life has no opposite

Trigger warning — DEATH + LOSS

Trigger warning — DEATH + LOSS

by gg renee hill

…

We lost a dear member of our family this past week. A loving, generous woman who took care of all the babies in the family. The first one we handed our newborns to when we had to go back to work. The one who walked up the street everyday to make sure the kids made it home from school safely. The one who fed them, hugged them, disciplined them. Cleaned their booboos and wiped their tears. Made my daughter do her daily 30-minutes of reading despite her fiery resistance and elaborate tricks. Kept my son from chasing balls into the street and climbing up too high on unstable trees. The memories go on and on. We're going to miss her so much. 

Losing her reminds me of the impermanence of the people I love and how I can't keep them— at least not in physical form—forever. Her death has led to conversations with our kids about what they tell themselves in their minds to cope with loss. I'm not only processing my own grief, I'm putting myself in the shoes of each person I know who loved her, and imagining how their loss feels as well. Losing her makes me examine my attachment to this physical form and reassess my fear of endings and death.

Surprisingly, my meditation practice has eased my fear of what's beyond life as we know it. If the silence and peace that holds me when I meditate is even a taste of what it's like to exist in non-physical form, I know there is nothing to fear. The stillness I experience in meditation is not boring or torturous like I once thought it would be— it's like tuning out of fear and chaos and tuning into the only station that plays love eternally with no interruptions or distractions. And no denominations either—come one, come all. Call it what you want. The peace in this silence is profound, and somehow fertile, a vibrating awareness. Even in this stillness, there is a creative energy, a sense of possibility. Mindfulness practice teaches us to pause, question our fears and assumptions, and keep bringing ourselves back to the aliveness of the present moment. In Eckhart Tolle’s book, Stillness Speaks, he says, "Death is not the opposite of life. Life has no opposite. The opposite of death is birth. Life is eternal.” I find hope and peace in this, even as I tell myself that no matter what comes next, my intention is to live this life with my whole heart and accept the mysteries that come with that.