To find peace inside, go outside.

I am a new day rising / I am a brand new sky to hang the stars upon tonight

-Foo Fighters

Springtime is slowly taking shape here in the Pacific Northwest, as we come out from the darkness of winter, into longer days, warmer temperatures, and brilliant colours everywhere. New life is pushing up through the soil, bursting out of tight buds, and flying through the cool April air, filling our ears and eyes with signs of renewal. So how strange it can be to have to confront death, especially that of a loved one, when all around us is emerging life. My friend Melanie is going through this now, having recently lost her husband, the love of her life. David Bataille died suddenly; he was just 35, lived a full and adventurous life, and leaves behind many to face the mysterious process called grief. This post is dedicated to them both, for the love and life they shared with each other, and all those who’ve known them.

Most of us are not schooled in the ways of death.  Even when we know it’s coming, our reactions, both before, and after, often take us by surprise.  Most people believe in some form of life after death, but we live in a culture that encourages us from early on to believe and behave as if this life we see is all there is. Death and dying is usually fraught with fear and anxiety, because we’re afraid to look at it. We’re not encouraged to talk about it, and we don’t even like suggestions of it. Our elders are hidden away from view, we spend billions on trying to maintain our youthfulness, to distance ourselves, if only cosmetically, from the reality we all face: death. How absurd is that ?

Living in a state of fear robs us freedom and the ability to live fully, to experience all that life has to offer.  If we were to take the time to acknowledge the simple truth that we all will die, then maybe we would stop taking life, and ourselves, so seriously.  Maybe we would adjust our priorities… David and Mel opened their hearts wide to love and life together, with no guarantees. David had a heart condition and they both knew about it. That is courage.  That is love.  They lived and loved fully.

Of all the mysteries we encounter in life, death is perhaps the deepest. Losing someone you love is a painful experience, and there’s no way around that. It can bring us to our knees, but rather than defeat, what if instead we learn to surrender, to all that we can’t see or explain ? What if we were to expand our imagination about life and death and make more room for both ? My wife Laura died one spring day, 14 years ago now; eventually I learned to stop asking “why” and simply accept that there is something greater at work, in life and in death, than my attempts at rational understanding could explain. In time, you learn to trust in what you don’t see. It comes more from the heart than the head.

Nature has much to teach us about life and death, if we would simply take the time to stop and be in it, to be with it, instead of trying to control it, or be separate from it. When words just cannot express the enormous and often overwhelming range of feelings that accompany grief, the natural world has a way of absorbing pain and sorrow, anger and resentment, guilt or regret, without condition or complaint. Nature is where we belong, in dark times and light. I believe it’s where our loved ones are when they slip from view; they are no longer in one place, but in all places.

We are after all, one breath, one love, one life. We are nature, in life and in death. Rather than an ending, see death as an awakening, taking us from what is known, to all that can be imagined, and then some. In time, we can hear our loved ones, in the wind moving through the trees, in the waters that ebb and flow, in the birds calling out, and even in the silence.

Live and love fully my friends.

Patrick

Times Like These