For this blog, I simply began to type. We'll see if my thoughts can not only be coherent but helpful. I'm sure it will help me to write it. I'm thinking about the life/death connection. The entanglement of two threads all knotted and messy. Never neat like a bow but a nest of confusion. The bottom line is this, "If there is no death, there can be no life." Death is the shadow, the dark side, that makes life shine. Last week 50 people were brutally murdered in a night club in Orlando. It takes everyone's breath away and sheer terror flows like a tsunami across the earth. Like concentric circles, those closest feel the depth of pain and those who are several tiers away observe the pain and imagine what it would be like if they were the intimately involved. At the same time, the horror makes us cling to our lives and creates fears that call for our own protection. We are obsessed with watching the details so we can make sure it does NOT happen to us. If guns could only assuage our anxieties. But the value of life is heightened especially for the families of those 50 people. Death makes life so much more precious. There is nothing to take for granted
This same week my great nephew, my oldest sister’s grandson, took his own life. The circle is smaller. The impact may seem less to the world. A young man alone in his apartment, a self-inflicted wound. The noise was not heard by anyone. But of course there was noise, a scream, a cry that was not perceived. We ask all the right questions: “Why?” “What could we have done?” Why didn’t we know?” No answers. Certainly no answers that make sense. No answers that are acceptable. The tangle of life and death is a knotted mess. The postmortem never satisfies.
Perhaps there is a redemptive thought. In the presence of mortality, we have the opportunity to love life more, to value life exponentially. To expand and multiply the energy and love of life. What do the families always implore of others? “Don’t take life for granted!” “Tell your family you love them as often as you can.” Love is life and more love is more life. Death is never the victor, even though it is necessary, when love is multiplied. That is our only recourse. You look death in the face and say my love is stronger than ever.
Death is not losing it is the universal closure to this earth experience. It is the contemplation of our own death that gives our life purpose. When your fear death you increase the darkness. So love more and let it shine light into the dark.