A student said to me after class yesterday,
"Cease to exist is a weird phrase because matter can't be created or destroyed"
I have no sense of how long I've been or how long I will be.
The mystery continues as I mark the fifteenth year since I first bore witness to a last breath.
That return to the source, the earth, the soil, the air.
A recycling of our substance.
This swirling of air, our air, into the atmosphere.
The temporary strengthening of whatever energy we left behind, in others, for others,
traveling like mycelium to nourish all existence.
A mark in bent time, a whisper reminder, a moment of pause.
A portal to the Divine briefly opened if you can catch a glimpse through the fog.
I’ve been lonely for what was, for his understanding.
George marked my early adult life with a compassion that could only exist in someone who had been to the depths of a worse hell.
I was the recipient of his grace and his fiction.
And I loved it, the joy more than the tumult, but still I loved it.
He was my practice field for forgiveness and mercy.
He was my mentor for meditation and peace.
He was my guide for the now and a warning of what is to come.
We remember people more fondly than they existed, but I’ve spent fifteen years detangling the web of my memory and tangling it again with new understanding.
I don’t forget the chaos or the gentleness, the waiting for the other shoe to fall or the solution for every problem.
I don’t forget the constance, the patience, the affirmations, the encouragements, the extravagance, the smiles, the laughter.
The children, what they lost was less complex and more beautiful.
What they lost was more than I can hold.
And in them I see the yin and the yang, the possibility and the reality.
I’m fascinated by people’s last words.
He said his to me the day before he died, “just love them.”
Fifteen years.
I see you death.
I’m going to live with joy in this life and the next.
