Trying to Settle

3 March

It astounds me every time I bury someone, family or not, how much I want the whole world to stop and take notice, and how very little they do.

It has been three weeks, give or take, since my step mom passed and the world hasn’t slowed one iota, nor has my immediate world. Perhaps I am unusual (nothing new there!) and I feel some need to mourn longer and deeper than others. Maybe I feel that each life should hold some greater significance in the end than a mere grave marker. I found myself thinking as we inurned Mary’s ashes where my father’s will also someday lie “Is this all there is?’ It felt like a cliche, but I think it holds too much truth.

Consider seriously for a moment how many names from history one can recall, even with the best education. Literally millions more came and went before and after any of those names. No matter how far back we can go in written or unwritten history, the majourity lived lives that ended in obscurity after only a few generations. I myself know very little of the people in my family history notes save birth and death dates, locations maybe, and names.
A handful I am lucky enough to have photos of, able to look back and seen where the features in my bathroom mirror came from.

The last couple of weeks have to have been a form of hell for my father. My sister and step sister helped him clear the house of clothes, makeup and other such things, not exactly wiping Mary off the map, but at least removing an awful lot of reminders. I remember doing this for my mom’s things, pretty much all by myself. It was rough. Even through clothes washings, an essence of Jeanne lingered, whether subtle scents, or the shape clothes hold when worn often enough. I am amazed sometimes of how much is still in this house of hers, useless pretty much to me, but too hard to part with glibly.

Yesterday, my best friend Casey, a jeweler by trade, came to town to go thru Mary’s remaining jewelry, partly for the estate probate, and partly I think to help my dad just know everything was being handled as it should. It isn’t the end of the clearing out, but it feels like the worst is past. Now I find myself with my head spinning around with unresolved emotions. As I said before in this journal, had she been in her right mind, it might have been simpler. Maybe not. Maybe I delude myself by believing that the final goodbye, whispered with I love you to an ear than can understand makes a difference.

This is probably my biggest paradox. My spiritual beliefs are deep and strong and I know that while we may be forced to separate forms while here on this planet, we are in fact a part , each and everything, of a much greater, undefinable One. We come here knowing full well we will put aside our memory of the Oneness, and yet it seems we spend a lot of our lives looking for that point of belonging all over again. It is the seat of our desire, grief and greed, all in one. We know how alone we are inside these bodies, and want to not be. I know I don’t,anyway.
Yet relationships rarely fill the hole. Whether it is with another person, or persons, the land, our pet animals, or what have you, there still seems to be something not quite right. I have reached out thru mediation and sought out the source, hoping to be able to grasp it and bring it back here in words to comfort others who feel equally lost....but I find words fail.

That is my big adventure here I think, and while I know the soul I called Mary is in a state of reunion with all those before, and yes, yet to come, I long for that belonging again for myself. The wait for my turn is sometimes unbearable. I know that is why we distract ourselves with the superficial, looking to lose even for a moment the disconnection we feel. I know it is why we cling to one another, whether the pairing works or not. It is worse to be alone in the wait than to have to bear with someone else’s egocentric point of view.

I am also heartily aware that not a whole lot of people see this. Those who do often become Buddhist, because it is the one path that teaches disconnection from all the longing, that life might flow smoother, getting to its point rather than staying focused on what is past. Everything and everyone here is mortal, and will pass from this world. Everything.

Hm. See? That’s why I write. By spewing it out for the reader, I learn again for myself. I have failed myself in this time, probably due to feeling obligated by various duties, and I am clinging to something I cannot change. For days now, I have felt more alone than I had in years, and it is all my own doing. I need to find my centre again, remember the Seven Fold Path, remember that there was some reason I chose to come back to this place, and my task here is obviously not done. If it was, I wouldn’t be here to write this.

Life is an illusion. It is neither what we are, nor what we are here for. Our true belonging is so much larger than our words can describe....
And I must leave each to his or her own path to understanding that.

I still miss the woman who had the guts to stay with my father,who can be as overbearing as I can, for nearly 30 years. She brought a whole other branch of family to me, not of blood, but still family.
I am just reminded that one of the least happy things about getting older is the ones who leave before you.

I must go find myself, refocus if I can. Letting this out doesn’t complete the task of healing. My spiritual self brought back to the forefront will.

namaste.