missrenie | Thoughts on death

In the coven we have a thing where one member posts a question each month... This month Blossom posted a question asking about our feelings on death. Terick is always asking me questions like this and I figure I might as well write down my answer here and direct him to it instead of mumbling "what the hell kinda question is that for 2am in the morning you skinny bastard!"like I have so often in the past.

Had to be this question....

I still have problems jumping into a pool from the side and to thinkof death I mean wow!

I have not so far had anyone close to me die. My step-grandmother was murdered and while I do think it was a horrible thing pointedly the way in which she died I feel no loss because I never really knew her at all. I've had pets die and people that I knew in high school die but its more like a wake up call.

I acknowledge that the ultimate symptom of life is death and that itis inescapable, every second I live and breath my cells toil away at their task and get a little bit more tiered and bored with their respective jobs until they say flock it and up and quit.

I know my mother will die, my brother, my aunt, Terick. One day sooner orlater. All I can do to keep them alive and the me that I am alive is preserve through my memory, my future children's memory, my writing and works of art.

Being raised Roman Catholic I was always afraid of death...
I think that is what kept me in the religion so long. But as time went on I realized that I was scared not of death but of hell.. I mean those nuns were very descriptive about just where I would end up if I cheated on my tests. The reason why I burned my first two Grimoires, why I chastised myself, why I gave money every Sunday, ran to confession every Saturday and bent over my rosary every night was my fear of what might follow death... my fear of hell.

But one Sunday I went to church with my girlfriend... not girl friend no my actual girlfriend the priest went on a hell fire rant about the evils of homosexuals and the infaliablity of the pope and how if you did not believe in certain things you were not Christian and therefore condemned to hell. I looked over at her as she snored softly against my shoulder and could not believe that this person that I loved so much would go to hell because of sexual orientation. Let alone me when there were so many other evils in the world. And then I thought about all the non Christians in the world who were good people and even better than some so called Christians that I knew. I could not believe that hell waited for them.

It took a long time and sometimes the fear of hell gets me again but I push, sometimes painfully, through my programming.

I have seen the ghosts of my family members. I have played with my mother's real mother when I was a child just as my mother had. I have known things that had never been taught to me. Connected with people and had that "I knew you in another life feeling". My research into the ever expanding field of metaphysics adds to my spiritual beliefs.

I feel that we are all connected because we are all made of the same things... the book you hold, the air you breath, your body, everything even the electromagnetic pulses in your brain are made of the same basic substance energy and space. If it is true that energy can neither be created or destroyed then my essence can not be erased or destroyed merely altered. I'm not sure if there is a God or Goddess or both waiting for me when I die. If there is then that better than finding left over change in last winters sweater. I treat other people with respect and love not because I worry for the state of my soul but because I believe everything is connected and that if I send out goodness I
will receive it, or be more open to it, and it gives me a great high and it gives me a purpose. And that purpose makes earth into my heaven my summerland. But I am sure about the connection... and in that connection I am sure that my being altered
by time, and energy and space will continue on.

I passed by a cemetery this weekend and I was thinking about this question. I parked my car and went in and sat on the ground amongst the dead. We mourn for shells, we seek answers from those who have "crossed over" and been brought back. We hold seances with lit candles and cast circles, the greatest thinkers of our age spent their lives questioning it. Religions spiral from it and return back to it.

But it does not matter. It is the inevitable ... the last symptom of life as we know it. There is nothing I can do to stop death or stay the hand the strikes it. So I endeavor to live.

Im not afraid of death... I worry only about the crossing... about the how I will die... about the jumping into the pool... that one moment where you hang in the air... but in my heart and soul I know that I will float to the top.