I wake up. I`m alive. In the blink of an eye, I remember - I might not be, but for the grace of the gift. I lie there for a moment. I`m grateful. The day begins…
On the way to work I go the long way, through the park – bursting a deep, verdant green in the summer months, a crisp white lace of wind-carved snow in winter. And everything I see in-between the time I leave to the time I arrive, is as involuntary and unbidden as the remaining seasons of springtime birth and autumn decline. And when I unlock the door and set my purpose and plans upon my desk; behind the labour, at any time…there is a part of me that waits, for “the call."
This is my work. It doesn't recognize time. I live inside it, because I am the one at the END of what is sometimes a long rite of passage for someone I don't know, where a new BEGINNING blossoms for someone, I do.
We sit at a table in their home, in their living room, outside on a deck or in the comfortable chairs of the funeral home chapel…and talk. Sometimes we laugh and sometimes we cry. And sometimes, I get the gift of who that person we're talking about truly was, and still is, for the one sitting across from me. I feel such gratitude for that. I feel such privilege. I feel connected. And at some point, always, behind our talking, I feel the feeling that someone will be talking about me like this.
There are some, however, who are not ready for conversation and all they would like to do is have things taken care of. That's fair. For those who do, I know their healing will begin within the quiet moments alone, when they are visited through a memory that they cannot, and perhaps should not, escape. Blessings that show up in bits of sound and smell and any “thing" that resonates. Regardless – I do what it is I do, that many don't care to know about, but that some see a need for knowing.
And I think, when I die, what then? Who will speak of me? Who will laugh and who will cry? Then, the thought begins: “I hope I go before my daughter," but I know all bets are off. That thought positions me in the heart of living, that uncertainty grounds me in love, makes me so present! And…gift of gifts… I'm not fearful any longer of the way life wants to manifest itself, what it wants to reveal - because now death walks with me as “friend;" who will open a door that I may be ready to walk through. And I pray, if that door is opened for me at a time unsuspecting…I will have loved as greatly as I can bring myself to love. And that is all that is needed.
And so, at the end of each day, I lock up the funeral home, I move through the park, I'm charged or tired, I eat and talk with the ones I love and then rest again in the arms of uncertainty and gratefulness - that I will either open my eyes to another day or open out the soul into another world.
THIS IS HOW IT GOES
