There are some life events that pass by without us even realizing them. A birthday, or a graduation that arrives without you counting the days.
Then there are certain life events I think can change everything. They can transform your perspective, your direction or your behavior.
A soul passing is one of them.
I notice three things happen when someone dies.
The first is shock. You hear the news and you don't feel anything yet because you haven't fully believed it. Maybe this is wishful thinking… or maybe death just happens so suddenly and rarely that it interrupts our daily flow and we don't have a programmed response to use.
The next part is mourning. I have seen this look so different for different people. You might cry or scream or feel a silent pang in your chest... Like your body is closing up starting from your throat and all the way down. You start to process things: how did they die? Who knows? The more questions you ask the longer you may stay here. It's almost like a positive feedback loop: each answer you receive devastates you more but you ask anyway. You question and imagine things… like how the ones close to them must feel. You share their pain. Even if you didn't know the person.
You enter into a state of confusion as you switch between what you know and what you feel. But this state is temporary. Like the unstable intermediate after two molecules collide and have not yet made it to their equilibrium. Like purgatory, it exists only as a path to a new eternity. You can't make it your home, so you move on...
To acceptance. You digest the grief and make it part of you in some way. You wear it on your heart or on your necklace or on your smile. You carry with you a customized piece of that person so that they are never really gone. You may post a quote they said on your wall, or live it out in the work you do. But one thing is certain: it has changed you.
It doesn't matter how close you were to them. Maybe you had never heard the name before… but still it has effect.
You go about your day differently because now you have been reminded of what you knew all along: you're not here forever. You might not even be here until tomorrow.
So you decide to do the one thing that they can't: you live.
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