Rebirth
I apologize for publishing this due to its sombreness, but I guess only intending to ever show the best parts of oneself implies never representing oneself truly.
One of the trademarks of being a living being is that one is bound to time. You are given a certain budget of time to make your mark and that’s it. There is absolutely no leniency in the allotment, because at least for the moment Death is an inescapable certainty. The death of your friends, family, parents, partner and your own is an experience we are all guaranteed to have. There is no experience that can surpass the sensation of death, as it is your final act as a living being. And if you were not to die, something else cannot live.
My Grandmother passed away this past Monday morning. Her death was peaceful, but we saw it coming. Somehow you foolishly believe that knowing her time is coming will make mourning her death easier. Loosing a grandparent is a confusing time at first. You don’t know what to feel for yourself as you see your parents very sad because they lost a parent and your grandfather deeply grieving the loss of his life partner. You feel sincere sympathy for them, but how do you feel about loosing your grandparent?
Although we weren’t very close near the end as she had Alzheimer’s disease, I remember my childhood and my times with her fondly. I remember the endearment she showed for my brother and me. How much she missed us because we stayed so far away. All the handwritten letters she wrote to us just to say hello. How proud she was that I have my grandfather’s first names. The bedtime stories she read to us as kids. The joy she had in making my favourite pudding. And the unconditional love she had for us. Our childhood dreams became hers and she could see in our young eyes that in us her memory will live on.
There is a special bond between a grandparent and their grandchild that most grandchildren become deeply nostalgic about after they have grown up. I will never be a kid again, not in this life time. I’ll never run around outside again while grandma lovingly bakes up a batch of my favourite pudding. Never again will I laugh at my grandmother as she reads the same silly story for the umpteenth time. I won’t ever be able to hug grandma again and tell her how much I love her. It is in these tragedies that many self-delusions shatter and one too looks soberly at one’s own mortality with some trepidation.
But it is in mourning their death that we too celebrate their lives. By thinking about how much you’ll miss her, how much she meant to you and all the things she did in her life you celebrate her existence. Without knowing it, by grieving, the family helps the departed into the next phase of their existence. Thankfully it is hard to remember all the bad memories and even in sorrow the memory of them is intensified by all the mostly loving thoughts. One cannot celebrate forever however; one must make one’s own mark before the allotment is reached and it is your turn to be celebrated. The old makes way for the young to become old.
Without death there cannot be life. Plants die to feed animals, animals die to feed other animals and animals die to feed plants. Death exists by design so that the universe can be continuously reborn. And as we are all part of that same process, in some way, she too will one day be reborn.
In loving memory of Sophia Fourie (1922 - 2006).
