I recently got to attend my mother’s funeral.

Her departure caused in me a series of emotions that can best be described as confused. Anger at how life ends, a sense of betrayal that someone dear to me had left, a deep sense of loss and melancholy, a feeling that the universe had become colder, or that the moral order had decayed as one who offered kindness to humanity was no more. It also gave me time to meditate on life, death, and the meaning of life.

As I grow older I feel more fully my own mortality. The clock is ticking. Yet I also have a strong sense that I must live in the land of the living, that we are the ones that matter. I will join the dead someday, but in the meantime, I feel engaged in living out a few key ideas: justice, truth, kindness … I am thankful I got to spend some years of my life with a great person, and for me she fit well those roles often ascribed to mothers: nurturing, caring, showing interest in others, providing a home.

But I write today not about her, but about us, about how we grow beyond our mortality, towards something like a legacy, a story of our lives that remains. What is the intent of our life? For me now it is simply, to not be on automatic pilot throughout the week, to take a minute to see the sunset and reflect on our existence, which is so dear. I lack the insight to be able to say what it all means, but I find comfort in knowing that the experiences of life give me ideas and imagination on this journey, and that I am not alone, that a few friends and dear ones travel with me still. I also hope in an eternity that will bring back together those who have been separated by death.

For me there is still much to be done. I sense a force of darkness at work in this world, and I guess I have a few more years yet to offer hope in something better.

Yet I know my own dark thoughts sometimes prevail. That is when I turn on some music and let myself think about life on this planet, and my hope that it is not in vain.

Dan, Jan 2018

Photo by Karl Taylor on Unsplash