I love spring. I also am fascinated by the two doorways of
life: birth and death. It seems to me that every spring we are faced again with
the meeting of these gateways. Birth is everywhere as delicate new plants come
through the earth, as baby animals find their way out of the womb, as hope
returns. And, where there is birth, there is also death. The snow in my cold
country of Canada finally melts as winter recedes into memory until next year.
Life in the womb completes as birth occurs. The placenta and its umbilical cord
are left to wither and die. The sick and elderly do not always make it through
the winter. Even in our modern times, the flu and falls take lives of the frail
in the short days of winter. Families, like mine, may be different as sun
returns and one of its members does not.
I am still recovering after the intense months of winter,
with my father passing in November, and my mother doing poorly and suddenly
moving into a care home last month. For the first time in my life, I felt
familial protectiveness in every cell of my body. There was nothing as
important to me last month as helping my mother move safely into the care home.
I have never had my own children, but I felt I knew now the feeling a mother
has when leaving her little toddler in the care of others. I wanted to be there.
I wanted to make sure she was happy and had everything she wanted. Changing
flights and making many phone calls in order to be available touched my heart
in ways it had perhaps never been touched. I feel incredible relief and joy seeing
my mother is happier and healthier than she has been in years!
My last five days in Canada were about clearing out my
mother’s apartment. As she began her happy new life in the care home, I swept
away the remains of the old life she and my father had lived. Death met me head
on in every corner, every drawer. There was no pretending it hadn’t happened.
All I could do was practice, again and again, being present.
In presence, death is every moment. Birth is always. The
miracle of rebirth happens now, and now, and now.
From that perspective, there is not death and there is
always death. There is no birth and there is always birth. Each moment new.
Each moment fresh. The grief and tears for what has been are part of the beauty
of this moment. How would it be to be unable to feel? How would it be to live
without this social nervous system that enables me to sense connection with
another, and permits the exquisite tenderness of love.
What more is there?
