave so much of herself to others.  The details of making a living, paying taxes, doing the daily tasks that ground us to the earth slowly became more difficult.  I had my own agenda about teaching her simple life skills that I thought were the solution to the slipping away from here syndrome I had observed.  I could not have been more wrong.  Self care is not always the answer for every situation, as I tend to believe.  I have no knowledge of the supernatural energies that give and take life.  My simplistic view that everything can be healed has been transformed by her passing.  Wounds inspire healing, and in some languages the word for wound is the same as the word for healing.  The complicated process of healing is not within our control.  I am not in charge of it, nor do I understand it.

Living people feel robbed by the loss of our loved ones, but each of us has a private and unique gift of life.  We must accept that those who leave us in their prime have fulfilled their own mission and are ready to go at some basic level. I accepted this fact when my dog gave up her life, and now I am certain that crossing the rainbow bridge may be scary, but it is a relief.  I am grateful for the good times and calm in the knowledge that peace is welcome when the end arrives.

In Memoriam

Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life;
That I, considering everywhere
Her secret meaning in her deeds,
And finding that of fifty seeds
She often brings but one to bear,
I falter where I firmly trod,
And falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great world’s altar-stairs
That slope thro’ darkness up to God,
I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,
And gather dust and chaff, and call
To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope.