so, i spent my sunday in the company of the gorgeous padraig. we were indulging in one of our favourite rituals. drinking tea and watching the last season of six feet under. has there ever been a more raw drama on television? it is, to use a twomeyism, astonishing. the comfort of tea is a must amidst the morbid magic of these episodes. this is a drama willing to ask serious questions about the nature of death and departure from life on earth. it probes our human need for ritual. it examines our relationship to our own corporeality, at times to gruesome and provocative end. every episode begins with a death and features at least one funeral. there is something wonderfully honest about its acknowledgement of decay, of death, of endings. because, as the beginning of season five reminds us... Everything. Everyone. Everywhere. Ends.i find this reassuringly truthful. a good friend passed on some wisdom someone passed on to her. these are simple words which i would dare to say i believe...
nothing last forever; neither sorrow, nor joy.
growing up, as i did, with notions of eternity, of the endless love of god, of the afterlife, endings were not really part of the prevailing mentality. except perhaps the unfortunate endings of those foolish unbelievers whose last days were spent somewhere where the temperature couldn't have been cranked up much higher.
the cyclical nature of our lives, with its births, deaths and re-births, and of the environment nurturing us, is quite a different worldview, and one i feel much more at home in. people die. people are born. love fades. love blooms. the pendulum swings and we must find a way of tilting with it, without being flung off the universe.
it's not that i don't believe in a concept of eternity, but if i live my life with the assumption of an ever-unfurling chronos to enjoy, i cannot pay attention to the endings all around me in the kairos. if i cannot mourn the losses i cannot celebrate the gift of connections. i know no joy without, first, sorrow.
and, if i am honest, it is sorrow i remember first. around a table recently, a friend asked us to recall our first memory. it was a beautiful ritual. (and how i need ritual.) one that wove threads of connection between us, and our memories, however painful or quirky or silly or funny or sad. i have had an awareness of death for as long as i can remember. but six feet under has shone a spotlight on my soul and scratched me with questions...and a renewed awareness of endings.
if we can look these endings full in the face, perhaps we will begin to discover something about beginnings...
as uncle herman reminds us...the mingled, mingling threads of life are woven by warp and woof: calms crossed by storms, a storm for every calm. there is no steady, unretracing progress in this life; we do not advance through fixed graduations, and at the last one pause...
there are many endings. many pauses. many beginnings. may we learn to live this cyclical mystery with grace, courage and the capacity to laugh at our own squished up noses.
