Death, The Friend

Death. The Reaper.

Yes, that topic Barbie bravely mentioned at the house party. “You guys ever think about Death?”

When we finally unwind in our social settings, it is not usually a topic of conversation for the faint of heart. However, maybe there is something to turning in on those shadow topics as a more holistic approach to living.

I have all these fears. Fears of death. Fears of myself dying, others dying, family dying, dreams dying, the world dying, pets dying. What happens when you do die? Where do we go? What is sitting in the beyond….etc, etc.

Although faith has a pleasant way of offering pockets of comfort and peace, it doesn’t erase all the fear of the unknown. In my experience maybe they both exist.

Taking things a bit lighter. Of freaking course, for most of us we wouldn’t want to actively participate in the pain that death brings, even if we did know it would benefit our soul evolution.

There is a select few in history that actively signed up for their own death and suffering to benefit all, Jesus being the most iconic. To be honest, I don’t think I have the stamina that He had. The courage He had. I try hard to embody it, but I am surely a work in progress.

I also don’t blame myself. Look at the way our society functions. We are generally raised to take the long road of non-suffering to avoid the short roads of suffering. I wonder, however, if

suffering is unavoidable, possibly even necessary.

When my Father passed away suddenly two months ago it showed me a few things.

Suffering is universal.

Even if I wanted to pretend that I had it the worse than others, all I had to do was turn on the news and see images from Palestine or heck, even throw a pebble to the person sitting across from me. They had a story of pain that was like mine. All I needed to do was scroll social media to see that beautiful friend and colleague having surgery or a family member going through chemo. I tried like hell to paint the picture on the uniqueness of my suffering.

“No one is as close to their dad as I was.”

“He did so much good in the world, it doesn’t make sense!”

“He was young.”

Those points were true but so were the points for others suffering as well. I stopped creating a hierarchy of suffering. I started to allow enough space for all the suffering from all the creatures. I started to ask if killing the spider in my house carried the same weight as my Dad. So now, I scream like a school girl and set it free.

I try to stop judging what people consider suffering, even if it seems petty and vain. Maybe each piece of the suffering needs and deserves love and attention. I started to wonder if there is enough space for everyone’s suffering. I began to open my heart to all of it. I think that’s part of it, to truly stay open to all the pain and sorrow can be intense.

BUT here’s what you get in return. More love than you could possibly imagine. The gift of opening to the full spectrum of the human condition.

We recently took a collective retreat to Taos, New Mexico. During our stay there we visited San Francisco de Asís Church, which is a very old structure in Catholicism. The most interesting mural caught our eyes. A painting of St. Francis holding a skull. It was almost

Shakespearean in nature and got me questioning“to be…or not to be”.

Faith and religion has always been a way from me to erase the idea of death. Like praying…”Mary, this is too much please make it disappear.” I used to pray to my guardian angels at night to fight off the angel of death. Even writing these words I feel my entire body go up in arms ready to protect those that I love to live forever.

Fear is a liar.

Death is inevitable.

My Dad’s heart gave out. They have no clear scientific answer other than,“his heart stopped

beating.”This news hit everyone differently. Some of us read the words with such clarity.

It’s out of our hands. All of it. The day your enter this world. The day you exit this world. The day all your loved ones do the same. We can eat right, exercise, pray, do the good deeds but it isn’t a carnival experience. You don’t get to turn in your tickets for extra days at the end.

You can’t keep score, and, for our society, that drives us CRAZY.

Or does it give us PEACE?

Today is a gift. That much we know for sure.

In Memory of my Dad, Jeff Brader

Song of the Week - (Don't Fear) The Reaper - Blue Oyster Cult

It's basically a love song where the love transcends the actual physical existence of the partners." — Buck Dharma, lead singer. The song is about the inevitability of death and the foolishness of fearing it, and was written when Dharma was thinking about what would happen if he died at a young age.