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Thoughts on death
Last week, my mother’s husband died. They were married early in the pandemic and he suffered a massive stroke just 3 months later. For the next 14 months, he was bed-ridden and she was his primary care taker. Due to his health and circumstances of the pandemic, I truly didn’t have the chance to get to know him. At his funeral, as I witnessed his loved ones share stories about him and express their love, I felt for the first time like I was getting insight into the man he was.
Funerals are interesting to me. To be honest, I really like them. I mean, of course the circumstances are unfortunate, but the expressions of love and celebration of life are incredible to behold. I always hope that those who’ve passed were told those things while still alive. I hope they knew how loved they were. I think we, as human beings, have a way of holding back those kind words and loving sentiments sometimes. We shouldn’t wait. We shouldn’t hold back. We should share with our loved ones all the wonderful things we see in them. I’ve heard the saying “never suppress a generous thought” and I believe that, similarly, we should never suppress an expression of love.
This is a subject not everyone will be comfortable discussing, but I wonder what your thoughts about death are. Do you believe in an afterlife? Have you experienced loss in your life? If so, how did/do you cope with that loss?
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1 Reply
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Good subject!
Completely agree with you about not holding back and sharing love as much as possible, Jenny.I can’t share your interest for funerals however. Perhaps I didn’t go to the good ones yet 😉 If there is life music, it becomes more bearable and less formal. The best memory I have is my mother’s funeral, because I got to talk in the language I most appreciate: music. I hired a good piano for the occasion and played Grieg, Schumann and Mozart for her. My relationship with an overbearing mother was complicated at times to say the least, but we always shared music and piano playing as a mutual love and only common safe place to talk about.
I don’t (have to) believe in an afterlife because I think there is no time. Life is always. There is no before or after. I sincerely experience this timeless aliveness, in which there is no birth or death. These only apply to the biological form of the body. When the psychological identification with the body is gone, there is only this timeless being. It’s not personal and not related to any form, time or space. It has no dimensions. It’s no concept or belief so it can’t be explained with language or understood with thoughts. It’s purely intuitive.
Identifying with that, which I call awareness or wholeness, means that I was there when this body was born. I was not born in the body, the body was born in me. And in time, when it runs out, the body will also die in me. I will be there too, at the funeral. I will be at everyone’s funeral and I witnessed everyone’s birth. Everything that is said or thought included. This is no belief, but an experience that took me over a while ago by surprise. It still deepens continually. I call it freedom, or liberation.
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