"I found myself squelching my desire to whoop and holler and celebrate each of their departures and newfound freedom; and I shifted my focus and shed tears instead. Yet I was aware that the tears I cried were genuine compassion for all the other grieving people in the room, and maybe even a few for myself; not for my Grandfather or Grandmother."
That's what I wrote in my last post. It felt so strange… so strange to feel the deep grief of all the other people in contrast to the magnificent sense of overwhelming joy and expansiveness I felt from each of my grandparents when they died. Each of them had health issues that led to drawn-out hospitalizations before their deaths. There was such a sense of freedom on the other side of that – for them – that my own energy was pulled there rather than to any grief I might have felt. Especially after my grandmother died; I thought “She did it! She finally got past her fear and surrendered her ego. She finally let go into the Divine, and now she is free!” Oh how I wanted to celebrate that for her, with her!
Yet in this society, we can’t; it’s not acceptable to celebrate at the moment of someone’s death. It’s viewed as disrespectful and cold or even callous. Folks start talking about wills and insurance claims and motives if you celebrate a death; it’s simply not done. Nope! You wear black, keep a somber face, turn off all music, cut off all joy, and stay in mourning until an appropriate period of time passes, whatever that is, so that everyone knows that you are truly aggrieved, as you rightly should be in their view. After all, your loved one just died!
Yet what is death? What does that mean – to die? Interestingly, the Buddhists see our physical birth as death to our Spirit form, and our physical death as birth to our Spirit form. So for them, birth is death and death is birth, since the ultimate goal is to connect as deeply and intimately as possible with our Divinity, which is more closely linked to our Spirit form than our physical one.
I’ve always liked that perspective…
©2010 Cecilia L. Zúñiga. A Year To Live. All Rights Reserved. Reprints, copies or reproductions of any kind must be accompanied by copyright credit line.
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