On Death, Everlasting

A good friend of mine recently put forth the metaphor to me that in order for God to be able to use you for Divine Purpose, you must compare yourself to a clay pot that has been broken and remade into a new vessel and it must come through the fire as such in order to be ready for use. As for me, as an artist, I can say I know quite a lot about the process of creating a painting. However, I do not know much about making pottery (that's one creative endeavour I have yet to try), but I know the basics; a hot fire turns mud to glass. They call that a refiner's fire. 

In the last several years, I feel I have experienced something very similar to the metaphor of the broken clay pot and the subsequent refiner's fire, after much shattering and refining. I don't like feeling like I've lost control but it happens to us all, at times. Sometimes we just break.

As for me, sometimes my moral compass gets mired in the debris of life, I will admit, but when this becomes evident to me, I like to see myself as someone who puts effort into getting it cleaned off and back into proper working order. When I veer off my path, I know I have to make corrections to get back in line. But trust me when I say, consciousness does not necessarily prevent you from calamities entirely. Crisis will still occur, so I've often wondered why it seems so inherently important to me to get back on course if I feel like I've veered away? In the face of adversity, what causes me to desire to move through and beyond a storm in order to get back on track? Why do we desire peace and harmony in our lives like we do? Is it survivalism or is it something more? 

As proactive as I have tried to be in my life in regards to following my True North, which truly does generate a sense of peace and harmony within me, I still know how it feels to have a truly broken heart (not the puppy-dog-love variety, but the broken-dream variety) and because our hearts are the vessels that contain all that make us who we are, it is impossible to not experience the rigorous process of breaking and rebuilding at various points throughout our time here on planet Earth. In academic terms, we simply call this humanity. It is unavoidable. In this way, our experiences in love and loss, life and death, mingle themselves deeply within the trenches of our day-to-day lives but, in societal terms, we have learned to sidestep the harsher realms of our humanity by cordoning the messier events we go through into segments––we give birth here, we die there and never the twain shall meet, except they do meet. Birth and death are inseparable and we know it. We just pretend we don't know it, thereby separating ourselves from the extremes that encompass our whole experience as human beings. The rare times that encompass our ability to be broken and therefore subsequently refined, usually present themselves in the realms of birth and death, in terms of the transitions we make within the scope of our corporeal existence. I want to focus on that theme for a this blog post. I want to talk about death, specifically. 

The events that unfold in our life which take us to point a and b (birth and death) will comprise the journey we make between both realms and for some reason, it seems to me like the best way to navigate these experiences is by following one's True North throughout the entire journey and you can be sure that if there were events in your life which took you off that path, they will be punctuated by excessive calamity, regrets and damages done. Do you agree? 

In the last year, as previously mentioned in my last post, I have been working in the healthcare sector, which is as surprising to me as it likely is to you, if you know anything about my past. I used to be very intimidated by the elderly, as a matter of fact, and avoided people beyond a certain age whenever I could. I just felt no ability to relate. Of course, as I get older myself, my perspective has changed, but it hasn't changed in a negative way. I do not view seniors as people who have had their day in the sun but are to the point where they need to relinquish their humanity to the bitter confines of the grave and eternal rest. I am not bitter about the process of aging, either. Death is supernatural and the elderly face it with an entire lifetime of experience like a battle-scared soldier faces combat. I have seen a type of courageousness rising up within the humility of a frail and dying flesh-and-blood framework and the mystery surrounding this event leaves me hopeful. 

I find all of this to be as mysterious and unfathomable as the process of birth––in a spiritual sense, there is a constant and never-ending query that functions within me when it comes to these extremes, in fact. It's a 'where did you come from and where are you going' conundrum which basically sums up our entire human condition. I don't claim to have leagues of experience in these things just yet, but I can confidently say I am gaining some insight and I've been around enough elderly people to know there is a certain life-driven energy that seems rather palpable to me when I encounter someone who is near the brink of death. These types of encounters are prevalent in the line of work that I am doing now. In fact, I've had this experience several times in the last year and I've noticed a common thread each time. I feel that same anticipation you feel when you know a baby is about to be born. There is something so awe inspiring about welcoming a new baby into the world, but I find there is a similar sense of mystery that hovers around a soul who is making itself ready to depart from this world. On the other side of this equation, it translates down to the notion that there is a birth occurring within the realms of eternity at the very moment someone passes away on this side of things, spiritually speaking, and it is the same when a baby is born. When a new baby is born, it means a spirit is being whisked through the portal of the eternal and into the province of mortality. The cycle never ceases and the lives come as powerfully as they go, and vice versa. 

A long time ago, I offered a lecture on the preciousness of a human beings and how, in reference to the way Black people face violence at systemic rates with the United States, for example, I proposed that we consider the idea that a human being is comparable to a universe unto itself, person to person. A prime example of that fact is easily identified by such names as Martin Luther King and Nina Simone, for example. Or Oprah Winfrey. For inasmuch as we are similar, I know for sure that each person on this planet carries a uniqueness within them which causes them to be as vast and unknowable as any galaxy that exists in outer space, of which there are billions. In order to condense this premise into a tangible metaphor, I offer the absurd idea of the elimination of galaxies from space, one by one, as casually as we eliminate people. It would be a ridiculous concept, don't you think, to wipe space clean from these elements that comprise the grandeur of space (and did you know we are all comprised of carbon, aka stardust)?

In reference to galaxies, it is the same when a human being reaches a certain age and then passes away, as nature dictates we all will. A man who is 75 years old takes with him decades of knowledge and education, experience and emotion, when he dies. All the different components that make him the individual that he is soon removes itself from this world at the point of death. The heart stops, all else ceases to be, off his spirit goes into realms that are as unreachable and unknowable as any galaxy we might be able to see through the lens of a telescope. Everything he ever knew goes with him. The earth itself experiences this loss in many forms, too numerous to count. In this way, death is as miraculous as birth. It begs the question, if we are born as a clean slate, what is written upon those same slates when we die? 

I just can't help but to conclude death is not the end. Death represents a rebirth elsewhere and it is a new beginning if it is anything at all. I've seen the excitement in the eyes of an elderly woman on her way to the hospital via ambulance, already exhibiting end-of-life symptoms. Her eyes were sparkling with anticipation of what is to come, the solving of the riddle of death, all within a fleeting glance. A curiosity could be sensed within the sorrow of her passing; where was she off to? 

In regards to how we handle death in this part of the world (I am from Canada, specifically) I wonder what would happen if we acknowledged this possibility in real terms. Is it possible for us to reexamine our narratives surrounding death and therefore, our attitude toward death and aging? We do not give the elderly any special privileges beyond that of a fully staffed nursing home and let me tell you, most nursing homes are never fully staffed. But what if we viewed the concept of aging differently? Why do we treat aging like something to be hidden away? Are we empty vessels right before we die? Or is there more to appreciate within us all? What did our Divine purpose accomplish? 

Let me illustrate my point by introducing an idea. What if we housed elderly people and those who required assisted living accommodations under the same roof as we house our educational institutions? What if kids from grades one to twelve had to incorporate within their daily routines the awareness of, if not the hands-on involvement with, caring for the elderly et al? What would a scenario like that look like? Would it be a total disaster or would it foster an entire generation of children raised on their inborn ability to care and to nurture others? Hatred is a learned behaviour but love and compassion are born within us, therefore, I see benefits in engaging in such a radical idea, but for as much as we have evolved as the human race, we still keep death and advanced age very separate from the activities of every day life. This is because we are so fragile in our humanity, through conditioning, in my opinion, that we are obsessed with filling every empty space we can find with so-called life-affirming ideals. But what if the best way to affirm life, and therefore our humanity, is by being faced with the very real truth of aging and all its implications, specifically death? I suppose some would say that this would hinder a child's sense of innocence but I postulate to you that many kids out there lose their innocence anyway the very moment the concept of death is brought to their attention without something to explain what it is and why it needs to happen. And don't get me started on school shootings if we are going to have the debate about loss of innocence in regards to death during childhood. 

And that's just the thing. Death needs to happen. How it happens depends very largely on you and me. 

As for me? I was never afforded the luxury of a childhood where I was shielded from the concept of death and to be perfectly frank, I am sort of horrified by parenting philosophies that focus on giving a child the so-called perfect childhood. Inuring a child is not always a good idea, if the current state of affairs is any indication. I know my circumstances allowed me to puzzle and puzzle over this issue if nothing else and I've come up with some surprising conclusions: death needs to happen BUT death is not the end. 

This theme is what the book Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt is all about and that's why I chose the title Jo-Everlasting for this blog. I doubt there was ever a kid in the entire history of this world who wanted to erase death from the equation of life more than I and that is because my father died when I was a baby, which left me grappling with the concept of death before I really understood the concept of life. I have mulled the problem of death over and over in my mind, year after year, but it's only been within the last 12 months that I've gained a first hand knowledge of the energies that hover around a person who is close to dying. It is not a sad nor scary thing to me, rather I find it to be as humbling as it is awe inspiring. It is a true shifting of energy from one dimension to another and to say that you don't believe you go anywhere when you die is as absurd to me as suggesting a baby's newborn soul didn't exist until the infant drew its first breath. Of course it did, it came from somewhere, and it is that initial seeding of spirit from some parent source that causes us to grow into the people that we are. 

So this evening, as I aided a very sickly man with his personal care, I felt the firm bones underneath his fragile skin, I heard his laboured breath, and I observed the violence of his illness. But as my hands touched is frail body I wanted to shout for joy and I wanted to comfort him. This too shall pass and when it does, your great journey begins anew––can't you see it, just over the horizon?! Of course I cannot explain something like that to a someone so weak and vulnerable, but I felt these things just the same.

 I wanted to let him know he was on the brink of a miraculous event and every moment of suffering he endured would be gone in the blink of an eye; there is nothing to fear and everything to hope for. Death is a type of homecoming, after all, if we view it within a certain context. We will be going back from whence we came and the only thing that can alter that fact is a corruption of some kind. So, in that vein of thought, I can conclude within my own personal belief system that the entire purpose of one's desire to follow their True North is because we know it will lead us back from whence we came, it will complete the cycle of birth to death. However, the cycle has more components than two. It is a threefold endeavour. What we truly experience is this; birth, death, and rebirth. We must find a way to incorporate this very real truth into our treatment of death. Death is not the end. Birth is not the beginning. We all exist somewhere within the realms of both and neither at the same time, all the time. We are formed, we break, we turn to dust, we are reformed, fired, and born again. We truly are clay but we are made of stardust, not mud. We are meant to endure and we do and we will. We are all everlasting.