Death

Feb. 10

At just this hour three years ago today, my father died and vanished. Gone into blue gray skies like disappearing ink. Three years gone except for memories, momentary visions feeling his presence and a few dreams in which I saw and talked with him and hugged him. Three years ago today my sweet Dad left this world for a better land, I hope, while I'm here in a car wash place waiting for my car which I'm hoping to sell. It's been a long time and it makes my heart ache a little as I sit here writing on my knee while eyeing the nylon stockinged leg of the dressy young woman seated to my left waiting for her car.

Oh, the contradictions in life, paradoxes and polarities, tragedies and ironies. I hope he's free of all this shit. I miss him. Life is sort of grim these days, but hey -- they're killing civilians and babies in Yugoslavia. Guys are sleeping on sidewalk grates in every American city, and I complain? I remember the intensive care unit in the hospital. Dad shuttered and left. (Gone)

Rumi:  To one who knows, death isn't bitter.
An earthquake opens the prison walls.
Do you think an escaping prisoner will complain
Of the damage done to the stone and marble work?
People will say, "So-and-so is dead. But you'll know how alive you've become. The soul soars when it's freed from its body. Like a sleeping convict in his cell dreaming of a rose garden, he knows he's dreaming and doesn't want to go back to his body dungeon. So he prays, "Let me keep walking here like a prince." God says, "Yes, your prayer is granted. Don't go back." He dies in his sleep and stays in that rose garden
with no regrets for what he left back in his prison cell.

Expect the best and most noble dishes
and the host will bring them out.
A mountain lifts its elegant head
like a guest who receives the dawn.

One might think this place would be fine if it weren't for dying. If there were no death, the world would be just a tangle of straw unthreshed in the field. No one who has died is grieving because of death. The only grief is not being well enough prepared for dying. No one objects to exchanging sour buttermilk for choice wine.

 -- Rumi Selections from Coleman's Bark's Feeling the Shoulder of the Lion