Meditation on Continuation

Meditation on Continuation

When a loved one dies, they disappear forever… or so we think. But no one we’ve ever loved disappears; they change form. Just because we can’t see them as we could before doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

Think about the wind. We can’t see it, yet it exists.

Tulips waving in the spring breeze. The summer wind rustles the summer trees. The autumn leaves, gold and brittle, let go of a brittle branch to spin softly to the ground on a soft and gentle autumn sigh. Snowflakes dancing on winter’s cold breath.

The wind that we cannot see touches you and touches me. 

We search for a familiar face and find a flowing field of wildflowers swaying just beyond the forest. We listen for a voice and hear the creek bubbling and racing over smooth, ancient stones. We reach out for a hand and find the summer wind and midday touching our skin.

It is a quiet, tender longing; a belonging we can feel but cannot quite touch. Those we loved and who have left us behind have become the soft scent of the summer air after a dark and fearsome thunderstorm that has turned into a beautiful, glowing sunset. Still with us if only we take the time to open our souls and senses.

And so we must go on, borne on the wings of memories of those we have lost. We are the opus of their lives; always and forever in our hearts and thoughts. They were never really gone at all, and they are with us always. All we have to do to be with them again is recall a sanguine memory… or watch a golden leaf wafting slowly to the ground on a bright blue autumn day.

Birth and death are one
Pattern of repeating.
Always hand in hand,
Yet never really meeting.

Children light the candles
To the singing of the choir.
We all stand somewhere in between…
Birth and funeral pyre.