April 13 * Just when you think life is perfect, it isn't. It makes me angry for putting so much effort into making it so. All we have is today, but it is the hope in tomorrow that keeps us going. When that hope is gone, death comes knocking.
My heart is so heavy with grief, so profoundly sad that this should happen. I find a great mixture of emotions accompanies grief - anger, overwhelming compassion, guilt, denial... this is a new experience, grieving someone I knew and loved. How can one mourn the existence of such a beautiful and likeable soul? It is amazing how the images of this person flood into my mind, each one making the pain more acute.
Day 3: This day is marked with frequent moments of despondency, surreality, and the truth that life and death are two sides of the same coin. Some things seem more meaningful and others so meaningless in light of this truth.
We cannot give another the ability to see in dark times, or give them the courage to hope, but we can remind them of how the forces of life are moving in them, so they might feel it, see it and believe it without a doubt.
Day 4: We laid his body to rest today, yet there will be a remembrance and much learning from here on. I shed many tears today, in realizing how many people, friends and family are affected. It doesn't seem right that this came to be, when so much love and life surrounded him, and God's grace was proclaimed to him on so many occasions. I feel exhausted, but I am sure it is nothing compared to the feelings of his family, his wife. I thanked those who so eloquently put into words the deepest feelings of those there today.
Day 6: I feel very tired, irritable, depressed and unmotivated today -- out of flow. My mind is numb and wandering. I feel acute loss. I feel compassion for those closest to him who are trying to find strength to go on. This is tragedy and this is loss.
My uncle's words return to me, of the civil war my cousin was waging alone in himself, how he chose to break form all his relationships leaving feelings of resentment in those who knew him best, how there is but One in whom to turn to for comfort from the profound feelings experienced in such times.
I am tender in remembering the value of life. He died before having the realization that everything can open the heart and hands in acceptance of who we are.
Day 8: Yesterday was better, perhaps because of the events of life, perhaps the result of sitting with the pain for the time it takes to let it turn and become an appreciation for the life that continues on. Like a beginning surfer, I rode the wave of "life is fragile and important" and the trough of "life is ultimately meaningless," and now feel I'm on the crest of a big one, heart opened and resuscitated by something so profound and real, eyes opened to the blessings surrounding and the elements that don't belong in thie equation, mind open to a greater perspective, a greater will, and finding comfort in the end of a path that lifts off to learning. I will practice living in the sensitivity, compassion and kindness that an opened, resuscitated heart abides in. I must remind others to be who they are, sharing what you see in them that moves and has being in this life.
Day 9: As indicated by my unkind words, there is still a festering anger and bitterness toward Death for taking something so beautiful as a life; that it is the fate of all things beautiful is tragedy! Unacceptable! It threatens to thwart my own carefree existence and all that I hold dear! Could "living on" possibly be as beautiful as this current life, with all it's contrasts and harmonies? I truly love life - is this "the pride of life" or gratitude profound? I can't imagine choosing to leave it, for I have learned to build a nest to live in using the twigs and grasses labelled "pain," "loneliness," "fear," "misunderstanding," "sadness," "disappointment," and "grief,"...
I feel I am stuck in this limbo between a soulful, feeling, meaningful inner world, which is now so alive in honesty and profound reality... and this other superficial world that screams for my attentions yet has nothing really to say. Sitting here now, with the day unexpectedly free to do as I wish, I resist the soulful meditative work - the gardening, the creating, the dancing, the writing. Why do I now feel so uncomfortable in the realm of soul, of spirit?
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