Photo credit: Foter.com
“It’s easy for her. All she had to do was die.”
If I still had vocal chords, I would have screamed.
Easy? Thats all I had to do?
They have no idea.
They don’t know how hard the body fights for survival. How it clings desperately to life, long after your own desire to keep living has passed.
The pain. The suffocation. You just want it all to end. You want it to stop.
But the body just wants to live.
And once it finally does give up, people think that’s it. That there’s nothing else for you. Ever.
But death, as they say, is just the beginning. Once you’ve managed to die, you have to find your way to the other side.
People talk about “going into the light,” but it’s not like that at all. It’s not as if the light pulls you into itself. If anything, the light seems elusive. Taunting. Just because the body has given up its hold on life doesn’t necessarily mean the world is done with you yet. Its hold remains strong, and breaking free requires the kind of strength I never had when I was alive because I never needed it.
Even once you have made it into the light, the earth maintains its hold on you. You watch those you “left behind” (as if you made a conscious choice to abandon them). You listen as they talk about how your struggle is over now. You’ve gone to a better place. The hardest job now is theirs: to try to go on without you – to keep on living.
But it’s not a struggle. It’s effortless. Life will go on no matter what they do. It just carries you along as time continues marching forward. Life adjusts and fills in the hole I left and the living adjust accordingly without even realizing it. It’s nothing compared to the work of dying.
And even now I’m still not finished. Occasionally I look up to see those around me scanning for their place on earth. Not the place they left behind, but the place to which they’ll be going next. There are many things to consider when making this decision. Multiple factors involved in determining where they’ll be most needed. Where they can do the most good.
Soon, I’ll have to join them and start thinking about my next move. Decide where I’ll go after this. This chance now to watch those I “left behind” is just a short break before I have to get back to work of dying.
But it’s not exactly relaxing, listening to them talk on and on about how easy I have it when I’m up here working my spiritual butt off.
They have no idea…yet.
The end.
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