All these people are gone.
On one day in 1931 or so, they paused after a day of picking apples. Seventy-seven years later, what remains of them is memory, their shadow in the features of their children, and the fuzzy capture of this one moment.
The little girl in front is my Aunt Pat. I adored her when I met her sixty years later. Her children, my cousins, are dear to me. But on that day, she was a toddler with an apple.
In front of her sits my Great Aunt Ann. As an old lady, she answered all the letters I wrote her.
Behind her, Marguerite, of French Canadian stock, married one of her brothers. When I met her at Ann's house, they ribbed one another over their age difference; Marguerite is two years older than Ann, and always will be.
But they are all gone.
We are coming to the season of death, when summer gives way to fall. Everything seems to be spinning down, to some deeper place. Leaves circle to earth, to take up existence as loam. The financial markets are in disarray--where does the money go, when shares in a company lose their value?
On Tuesday, my mother in law was found dead in her house. Her life was too short, marked by hard work and little enjoyment. She had just retired. She was ill, but her death was a surprise.
And so we have been struggling with the big questions. Why do we die? Does life mean anything, beyond what we give it? Why are we here? Is there a reason for any of it?
There is no pat answer to these koans. You find the truth by living it.
What I feel now is a deeper engagement with the Dharma-unfolding-as-life, a kind of surrender, or faith. Faith that things find their own way, regardless of our ideas about them. Faith that this woman's life was what it was, as perfect and complete as a life can be. That we all fall, one day, like leaves to loam. That the days we have are precious; that they contain tiny unfurlings of life and death that mirror the Great Pattern.
And, this is sad. We have been sad. It is time to be sad, to look more closely at the life we are living, and the life we want to live. One day, we too, will be nothing but a photograph, and one day, not even that.
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1 comment:
A very thoughtful post. I remember when my first child was born. That was when I became mortal and not dying too son became important. Before that I had rarely thought about death. Now, I think about it daily. Not my own, but others', in particular my brother, who is struggling with a terminal illness and has two small children. I wonder how he can keep his spirits up, but he somehow does.
Chris
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