Time for a letter

I cannot count the times someone has told me, "I don't know what to say," after a friend has lost a loved one. Sometimes it's better and easier to write than to talk. The mother of a young friend of mine died recently, after suffering from cancer for six years. My friend and I talked often about her mom's illness over the past four years. After appearing to be stable for a good while, my friend's mom suddenly went into hospice care and died a few days later. This is part of what I wrote to her:

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Dear friend,

Right now, I can imagine that life feels surreal to you and I encourage you to take some time to "not be normal," whatever that may mean. Maybe it's a day in pajamas, eating dessert first, or a day trip to the mountains. In times of loss and pain, it is too easy to forget to look to the fullness of our life experience. Of course you can and should feel that your mom's life was not long enough. But was it full enough? I know that the answer to that question is a resounding yes!  And you were a central part of the fullness and fulfillment of her life, as you will continue to be with and for your dad.

Speaking from experience, I think you will feel some relief that she no longer has to endure the ravages of her illness, even as you wish she were still here. The first thing I did after my mother died was throw away all of her medicine. In the midst of my loss, I felt a sense of victory that I could literally trash those drugs and know that she would never again have to take them or suffer their complicated and punishing side effects.

You will always miss your mother, but with time, the pain of that missing takes a gentler, more bearable form. You will, one day, reach a point where joyful memories outweigh the grief. In the meantime…look, watch, listen for her “signs.” I believe that she will let you know in some way what wonderful shape she is in now—in her new life.
Be good to yourself!

Love,
Ysabel

A Universal Logic

Since the last post on this blog, I've been researching the history of some of the indigenous peoples of the part of the United States where I live. I've found multiple passages similar to this one, written by Ernest Wallace and E. Adamson Hoebel in their book, The Comanches, Lords of the South Plains:  

"...the Comanches had an unwavering faith in a future existence. Their after world...was modeled after the imperfect reality of their everyday existence with all the disagreeable features absent, for all things were perfect."  Another tribe held the belief that when fellow band members died, they would go to a heaven, where the deceased from earth would wait for those they left behind, and there would be a time when all would be reunited. These, among many other beliefs held by people in both pre-historic and historic times do indeed attest to a "logic of heaven," as J.D. DeHart refers to in this poem. Perhaps that is why belief in heaven--however you describe that state or place--has survived for thousands upon thousands of years: because it is so deeply, utterly logical.

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Ysabel de la Rosa

There Must be Heaven

by J.D. DeHart

Sometimes, the weight of days

Guilts and delays

Cause me a flash of doubt,

But when I consider your delicate

Ways, a dragonfly bouncing

On the surface of a lake,

Or the beauty of your ancestor

Gazing from the portrait on our wall,

I know that my faith must remain

And I know that there must be a heaven.

There must be a logic in the universe

And we must all be part of it.

  

Ysabel de la Rosa

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Copyright J.D. DeHart, all rights reserved.  
J.D. DeHart's work has recently appeared in Eye on Life and Ancient Heart.