Tag Archives: circle of life

Afraid of Dying

Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, photoshops a beach to illustrate the life and death cycle.You’re afraid of dying, you say, afraid of dying alone mostly. I wish I could tell you how this thing called death works and what dying means. Or where we end up in the end. I wish I could alleviate your fears, and tell you the best comes after life, that there will be music and bright lights and long-lost loved ones welcoming you. But I’m still trying to convince myself there’s more than nothingness, that after we die we reach some eternal heavenly state of consciousness, if not an actual heavenly place.

All I know is that for eons of time, trillions and gazillions of other beings before us have made this journey of conception, life, and then death. That this is part of a great cycle. And that maybe, possibly, death is not the last stage.

What if we think of this life-death cycle as a beach? Over the course of your lifetime you crept along the sandy shore, and then toddled, walked, and eventually waded into the water where you swam and dove through the waves, never noticing the tide gently dragging you out ever farther. And now every breath takes so much energy and struggling. Yet you keep swimming until there is nothing but ocean and sky, and soon you become part of them both. It’s like when you were born. You had no choice in being born, no control. You yielded to the forces pulling you into the then unknown world. Now it is time once more to be carried along into another great unknown.

You will not be alone at the end. There are those who will be honored to sit vigil with you and make you comfortable at this sacred time. Let’s call Hospice. Allow people in. I will come myself when I can, wearing my red-beaded necklace, the one like yours, because greeting death with red beads seems both gutsy and appropriate. I’ll hold your hands and listen to your memories, or to your breathing. Maybe I’ll rub your feet.

And finally, when you are gone to the great wherever, I will always love you and remember you. Whenever I wear those beads I’ll think of you laughing boldly in a bevy of friends, immaculately bedecked with makeup and perfectly matched jewels.

 

What can you do to assuage a loved one’s fear of dying?

REPLY TO ROBIN

Blooming and Blossoming Aunts and Uncles

Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York photographs a lotus pond thick with lotuses at all stages of life.I’m running out of aunts and uncles. Last week my beautiful, brave Aunt Ilse died. Now I’m down to one aunt and one uncle. Plus another aunt who is really my first cousin once removed. Somehow, while I was mooning over all my cousins’ children’s babies wishing I could hold a grandbaby of my own, I hadn’t noticed the shifting of our family tree.

It used to be there were enough of them to fill every holiday, enough aunts and uncles to have favorites. My cousins’ parents. They weren’t at all like the parents of my friends. No, these adults were mine, as in My Aunt Bope and My Uncle Max. They showed an interest in me; perhaps they were seeking similarities to their siblings. If I did something remarkable, like get married or have kids, they gave me gifts. They gave my children gifts. They always seemed happy to see me. And at each stage of my life, I’ve loved being in their company. But over the years they’ve been disappearing.

There were only a few days between the joyful family event that brought my tribe traveling west to Colorado and then south to Ilse’s funeral in Florida. In between, in Ithaca, I met up with my photographer friends at a lotus pond. We took pictures of young shoots emerging from the muddy pond bottom, new pointy-leaf buds, and unfurling blooms already pinked out or still green like their stalks. Some of the flowers had petals opened wide and falling. There were old dried up, naked pods standing tall or bent downward. The pond was thick with lotuses at all stages of lotus life.

Stages. Changes that happen between life and death. The shifts I’ve made from thinking in terms of my tiny shrinking family (my single child left, one remaining uncle, one of this and one of that…) to considering the whole family forest. My cousins and my cousins’ children are now aunts and uncles. They branch out with partners and step-kids and “extendeds.” Thanks to all their blooming and blossoming, our tribe continues to grow.

And maybe it will be my funeral they gather at next. Or maybe, I’ll soar up into the sea of clouds above the magnificent flowering earth, and be the one to outlive them all.

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REPLY TO ROBIN

Why Walk?

Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, Photoshops friends walking with dog in the woods.There are always a hundred reasons not to go walking. It’s too cold. It’s muddy. There’s too much else to do, you just walked yesterday…. But to deal with depression, grief, or stress, you should make walking a regular part of your life.

If you Google “why I should walk,” you will find that walking is good for your heart and your bones. It helps chronic back pain, reduces anxiety, improves your sleep, connects one to nature, gives back a sense of control, fuels creativity…. Walking helps you heal.

You can hike on mountains or hills, in forests, along coasts. You can stroll in crowded city streets or suburban shopping malls. Walk in hallways with walkers or wheelchairs. Walk and talk. Saunter in silence. Walk with friends, with a dog, or alone with your thoughts. Or with the memory of the one you love who walks no longer. You can walk away from troubles or walk with them. Sometimes you’ll find solutions or walk your way into being at peace with your pain.

My main walking companion is my inherited dog. Saturday, the path we followed up a hill was covered with decaying leaves. We watched chipmunks dart in and out of the hollows of dead trees. We passed a small tree growing from a crack in a rock. Geese honked over us. In another month the trilliums would start to bloom, followed by tender trout lilies, and then the mayapples with leaves like umbrellas for rabbits.

It wasn’t much of a hill. But sweating and out of breath, I looked back down at where we’d started climbing. Signs of birth, life, and death were everywhere. The circle of life. Right there in the woods. And on the top of that hill, under the sky, I felt blessed, big and small, and part of it all, at once.

 

What kind of walking or exercise do you do? What brings you out into nature?

 

REPLY TO ROBIN