My grandma died. A feeling of comfort welled up in me as I kneeled over her corpse. I can't say why. There was something about seeing her body completely devoid of life that reassured me. I don't know of what.
As I looked at her, my mind began thinking of the employee who must have glued her lips shut to prevent her mouth from gaping open. Later, as we were puting her in the ground, green golf course-looking material carpeted the dirt, even down inside her grave. Men came and peeled it back to reveal the earth, and we each got to sprinkle a handful of it on top of my Grandma. I gave her my necklace. My Uncle Elroy sang her a song in Nez Perce. I am very thankful for this song; it enabled my dad to cry.
I couldn't stop my mind from thinking about how my grandmother's body would look in a week, two weeks, three weeks, down there inside that coffin. It was made of beautiful wood. Would her fluids leak onto the clean, white lining? I do not know how maggots work. Can they spontaneously hatch in there? Are these thoughts disrespectful?
So far I have not been able to celebrate Grandma's life. I have only been able to think about death and its implications. How do we so solidly form concepts of ourselves? How do we achieve the continuity that enables strength of identity without becoming rigid? Everything is always changing. My physical form is changing, the thoughts running through it are changing, the environment around me is changing. Change moving through change moving through change. . .
Still there is a spark, or maybe it is a fluid, that makes me who I am, makes you who you are, even after we have surrendered to all this change. After we pass through the shock of losing our egoic minds, something new arises in their places. Something wiser and better, something that is not afraid of losing its life because its life is fundamental. This is a subtle state, I'd imagine. Is my mind ever quiet enough to even recognize it? This fundamental awareness?
My seventh grade English teacher, Mr. Long pulled me aside in class one day to say, "I enjoy your poetry, but have you noticed it's all about death?" I had not noticed. The trend started long before this. When I was just a little girl, I'd lie in bed thinking about everlasting life in heaven. This is what the Southern Baptist faith had said happens when I die. The thought shook me to my core. I would have to live forever? Forever? Forever?FOREVER? My stomach turned; I felt sick with fear. Living forever in an unchanging state terrified me. If I let my mind think about it today, it probably still would.
So, if forever terrifies me, and not-forever terrifies me, then I'd better reexamine this "me" thing. Terror is not a fundamental state. It requires effort to linger here. Can I witness my own slow death, the death of the thoughts I hang on to, the me that is not me? I suspect the feeling of comfort I felt looking on Grandma's body came from meeting death face-to-face. Finally, here it is. Here is death, Erin. It's real. It's here. Oh, thank God. Thank God you exist, Death. Thank God you claim us all. Thank you for your incessant labor. I can finally breathe again.
