Do you ever wonder why we are so afraid of the dead? Or is it that we are afraid of death, because to us who are living in chronological time it feels so final. We are afraid of endings, maybe. We are afraid of not finishing something, even though death is the finishment of life.
Wrapped up as a perfect circle. The snake bites its own tail not because it is foolish, but because everything is a cycle. The beginning is the end is the beginning is the end.
I do think it’s possible to die with regrets. I think there must be many spirits still tied to Here because of grief, regret, guilt, fear. I think the dead have not necessarily moved beyond strong emotions. I think the dead sometimes need to be walked home.
In the midwest, in southern Michigan, autumn is a full sensory experience of the natural cycle of death. The leaves of deciduous trees changing color and then falling, then fading.
Now the leaves are mulch for the earth.
Now the earth will draw into itself, protecting what is underneath, preparing for a sleep of many months.
Now the animals get ready to hibernate. Now the sandhill cranes cease their stalking across the fields and yards. Now there are squirrels burying as many acorns as they can find, letting the earth cover their last harvest before the winter.
Smell the air and you will understand the sweet rotting death of thousands of leaves. They are becoming what is inevitably, naturally, the next thing they will be.
Now the whispers of trees are inaudible as they speak to each other through their root systems, nourishing themselves and each other, surviving in their long slow timeline. There are trees alive that were there before you were born; there are saplings nestling into the ground that were born during your lifetime; there will be trees growing after you are gone.
All the dirt you ever see is made of fragments of so many other things. The earth itself is a record of all our lives and all our deaths.
We are always dying, and I think we forget this on purpose. Because we are so afraid of death and afraid of the dead. Because we don’t know what happens afterward. We are the snakes biting our own tails trying to make a perfect unbroken circle of our lives so that they never end.
How sweetly foolish we are.
The point is not that the veil may be thinner today; the point is that we are facing toward death and trying out what it feels like to be afraid and look anyway.
If you believe that your ancestors can watch you — and I hope it isn’t all of them at the same time because that is a crowd far too large — you may hear them whisper to you today. We love you. Look how alive you are. I can see my memories reflected in your eyes.
If you believe that the cycle of the seasons has meaning; even in this burning world, even though our seasons are changing and have already changed; these are the last days of the waning year. Let them pass naturally. Let what is dying, die with dignity. Let it touch your heart so that you don’t forget the depth of meaning held in death’s mysteries.
Pause here, but don’t stay here. There may be many reasons to be afraid; fear not. We spin on an angled axis around the endless circle, closer then further away, then closer again.
Being in death’s presence is a gift. (Not every gift is meant to comfort you.)
None of your love is wasted. All the love and effort and meaning that you have known, all of the ways you have fought for your life and for others, all of it is added to the immeasurable breadth of the universe. It will always exist, like the atoms at the foundation of your physical body.
Never gone.
If there is a weight on your heart today, if your chest feels full and tight, breathe into it. Let death be what death is. Put down your desire to control every piece of what scares you, because it is impossible to do. Have faith, at least, in these words.
Time can be measured in human lifetimes, but it is also measured in epochs, in centuries and millennia, in the evidence of ourselves still hiding layers down in the earth. We have been here. How can we forsake the place that loved us every moment we have existed?
Grief is a natural call-and-response with love. The more love, the more grief.
Hope is necessary when grief is overwhelming. Grief is meant to be felt, and honored, and given space, and when the wave has crested and gone away for a while, it is time to remember how to hope.
Take your grief to the stars. To the shadows under the trees in the dark. To the moonless night. Take your grief to the growing things. Take your grief with you not as a burden, but as a gift. Put your grief in one hand and hope in the other, and hold them both dearly because they belong to you.
Right now you are alive.
It should be effortless
A little of nothingness
It could be anything but this
Remember to take it in
It might be the last time
That we ever meet like this
If heaven and hell were to collide
Would you choose darkness over light
Did you leave enough of you, you behind
Cause no one lives forever
Forever is just a word
That everybody says when they get hurt
Forget forever
— 44 (Forget Forever) by WOOSUNG
I am writing something that will probably take all of next month to finish, but that’s okay. Everything in its own time.
xox,
Nix
featured image is a photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
