Aunt Janie died today.
Heart breaks open. The news known and unknown. Heard and unheard.
Her spirit passed into… What? Into heaven. Into the clouds, the sun, the rainbow over the South Sister. Where did such a fiery and spunky spirit go? Perhaps it passes into each of us. Perhaps all the love she carried settles into our own essence, our own being, and becomes part of our human and spiritual selves. Perhaps she finds wings, allowing her to sore gracefully into Samadhi. Now she gets to enter the heart center of those sacred things, revealed only to the purely spirit, to the essence, to the part of us that is wholly and fully love. Or perhaps she stays for awhile. Cradles us as we sleep with our grief, whispers lullabies to us in our dreams, and wraps her arms tight around us as we ache in her absence. Perhaps she becomes the sun, her kisses the warmth that blankets us on summer days. Her thoughtful presence the wind that dances with snowflakes on crisp winter nights. Or she enters into some other piece of this world. A piece we aren’t able to see or touch, but can feel when cuddled next to our best friends, feel when cozy beside a fire place, taken care of by our family. Can she be all of it? Can she still be here with us, in an angel-way, so that it’s not loss, it’s a passing into love, a becoming, a release into a state of pure beautiful peace.
Heart aches and body feels heavy. Skin around the eyes tightens, eyes sting, tears roll town. I can do nothing more than be in this moment, this sadness, this ache in my chest.
Mind quiets, as if the only thing we need to know right now, we have been told. A peace settles around us for her own relief, her own sacred passing. No more pain, now. Just quiet. Body breathes in the news slowly. Carries it. And yet still cannot understand. It pushes the world for a different answer. Because the answer we’ve been given makes something well up inside, some sadness pulse. Words leave me now. All that can be done is sit in this miss for you. I grieve this missing, and for all who miss you. I grieve mostly for those who miss you most. She was so perfectly maternal, so loving in that unconditional motherly way. I grieve because to those I love, she was mom. Body heaves and tears roll down again.
Maybe this is the heart breaking open—this ache in my chest, this hollow beneath my rib cage. Maybe hearts break when love is needed most. When the need is for more than a love that illuminates. Instead it is calling for a love that flows as fierce as a river. A love that pours out, enough to fill the space that is left. That absence, that hollow. And the weakness that follows an acknowledgement that it can’t be filled. It can only be felt. Lived. Submitted to and known. And the sadness, that charcoal blue haze, is profoundly and deeply a craving to not know anymore. To still have her here with us. A craving for that spirit that we love so much.
