Yesterday morning I learned that a young man had died who I did not know extremely well. Not the details of his life, or what he was doing every day.
Whatever “knowing” someone extremely well means….
I had found him totally and completely delightful and sweet, like giving him a big huge hug, from the moment I met him. Like recognizing a long-lost friend.
He came to the dance I facilitate with my partner, and several other dances attended by many people who love to dance in Seattle.
When I learned he was gone, I began to weep.
He reminded me of my son from the very start….they look fairly similar, are close in age, and have a kind-hearted, joyful, unassuming energy.
Maybe this is why I felt so tender towards him.
Or maybe it was because he reminded me of myself.
Seeking answers, asking questions, craving understanding, observing the love and pain of this world and having a great hunger to know.
When I was 22, the age of this dear young man, I suffered deeply from my own thoughts about life and death.
Life actually felt very difficult at the time. I had dropped out of college. I wasn’t sure which direction to take. I wanted only to read philosophical works, spiritual scripture and sacred text, and talk about meaningful life-and-death matters.
Fortunately (I can now say it was fortunate) that never stopped.
And here today, learning of this death, I feel very contemplative and full of grief.
Almost like its too much to write about, and yet it is here, filling my consciousness.
Death feels so decisive, permanent. It feels like loss.
Every single one of us has known others who have died.
And what is this moment when the awareness that someone is gone occurs, and there is a powerful energy that moves like a great wave?
The temporary nature of everything presents itself.
Here again today….everything is temporary.
This past year I have encountered two other deaths of people I knew and loved. I still think about them. I still see them talking, smiling, in my mind. So vivid.
I still see my own father, gone so many years apparently, standing in the kitchen, cooking and wearing a big chef’s apron. Like it was yesterday.
Talking, smiling, his facial expressions, his wire-rimmed glasses.
The mind calls up the picture with such acute precision, so real.
Then the feeling enters, an expression of the thoughts and beliefs.
The grief pours in when I have the thought “I will never have that again” or “I want more of this image, this person, but more is impossible”.
Can I be with this memory, and allow it to live, in big-screen technicolor? Just let it be here, this full-blown memory of this wonderful person who I loved?
Because when I can let it live here in this present moment, when I take in my surroundings (oak table, green chairs, silver laptop computer, family baby photos, sound of airplane, white flower in vase, pink fingernails typing) then this is all here, as well as the internal image (his face, smiling, laughing, head tipped back, brown eyes, happiness).
All here. Things, pictures, memories, feelings, grief, appreciation, love.
Unknown, mysterious, impermanent, wild.
Letting go of the demand, the ache to have more of something….more time, more connection, more of that memory, that person, more, more, please more.
Even being with the feeling of wanting more.
Recently, a dear friend offered this poem on the anniversary of her husband’s passing.
Today, I share it with you, in honor of those who have gone before, whose images I hold in my mind and heart.
When the heart breaks open with letting go.
Walking Away
For Sean
C Day Lewis
It is eighteen years ago, almost to the day –
A sunny day with leaves just turning,
The touch-lines new-ruled – since I watched you play
Your first game of football, then, like a satellite
Wrenched from its orbit, go drifting away
Behind a scatter of boys. I can see
You walking away from me towards the school
With the pathos of a half-fledged thing set free
Into a wilderness, the gait of one
Who finds no path where the path should be.
That hesitant figure, eddying away
Like a winged seed loosened from its parent stem,
Has something I never quite grasp to convey
About nature’s give-and-take – the small, the scorching
Ordeals which fire one’s irresolute clay.
I have had worse partings, but none that so
Gnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughly
Saying what God alone could perfectly show –
How selfhood begins with a walking away,
And love is proved in the letting go.
Love, Grace