Recently, I learned that death is as ubiquitous as life perhaps even more constant. Death is all around us. The death of people in your life of course but more subtly than that, the death of a relationship with someone, the death of an activity, of a visit, a day, a breath. The death of the past allows for the present and with time, the future. Death of what is, is what allows what will become.
I have never been to a funeral myself but in media, the fatal shot, the last breath, and funerals are the only place I knew death (you may infer I like crime shows). I thought death was something concrete. The last end where there is nothing after. The death of a person, of a life. I thought death was rare although, at a certain age you entered a period where death, the death of lives would become an almost everyday event. And that at a certain age, attending funeral services would become the precursors to "Hey, do you want to get a coffee?" A kind of mundane quality would start to blanket the event.
I never thought of death as an everyday occurrence having nothing to do with a heart that stopped beating. But it is, a shedding of dead skin, of a layer that is no longer useful. Sometimes this shedding of dead skin is painless and barely warrants awareness and other times your skin burns with a fire that is invisible. Many people rely on their eyes, on the visibility to recount whether what they are witnessing is true or not. Something invisible, intangible is difficult to back up, to measure, to believe. You might even doubt yourself even though you're feeling the fire.
Staying in the past will only burn you. I had to advance. I had to tear the old layer from my skin as it was burning me. You cannot heal in the same place where you got sick.
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