Life Reborn

The following is a blog that I posted on a different blog site about a year and a half ago after my grandfather had passed away. I've decided to repost it here because it is applicable to the way I am feeling right now, and because I feel like this blog is more permanent than the place I posted it before.

I sit. Here. In front of my computer. Fingers poised, resting upon the keys. I'm ready to write something, anything.

I search for something with meaning, something profound, but I can't find it. Maybe today there is no more profound left in me. Maybe that is ok.

I've wanted to write since last September, not so much because I felt that I had something to say, but because I felt that it might put my mind at ease.

The subject? Death. Or, more accurately put, life born within death.

If my life was a book being written, each chapter would tell the story of a relationship with a different person, and would only end at the moment that person left my life.

February 2005 would mark the ending of a meaningful relationship with a pet who had so many endearing qualities, it was hard to not think of him as a family member.

July 2005 would mark the end of a chapter that expressed the very special relationship I had built with one of my patients.

September 2006 would mark a different kind of end, an end I was not as familiar with; the end of a relationship with a friend taken in her prime. She was at the height of her life. Friendly, open, warm, welcoming, and entirely hilarious, she never failed to make me laugh. Although my memories with her were not quite as vast and varied as I would have wished them to be, she touched me. She added an extra spark to my life. She left behind a fiancé and a loving family. My heart ached and continues to ache for them.

Last Tuesday, February 6, 2007, yet another chapter ended. This time the end was expected, and almost welcome. My grandpa had been in a care center for a long time. He was afflicted with old age and infirmity.

Over the past few years as a hospice aide and nurse, I have become intimately acquainted with death. Because of this, I can't help but see my grandpa's death as a blessing. Why then, is it still so hard? Why do I find my eyes welling with tears as I think about how special my grandpa made me feel? I might not have been as close to my grandpa as I could have been, but I can't help but remember how I felt when I was in his presence. I remember dancing with him as a little girl. He made me feel special, as if I was the only one in the world that mattered, as if there was no one he would rather dance with than me. I remember visiting him in the care center. We had a ritual.

"Hi, Grandpa."

"Well, hello sweetheart."

And his eyes would light up. They would light up, and in that moment I would know that he cared. I would know that, to him, I was important. Listening to the speakers at his funeral today, I know that he had that effect on everyone. I know that nearly every cousin had that same experience with him on the dance floor. My grandpa had that way with people.

These chapters end, but even as they end, the relationships they contain continue to affect the chapters still being written. The nice thing about death is that it forces you to reevaluate life.

A few months ago, I had a dream. I dreamed that I was inside a Chinese-style painting. The painting depicted majestic snow-capped mountains in the far distance. My gaze, however, rested upon a lone, dead tree. I knew that my dream-self was aiming for that dead tree. If I could only reach that tree, all my goals would be realized. Then my gaze shifted, and before me was the most beautiful flower I had ever seen. It was pure white, and simple. It was in this simplicity that all its beauty was contained. As I've thought about this dream over the past few months, I've concluded that maybe my priorities need to shift to the beauty that can be found right before me. Today I've realized that focusing on the flower will allow me to surpass the tree. By focusing on the flower I can reach the top of the snow-capped mountain, in all its majesty.

So, for Louie, Helen, Shirley, Tami, Grandpa Ross, Merlin, and the many patients I have lost along the way; here's to the flower, and to all the hidden beauty in this world.