A letter to Death

Death,

Early in life, I didn’t know much about you. I didn’t understand the sadness people associated with you, especially if what I had learned in religion and about other people's religions in history class was true.

Later, but not too much later, you became my best friend, but clearly, I wasn’t your best friend. Or perhaps, you were more like a penpal; You received my thoroughly and romantically contemplated letters, my desperate messages, but you never gave much in return. It was the idea of you that allured me, not your personality, as I actually didn’t know you much at all.

Still, you were my respite, my daydream, occupying my thoughts, my fantasies almost every waking hour. I couldn’t wait to know you more intimately, meet you “in person”. I wanted you to make good on an unspoken promise I assumed of you: the end of suffering.

Then, after many failed attempts to connect, and so many people that cared for me trying to keep us apart... We met.

I knew you, just for a few moments, as I dangled in my closet. And after all the build up, the years of anticipation, I don’t even remember our time together. It’s just black. Admittedly, I’ve carried some resentment about that.

When the fog cleared- after I was jolted back to life by that defibrillator, put under; Frozen, then thawed- I was angry. I felt cheated by you. I realized I couldn’t trust you to come when I thought I needed you. I had to neglect my reliance on you to be my escape. This was our breakup, my stepping away from an unhealthy relationship. I was reborn, but scorned.

This was a gift.

Relenting to be here opened me up, slowly. The absence of your allure allowed me (after time and much work) to treat you with the respect that had been missing from our dynamic earlier on. While I came to appreciate my presence in life, and understand why you shouldn’t be “used”, I never grew to fear you. After time apart, I was able to see you and honor you for who you are, rather than who I wanted you to be, as is so often the case after the grief of a breakup dissipates.

Now, I see you not as an end, but a beautiful, sacred transition. A rite of passage not to be taken for granted. A graduation that is always on time, regardless of how difficult it can be for our human minds and hearts to accept.

Since our break, you have met some I love. While I grieve their physical absence in my life, and I honor this, I never worry about those you’ve taken. I trust your mercy, your welcoming. I trust your timing. I trust your perfect love, and indifference. And the freedom, the expansion that is innate in you.

That said, I know it will be some time before we meet soul to sky, before I leave my body for the last time. I will be ready. I will go in love, and I will be gracious for your patience with me, and my younger self.

Eternally,
Caili