A thing I learned this year: Epiphanies

2004 is the year I learned about death. Who's gonna keep reading at this point? Ahh, well, there...since I lost most of you, I can say what I want. Knowing about death is like joining a club you didn't know existed. Before my dad died, I understood intellectually that people die and they're not here any more. Now, I'm beginning to understand what that MEANS and that it's going to happen to me, and to M, and to everybody I've ever known or loved, and even those I don't. I get it. I think death is kind of like the sky. We know it's there, but most of us never look too closely at it unless confronted directly with lightning, thunder, or a particularly gorgeous sunset. We can't, or we'd blow our own minds. I asked my friend Af, who's 69, if the knowledge of death ever gets easier to deal with. She describes it thusly: "Knowing, really knowing about death is like picking up a lead ball on a string. It's much heavier than you could ever imagine. You shift it from shoulder to shoulder, trying to find some way to be comfortable with it. You can't. But eventually you learn to walk with its weight." She's smart. That's why I hang out with her. What death has done for me this year is still becoming clear: -- I realized the futility of ego, though I'm still assimilating that. My own wants and needs and desires and goals really, really don't matter at all. -- I know that death is always at my shoulder...right...there... though I usually compartmentalize this knowledge away from my day-to-day life. Until some crap-ass movie or commercial or friend or tsunami makes it clear, again. -- My heart has grown softer and more spacious. -- I don't care as much what you think about me. The wall that I've used to separate everyone else from my feelings has grown paper-thin. Play the right emotional note, and I will dissolve into tears -- and I don't care where we are or who's watching. -- Nurses are amazing people. -- Grief isn't at all what I thought. It's not being sad all the time. It's being confused, tired, fragile, transparent...It's a seismic shift in reality, and the waves are still coming. -- The people who have also been through this seismic shift are the most comfort. You simply don't get it until you get it. When it happens to you, when you lose someone very close, all of a sudden you will notice that certain people have a knowing look in their eye when they say "I'm so sorry." You know that they know. And it helps. -- Nobody knows what happens after death. All the religious are just making stuff up to comfort people with, and that's fine. Belief is comforting, and who am I to judge that? But nobody knows. -- Johnny Cash -- Love. (And if I add anything at all to that, it'd be bullshit cliche crap that won't really explain what I mean. That's the only word that says it).