Married to Action

Erupting from new depth, the volcanic sound of my heart’s desolation.  Seismic enough to raise eyebrows on other planets I shouldn’t be surprised.  My dogs sure looked at me funny.  Ten months since Dear’s suicide, I got why some people are pulled to follow their beloved in death.

The spark was the might of a particular love song, a duet: “All I Ask of You” from The Phantom of the Opera.  “Anywhere you go, let me go too.”  

Heard for the first time in more than 20 years.  Then, the two of us were witnessing a superlative production in Los Angeles, a celebration of humankind’s yearning to create beauty.  Long after the curtain fell Dear and I sat silent, feeling things about our bond only tears could convey.  

My fantasy of joining Dear wherever death has taken her is not from the despair of loss, like I’m fundamentally diminished or incomplete without her.  

Rather, it is from my eagerness to take whatever loving action I can to ease the anguish with which her spirit felt obliged to bid farewell to this lifetime.  And further, to serve her spirit in whatever form and way she continues to climb the sacred mountain of Self-realization.

If deliberately ending her life adds any karmic complexity to her journey, I wish to assume that burden for her.  Whether that’s even possible I don’t know.  But that’s how I feel.  I’m no martyr.  She is my one true love in this incarnation.  

The power of that love makes the void of her an elephant stepping on my heart at times, and reminds me that everything I can do for her I can do right where I am. 

Amidst anguish I cannot conceive, Dear died with a certain peace of mind.  She knew I’d be okay.  Changed completely perhaps, but not in a limiting way, not devastated.  She knew I would be committed to use this trauma as I aspire to use everything: a vehicle for expansion.  

I also imagine her saying to me: “You still have things to accomplish in this life, ways to grow to honor why you were born, and my death will help you.”  This wasn’t at all why she died, but it was, I feel, an awareness that allowed her to leave with a certain ease, knowing that whatever pain her demise imposed on me would nurture greater reflection.

And she was right.

The intensity of her absence has set my life’s vital questions on fire, beginning with, “What do I really want?”  The answer today is no different than it’s ever been––God, a peaceful heart, only love, (a sense of humor, Dear would kid) maybe what all of us want whether we know it or not––but what’s revved up is the demand for those commitments to be ever more passionately married to action.

Continually growing my love of all creation is the only action that adequately supports my beloved’s eternal dance of liberation, no matter how or where that occurs.

It’s also the only action that adequately serves the healing of the world’s dysfunction at this time and any time.