Endings are Beginnings

One day, I was visiting a patient, Robert, who was 87. As he lay motionless, his wife Mary sat near his bed, tearfully anxious and refusing to let go of the love of my life.

Mary said: You are a man of God, tell me why people must die; and don’t just quote verses from the Bible.

I was humbled by the question but also stumped by the directive not to quote from the Bible which has been my go-to-book in similar situations.

I said a silent prayer, asking God for the right words to tell Mary. My attention was drawn to a playpen in the middle of the living room. In that playpen was a beautiful baby, laughing and playing with his toys. He was full of life and joy.

Mary pointed to the baby and said: He is the only thing that keeps me going.

The baby in the playpen was her great-grandson, Bobby. It was no coincidence that her husband’s name was Robert.

In the bedroom was Robert I, her husband, who had lived a full life and was at the brink of death. In the playpen was Robert III, barely beginning his life. I pointed out to Mary the irony and mystery of the cycle of life.

I made her aware of the fact that all experiences in life are by contrast.

There is no reality without polarity!

Unless one knows both, one knows neither. As the Indian guru Sri N. Maharaj says,

“Between the banks of pain and pleasure, the river of life flows. It is only when the mind refuses to flow with life and gets stuck at the banks that it becomes a problem.”

I gave Mary a copy of the poem On Dying by Henry Van Dyke, sometimes attributed to Victor Hugo.

I am standing on the seashore,

A ship spreads her white sails and starts for the ocean.

I stand watching her until she fades on the horizon.

Someone at my side says: “She’s gone.”

Just at that moment when someone at my side says “There, she’s gone!”

There are other eyes watching her coming,

And other voices ready to take up the glad shout: “Here she comes.”

As I watch the sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean from the USA, my brother sees the sunset over the Indian Ocean, in India.

All endings are also beginnings.

If you can make that phrase part of your daily awareness, you will deal with loss, grief, and death with grace, dignity and equanimity.

As inhabitants of a circular planet, that awareness should come easy for us when we watch a soul-stirring sunrise, remembering that someone else in another part of the planet, is watching a spine-tingling sunset.

(from Cosmic Kindergarten: Earthly Lessons for a Heavenly Life)