8.8 - A PORTAL TO THE ETERNAL NOW

This post is delicate to write. I am often strung halfway between feeling that I must share these experiences and perceptions and feeling like these are things I can’t say. That they are not mine to say.

To be honest, I still don’t know. And so I tentatively write, with this tenderness in my heart and let it help me find the right words.

Coming up to 5 years ago, on 10.10, my then 8 year old nephew drowned. I was on teacher training retreat at the time. I got a call from my sister’s friend asking me to call her back and knew instantly that something big was occurring. The family - my sister and her 3 boys - and friends were camping on the Deep River in Walpole when it happened.

Teacher training is a kind of liminal space. The teachings, the practices, the togetherness .. it creates a space and time that is outside of the ordinary. It’s a sacred space of transformation. It’s not ordinary. It’s extraordinary. And so this earth-shattering bomb dropped into the middle of that. Thank God I was not teaching myself, but my own teacher, Shiv Charan Singh, was. Online. The day it happened was the day he taught on the 8th Sikh Guru, Guru Harkrishan. He was 8 years old when he drank the water in Delhi which was infected with smallpox. He did this knowingly and out of compassion. Through his drinking, it is said, the water was purified. He died.

I’m sitting there in the room with the students, holding this secret of my nephew’s death (disappearance? as it wasn’t yet fully verified) and listening to this story of 8 year old Guru Harkrishan. In shock, really, in retrospect, and in the silence following an explosion. A suspended state before the realisation occurred that I had to call my parents and brother and tell them.

There is alot more to tell.. and many many parts that are not mine to tell. My sister is in the process of collecting all the parts of the very large story that emerged from that day. What I share here is but a fragment of that incredible cosmic myth. I went down a little later to spend time with her and my other nephews - to be there, to hold, listen, support and to also myself grieve. I learned from her, from the situation, from her amazing friends and community, alot about grief, life and death. It was incredibly awful. Incredibly beautiful.

I learned that you can only sustain the gravity for so long. We sat together in the weightiness of what had happened. We sat with what was and felt it all. But then, suddenly, something would be funny. The clouds would part and then - an amazing levity. A brightness. A tragi-comedy moment, dark humour, absurdity.. The thing had a life of its own and we were all players in this divinely orchestrated play. It gave us a run for our money. It was no joke. It was terribly terribly sad. And yet, also, there was laughter. It’s what humans do, also to stay sane.

Then back to the depths of grief. I watched my sister live on the edge of an abyss. I know that at times there was not much holding her from falling into it. You could only have faith in the single moment. Trust in the basics of the present. Foot by sensitive foot. Feeling our way forward. She became something of a mythical creature herself through this brutal turn of events. She was already an amazing person and is now even more so.

So yesterday, the 8th of the 8th, it is Sol’s birthday.. again. Beautiful Sol, eternal sun, would have been 13. I light a candle for him. I sit on the couch and start writing about number 8, Guru Harkrishan and the 8th virtue - compassion. It’s my monthly post I do of this kind. It’s August, 8th month, and so.. Feeling that feeling of synchronicity and right timing, I also decide it’s time to send my sister the story of Guru Harkrishan, which I retold in my own words. So I send her a message and email her the story.

At around 10.10, my own youngest (20) enters the room. She’s on the phone and she’s crying, shocked. One of her best friends took his own life the previous night. I hold her as she collapses and sobs. I cry with her. I light a second candle. The day unfolds with this weight in it. This sudden absence. And our beloved Sol’s absence. It rains heavily. Then the sun comes out, only to go again. And so it is and I am so grateful that I now know how to be with grief. I can show my children and their friends that. I know that it has so many faces and there is not one right way. There can be no judging it. And no-one has the correct formula for it.

So that is it. That’s what I can share today. Death is with us always. This life is a liminal space, with long stretches of ordinary. Souls come and go through the door. Constantly. All we can really do is be there with a prayer. There is love and there is pain. There is no solution. There is no problem. There is only the eternal now.