Tuesday, November 18, 2008

death made me soft

I read an overdue article in an old Yoga Journal magazine I had sitting around my abode last week. The title was "Sweet Hereafter." It talked about meditating about your own death in order to obtain an enlightened state of being. This may sound morbid, but it is true. Meditating on death, your own death, or the death of a loved one makes you soft and pliable, almost like clay or dough. Death opens me. It pries open the hardness of my heart and melts grudges away like butter in the sunlight on the kitchen table.

This article brought me back to the death of my father a year and a half ago and the feelings which surged up and over me during my time of loss. I was instantly more keen to other people's emotions and situations which I knew nothing about. I did not become ultra sensitive, but more human, more of what I wish I was every day. Strangers became companions on a similar journey with struggles, losses, and gains which I knew nothing about but felt strangely connected to because of the openness of my being. Death brought me closer to life. It made me more aware of those surrounding me that I held so dear, or those whom I was holding at a distance because of some sort of disagreement. I became soft, at least soft in the fashion that I was more aware of my surroundings instead of just what was happening to me. I was no longer just being affected by life, I was the conscious cog on the wheel. The more I thought about death, the less I feared it and everything that comes with it, whether it would be the death of others or myself. When someone dies right before your eyes, when their last breath is breathed and you are there to share that same breath, you evolve, you change. You become soft, pliable, and awakened even in this time of complete and utter end of another human's physical life right before your eyes. Experiencing my father's death was a rebirth for me, a rebirth of my life in his death. His last breath lives on in me each and every day as a reminder of my life and the fragility of my physical state of being.




The last picture I took with my dad, a month before he passed away.

1 comment:

Meg said...

that's a great picture and a great post. I love you.