After the Loss of Loved Ones, Embracing the Unknown

After millenia of posing the question, we still ask ourselves, what is the meaning of life? For the individual, it may be whatever one makes it, but no matter what you come up with, it's hard not to think the answer exceeds the human imagination. 

In the last year I attended the funerals of a 20-year-old and of a close neighbor who also passed prematurely. And 2012 started with the loss of a friend who was more of a good acquaintance when he first took ill, but became a much closer friend by the end of his eight years of illness. So my bond with him is a little unusual and his protracted battle has lead to a extended periods of thought about death and dying.

There is contradiction in all emotions. Happy can't really exist without sad. But grief, more than most emotions, heightens those contradictions, probably because grieving, as posited by Elizabeth Kubler Ross, is sort of an amalgam of different emotions, sadness, anger, sometimes guilt and even joy, which can occur in sequence but often overlap.

Among others, I’ve lost a sibling suddenly to an accident and my mother to a long illness, and even though circumstance lends a lot to the nature of the grieving. In the end, coping with loss of life inevitably comes down to pondering, “is this all there is”? 

Some of us have elaborate religious or other belief systems which we turn to for solace. For those who have such faith, more power to you. At age 56, I’m still going it alone, or at best it’s me and science, but not even science can unequivocally confirm something beyond this reality. This, one supposes, is precisely why humanity has turned to the concept of God, whatever He/She/It may be.

I just can't be too concerned about what happens after life and death, because I don’t feel I have any control, so the real challenge is to use the time I have left to get right with the great unknown.

I have had many experiences which have encouraged me to believe in an after-life in some form. I’d like to believe in one, but  I don’t want to set myself up for disappointment. I’ve participated in a Native American prayer circle lead by a medicine man descended from the original Black Elk, and I’ve wandered in the Himalaya with Tibetan Buddhists, both of which left me with more questions than answers.

In high school, a Sufi from Sri Lanka was brought to Philadelphia where I lived. After a two-hour audience in a small room, the 150-plus occupants filed past the guru one at a time, bowing and even kissing his feet. As my turn approached, I began to have an anxiety attack and froze three feet before Bawa.

During the next couple seconds of intense eye contact, I felt transparent, his empathic concern telegraphing directly into my mind without words. At that same moment he put his hand to his chest and my own chest burned with heat. It was as if he was letting me know I didn't have to sweat the formalities, it was all cool.

The next second I stood there still frozen and dumbfounded. With a grin and a hand gesture he motioned me to scram. Having seen this act, his entourage laughed, but I'll never forget that brief second of bewildering grace. Beyond these and other experiences, including those with psychoactive substances, I’ve witnesses many things which would seem to give glimpses beyond the horizon of this reality, but I’m still waiting for my turn for ultimate confirmation.

You may know the book "Embracing the Light," which chronicles elaborate visions during a near-death experience traveling through a dark tunnel to an exquisite light where deceased relatives beckoned. The forward by a doctor specializing in near death studies claims that because we have located a center in the brain which allows us to have these experiences they are therefore not hallucinations, but “as real as math or as language."  Huh? Sorry Doc, I’m certain these experiences were "real"; it’s just a matter of defining the word. To me, the tunnel and light may only be a last fleeting hallucination of this consciousness as we leave our corporal state. Even if that is the case I don’t want to miss it, and if there is more I’m ready for that, too. To quote our previous imperious president, “bring it on!” — but in good time of course.

Beyond the shock of tragedy when it strikes, what confounds me when another person passes is how rapidly ones thoughts can lead back to the self. My buddy just finished his battle and packed it in, but I’m over here wrestling with my own self-involved conflicts over what it all means, which in turn leads to guilt, anger and more confusion. Briefly, that quandary is triggered by questions of the fate of the departed, as I imagine their spirit hovering nearby, but it quickly turns to  trepidation about my own mortality.

At some point there is little choice but to take a deep breath and remember an abbreviated, secular version of the Twelve Step Serenity Prayer: Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time; enjoying one moment at a time; accepting hardship as the pathway to peace.  Amen.