Is it turning 50? Perhaps, watching others get even older in response to my aging has me realizing that at some point I will need to wrestle with the question of death in a personal way. Not personal, as in my friend, mother-in-law, or beloved grandmother is dying – been there, done that and there will, sadly, be more of it – but personal to my own mortal self.
So far, I have built upon ideas and beliefs that began when I was 16 years old and asking about the point of being alive. It’s a question I’ve asked in numerous ways over the decades since then. A big life change often precipitates these searches – and I’ve had a lot of big life changes. I’m tempted to just choose the ones that show up on the stress charts as the most stressful: death, marriage, divorce, moving, loss of job, serious illness for self or family, bankruptcy… and give it a number of times since I was 16. Hang on while I take off my shoes and socks and the shoes and socks of the people on the bus beside me so I can gather enough fingers and toes to do the counting…. I am at 49!
49 Life-Altering Events on the Wall, 49 Life-Altering Events…
Forty-nine life-altering, psyche-wrenching events in 34 years. Granted, I am a little more relaxed about moving than some people – oops, just remembered another move – but it doesn’t mean it’s easy. Every move changed my life – or my life changed and I moved. I didn’t include in that count some of the events that registered right up there on the Richter scale like breaking up with someone I had been dating for 2 years (I have more than one, more than 2, instances of that particular stress.)
This should make me a freakin’ meaning of life genius with all the times I have visited the concept.
Meaning-of-life Genius
The short answer is we are here to create and serve. And, that’s all you get today, because I am thinking about dying rather than living.
As a sly and rebellious teenager I liked to say that Heaven was one great big orgy of souls. Essentially, I believe that, but less vulgarly.
When we die our bodies decompose – whether by fire or slow rot – and the constituent molecules are released back into the cycle of the earth. My carbon will return to the soil, will find its way into some celery, will be eaten by Justin Bieber who will breathe it out where it will be captured by a decorative fern on a side table in a hotel lobby, ultimately ending up in a compost heap and mingling with some other carbon. At that point, I might be spread on a garden and repeat, or the compost might be left for millennia while I turn into coal and diamonds, or oil. Maybe there will be a world disaster and the next thing you know my carbon is part of a new branch of evolution.
Some of my magnesium might have already found its way into a vitamin capsule taken by a pregnant woman and into her baby … where it reunites with some of my spirit matter that has been following similar decomposition and dissemination cycles in Heaven.
At first, both body and spirit are transformed by death but reasonably intact. As time goes on, the matter (spirit or physical) disperses. My spirit bits will mix with the spirit bits of others. It will feel like the greatest connection ever. It will solve the yearning for union in a way nothing on earth can. However, after many years of sacrificing a sense of individual self to the ecstasy of love and belonging the spirit bits will coalesce, not the same spirit bits that were once named Caitlyn but a different conglomeration, and find their way back to humanity.
Why Empathy Instead of Orgy?
That’s my version of reincarnation – and why we don’t remember the last time except, perhaps, in snippets. So, why “empathy” in the title instead of “orgy”?
Because I was listening to Dr. Brene Brown, talk about Shame and Empathy and it occurred to me that the best death would be a conscious transition from life where you are as connected to others as a human can possibly be – empathetic to the point of blurring the lines between self and others (hopefully, I am not speaking of co-dependence and unhealthy attachments.) Maybe Mother Teresa comes to mind. Feeling the pain of the less fortunate and living among the people and their pain until the unsanitary conditions and the rough bedding are your own. Their pain is, literally, and empathetically, your pain. At some point in this connection, do you simply walk into death and the ever increasing connection of your spiritual molecules with the spiritual molecules of others?
