I’ve been mourning my beautiful young cousin who passed this week. Been celebrating him too because he was a funny ass kid with a brilliant perspective. Still, he was a kid. A baby. Our baby. My wife’s family has formed into my own and it’s comforting to be able to grieve together, showing love in this way. Growing a family means being prepared to lose them too. Having experienced the deaths of close loved ones earlier than I would’ve preferred or expected in my biological family, I have come to mostly accept that it is everyone’s path. And that it is not the end, just an end. But sadness and shock, anger and confusion still come. I fear it less now and I still don’t claim to understand it. I remember that people say a lot and nothing, searching for emotions that have no words to expound on their true depths. Cmon, how do we sum up love and loss adequately? I also realize that we get in our selfish bags, focusing on how death affects only us and not those around us, or running from it entirely as a form of hiding and escapism, like only focusing on others and not ourselves. How friends don’t know how to conceptualize death, especially those who haven’t lost their closest people yet, asking unanswerable questions like “how are you?”. Who think I must not be affected heavily because the person wasn’t my kin, so only reference my wife in the condolences. Death teaches us exactly what we don’t know. We also do a lot to explain or know facts or circumstances; all to make some meaning of it. But I return to this beautiful young man and get present with all that arises in my spirit. And there is so much love. I’m learning how not to suffer in spite of death because literally I have the choice to celebrate it as another form of life, grieving what was, who was, and who/what remains without losing myself or succumbing to my ego in it. Cuz ain’t no logic to the shit. It just is.
But to the point: I am renewed in why life is mine to live. And how my life is beautiful; a spiritual gift. I’ve been so stuck and rightfully so. Ego does a number on us when we are rejected or failing at something, or just aren’t where we think we should be. It can whisper or scream how we shouldn’t even be here. Or that our life is meaningless, unworthy of living. However, peering at a 25-year old body with a departed soul will shut that shit down! I am alive and I have today to make it right. Hell, without justification, I have today. It has me in it. And I get to serve while here. I get to be better. Remember my strength and calling. No matter how many times I have to be reminded in times like these, it’s a glorious and necessary repetition. I can’t really understand why my cousin is gone or why others get to live under similar circumstances, but I’m alive and can honor him now. Honor myself now. Live the god in me as I’m destined. Thank you for your humanity, lil cuz, and your guidebook.
Ashe.