Rest in peace, dear Uncle
When someone close to you dies, you reflect on death, but you also reflect on life. It seems to me that we all live many, many, multiple lives here, during our Life on Earth. We live each of these multiple lives through our different relationships, vocations, interests and experiences. Everything and everyone that “happens” to us, shapes us, molds us, and changes us. Our individual lives are in a state of constant evolution and flux. We like to see our individual lives as “one unit/one long story”, with “I” being the constant, but we do this mind trickery to ourselves, out of our human need for simplicity and categorizing and security. Everyone who we come in contact with, brings themselves and their perceptions and their past experiences and history, into the relationship, and we do the same. And then, when we meet that person once again, and even though we recognize that person through past and present associations and shared memories, in reality, each new meeting, is really like two new people, experiencing each other, in a fresh, new way. This phenomenon even happens with the people who we are closest to, the ones we live with, and who we experience life with, on a daily basis.
So when someone dies, who you have had a long history with, you have a lot of versions of that person in your head and in your heart, and to console yourself, you try to lump all of those versions together into one entity. You realize that you won’t be adding anything more to the relationship together, here on Earth, anyway. All of the fluidity of the relationship, is now just within you. The story, the legend, the history, of that particular relationship is now on your shoulders. It feels like a heavy load of responsibility to bear.
I think that it’s good to remind ourselves, that just because a person whom we loved, is no longer on Earth in bodily form, there is one thing that remains. The only thing that was truly a Constant, the Same, every time you encountered the person, was their God center, their light, their soul. Those of us who enjoy the practice of yoga, greet each other with the word, “Namaste”. Loosely translated, “Namaste” means “the spirit/God in me, recognizes the spirit/God in you.” So throughout the long time periods that you experience your closest relationships, you get to see so many aspects and versions of the persona and of the body, which Life (spirit/God) has lived through that person. These people, who you intimately know, get to see the same with you. How we experience each other is all grand and delightful and joyful and heartbreaking and interesting and awe-striking and overwhelming. We are mirrors to each other. We are the reflection of Life. We get to co-witness the constant evolution of a human life, through our relationships. And all of the while, when we are doing this mirroring/experiencing/witnessing of each other, the one thing that is the very Same and Eternal, within each and every one of us, just sits in peaceful, eternal, loving Awareness. And that Awareness never, ever changes, nor goes away. It remains with all of us. Always.