death

So there's a great blog I follow about mindful parenting.

http://committedparent.wordpress.com/

Check it out. I know you all are more fixated on the election right now. It's not just Obama, here in Massachusetts it is Question One, and out there in California it is Proposition 8, and in Connecticut it is about the constitutional amendment--big topics everywhere you go.

So Dr. Brady's post--not even his most recent post--about death probably isn't where most of you are at.

He quotes Tagore, which kind of hit a nerve for me since my Grandma left behind a quote from Tagore to be found by all of us when she died. This post--and the comments left by readers--really bolstered me because I have been amazed how much I have thought about death since Ari was born--and a little worried about it. It didn't feel normal. (And it still may not be normal, but at least it doesn't feel wrong.)

I brought him into this world, after all. I am responsible for the fact that he is alive. Unlike someone who chose to do this with a partner, I took the responsibility wholly upon myself to bring this life into this strange and somewhat desolate existence. Who knows what will befall him? But I do know that someday he will die. And there are times when I find that knowledge to be almost unbearable. Strange words from a yogi.

This issue goes to the heart of everything for me, and has every since I can nearly recall. I was told when I was too young to understand it that “death is a dreamless sleep.” I remember being so confounded by death and the limits of it. I remember long late night car rides when I would look into the steamy car window and think about Laura Ingalls Wilder being dead; about her body decomposing somewhere and her suchness–where was it?

It never stopped plaguing me–the fear of death. Not only losing this self, but all the other selves I love and have loved and in fact the loss of all the people who were already dead when I came to love them (great-grandparents, authors, artists, etc.) I hated hearing about tombs being broken open, etc. I hated the idea that anyone’s carefully crafted protection was being sundered. Even if I did not believe that those rites offered them any protection at all from the neurons simply shutting down as part of the body decaying and dissolving–even if I in no way could really believe in any Eternal–-I hated the idea that someone else’s faith was challenged in such a fundamental way.

It has been one of the hardest things about becoming a mother. I have attached so fiercely to the aliveness of my son. I have moments when I can’t bear the idea of him dying–-ever. (Much, much worse if he died before I did.) I also can’t bear global warming. That is too much impermanence for me. I have friends who are able to face the possible extinction of the human species with equanimity, even joy. Not so me.

One of the times I felt fully free of this (almost always nascent) brooding was when I was on retreat at IMS. I was walking and glanced up through the window and saw (imagined) an image of children climbing up a play structure to go down a slide. (This was before Ari was born.) And I thought, so peacefully, “Ah, yes, it will be their turn.” I felt myself relinquishing the me-ness of death, for myself and for others as well. I just felt myself take my place in the order of things, and death along with it. And I felt a great contentment that I would be able to go along with all these other beauties--these people I have loved–-into the unknown.

It still torments me, death, along with other things, like starvation, and children suffering in unspeakable ways. I always feel these things so keenly; perhaps I am unwilling to relinquish the sadness in this anguish. We do suffer; we will die. It is not “okay” how some people must live. And I can still love this reality that we are all of us helpless before. This moment, typing on the keys. Right now, I surrender to it.

I love the idea of living a life where death seemed truly like a friend, nothing to be afraid of. Any of you feel like that?