Yesterday when I drafted my post, Completion, there was a section where I talked about death. First I said that death is the only real completion. But then I realized that death actually may be a good example of completion=beginning, because although I have no firm belief in what happens ‘after life’, I do believe that there is an essence, call it spirit or soul, that carries on in someway. It is the body that has completed its journey.

Anyway, I said all this, most eloquently I’m sure, but when I returned to edit the draft before posting, I had just learned about the death of a woman I knew and admired greatly. Unfortunately the people we know in common didn’t think to let me know when she died about two weeks ago. Hearing this news, especially after such a delay, was/is shocking and very unsettling.

I worked for this woman and her husband for eleven years and in a curious way was very involved in their personal lives. She and I also shared a birth date and as I said, I admired her greatly. She was active in the larger world as a promoter of connection and understanding in a way that was quite special. Yes, I’m being vague, because I am.

So I returned to my little blog post, was freaked out by the section I’d written on death, hastily took out those sentences and posted the rest. I am still shaken today, disturbed on a gut level. I think it has something to do with the fact that death and secrecy or ‘not knowing’ played such a powerful role in my childhood. In reaction to the way death was ‘handled’ in my family, I have spent a lifetime insisting that death is important to talk about, know about, discuss, share.

To be left in the dark of unknowing about this woman’s death for two weeks has triggered a lot of feelings. Something like anger toward the friends who did not think to let me know, but I see that that is old stuff, anger I did not, was not allowed to express toward my parents for their behavior when my sister died. Just writing this is exhausting, but it helps a little. I know that I am one of literally thousands of people whose lives this amazing woman touched and who now mourn for her. So all I can do now is add my breath to the clouds of emotion that have lifted her beyond this world.