Kate Lila Wheeler

Welcome to my website

  • About
  • Teachings
  • Writings
  • Resources
  • Calendar
  • Contact

The Dying Season

February 19, 2014 by klwheeler

My father and mother in law died this winter within weeks of each other. My husband, David, and his family and I buried Sylvia in New Jersey on Sunday. I have been imagining us as orphaned little kids holding hands by an open grave, trying to carve out a little piece of happiness for ourselves as we transit through this life.

For no apparent reason, I feel closer to everyone and I believe it’s the impact of watching these two powerful beings disappear. I feel bonded with David, and my sisters, and stepmother, and somehow closer with this moment. It feels more vivid, naturally focused and undistracted. Sometimes I look at people in the street and think — Oh my god, you are going to have to die too! It’s an image-laden thought about the physical process. What I saw looked like hard work for the ones who were dying.

I want to get up the steam to write about these events a bit more — later. But for now, I will speak from a tired, stunned, soft and somewhat foggy-feeling space. There was terrible beauty. A kind of deep celebration, holding each dying person’s life in its wholeness. The completion of their process made it impossible to continue blaming them or doubting the value of who they had been — seeing them in all their facets, with the life of joys and pains and all the events they faced. Then the the mystery of contemplating the process of death itself. Why? There is no answer, really, only that it is this way.

This season has felt transforming for me, although I can’t help wishing these people had not been constrained to die. But it is the same force as living. As Dylan Thomas said, “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower/drives my green age.” And the brown age, and the stark black and white.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.

—Margaret Mead

Subscribe to my mailing list

I send them out every once in awhile

* indicates required

Archives

  • November 2020
  • October 2019
  • October 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • November 2017
  • July 2017
  • October 2016
  • August 2016
  • June 2016
  • April 2016
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • July 2015
  • May 2015
  • March 2015
  • December 2014
  • September 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • April 2013
  • December 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • June 2011
  • March 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • September 2010
  • About Kate
  • Meditation Teachings
  • Calendar
  • Writings
  • Blog
  • Resources
  • Contact

© 2021 · Kate Lila Wheeler.