How blessed am I to be able to recall the deaths of my friend Janet, my mother Peg, and my father Bill, with such serenity and even bliss. All three taught me so much in their vibrant living. And in the way they departed, they each left me with a peace, a relinquishing of fear, that has buoyed me up, through mourning the losses, through memorializing their rich lives, and now through passing me the lantern that lights the way forward.
Some say that part of ageing is the natural coming to terms with one's mortality. But when our modern world has been incessantly telling us that youth is the ever-shimmering goal and getting old is to be denied and hidden away, it can be difficult to stay connected with one's inner wisdom. When we look at how much we spend on "staying young" as well as the preponderance of medical resources going to keep people alive at the end, we see our materialism made manifest.
When in the bloom of youth, with stellar DNA and a healthy sperm count, I'd collect a lively sample into a little glass jar, tuck it into my jeans pocket as instructed, and bike over to the nearby hospital in Old Amsterdam to drop it off. It made me feel good knowing that I was helping couples realize their dream of having a family with children. While always preserving anonymity, I did learn that I was the biological father of at least three couples' children.
Are these my children? Of course not! While the thought of someday maybe bumping into some adult in Holland who kind of looks like me may feed my vanity, I am no long lost daddy. And if I am an "Uncle Bear" to scores of my former students, those are relationships forged through time and affection, growth and discovery, not through attachments.
The relationship I am creating each moment with the world around me is what informs each step of my path forward. I experienced Janet's way of walking her one hundred year path and have learned from her. I have seen how my mother and my father spent the last years of their lives standing by hospice patients, helping them navigate forward to their last breaths and I have been inspired.
If I tell you that each day I am practicing living that I may learn to die well, don't think, dear reader, that I've become morbid and preoccupied. Au contraire! I have never felt more alive than I do right now.
This world all around me now -- the rustling of the bamboo, the birds in song, the yellow rose bud just about to open -- is gently calling me. The western horizon is deftly lifting itself up away from the golden sun, even as in the east we sink slowly down to meet the big, white moon. The deep orange wings of a monarch butterfly just lifted this traveller up from the violet agapanthus and saw her on her way, leaving the echo of the beating of her wings in the thrum of my heart.
Lift up your eyes, dear reader. And listen. Your world sings on. Don't stop. Just yield.
For a Dancer by Jackson Browne
Keep a fire burning in your eye
Pay attention to the open sky
You never know what will be coming down
I don't remember losing track of you
You were always dancing in and out of view
I must've thought you'd always be around
Always keeping things real by playing the clown
Now you're nowhere to be found
I don't know what happens when people die
Can't seem to grasp it as hard as I try
It's like a song playing right in my ear
That I can't sing
I can't help listening
I can't help feeling stupid standing 'round
Crying as they ease you down
Cause I know that you'd rather we were dancing
Dancing all our sorrow away
(Right on dancing)
No matter what fate chooses to play
(There's nothing you can do about it anyway)
Just do the steps that you've been shown
By everyone you've ever known
Until the dance becomes your very own
No matter how close to yours another's steps have grown
In the end there is one dance you'll do alone
Keep a fire for the human race
And let your prayers go drifting into space
You never know what will be coming down
Perhaps a better world is drawing near
And just as easily, it could all disappear
Along with whatever meaning you might have found
Don't let the uncertainty turn you around
(The world keeps turning around and around)
Go on and make a joyful sound
Into a dancer you have grown
From a seed somebody else has thrown
Go on ahead and throw some seeds of your own
And somewhere between the time you arrive and the time you go
May lie a reason you were alive, but you'll never know.