Locked out of life

When I started this blog, I looked at it as a metamorphosis…a caterpillar in a cocoon of grief emerging at the end as a butterfly- vital and free. But where is the end? It is eight years today and here I am, tired of explaining myself.  Every time I think I have emerged on what should be the other side, I find myself back in a limbo of melancholy. As advised, I have let go of the sadness but it refuses to leave. Like gum stuck to a shoe, it persists and insists. Grief has shrunk my world into a tight prison from where the only view is through the fractured lens of pain and loss. It has locked me out of life…made me toxic to myself.

 

Soon after Shekhar died, the depression changed to anger. Anger, which was not characteristic to me, kept me going. I could not be angry with the man. He had no choice. So, I was angry with everything and everyone else. It helped me get a lot of things done that otherwise would have languished under my pacifist nature but it also made me difficult to be around. Then the anger dissipated replaced by an empty yearning for peace of mind. I went through the rituals of prayer, having lost my faith on that fateful night in April.

In And the flowers showered, Osho said, “Many things start happening around a dead man. If he loved a person very deeply, that means he had given a part of his life energy to that person, and when a person dies, immediately that part he had given to another person leaves that person and moves to the dead man…That’s why when a loved one dies you feel that something has left you also, something in you has died also. A deep wound, a deep gap will exist now.” I felt Shekhar leave that night while travelling in my neighbour’s car to the hospital. The wound is as deep as his love was for me. It has healed on the surface but the lingering sadness is a constant reminder of its depth.

Something changed at the beginning of this year…I started with a ritual but it awakened my faith, rebuilt a tenuous bridge of trust which had lain in a state of benign neglect. The force with which it has returned surprised me today as the boys and I marked the day in prayer. I look back and see that everything that has happened has unfolded as it was meant to, despite me. I have been witness to miracles and the beneficiary of his ministrations through instruments. Today, it dawned on me that as I walk in his light and grace, I have nothing to worry or be sad about – not the past, not the future. Everything is as it is meant to be. That is the gift of acceptance.

So, I am changing the metaphor. This is no longer a metamorphosis. There is no butterfly waiting to emerge. It is the phoenix. Reborn from the ashes…on a wing and a prayer.

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The blood, the soil, the faith
These words you can't forget
Your vow, your holy place
O love, aren't you tired yet?
The blood, the soil, the faith
O love, aren't you tired yet?
A cross on every hill
A star, a minaret
So many graves to fill
O love, aren't you tired yet?

Leonard Cohen - The Faith

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May today there be peace within.

May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be.

May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith.

May you use those gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you.

May you be content knowing you are a child of God.

Let this presence settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love.

It is there for each and every one of us.

Teresa of Ávila