The Passing

The Passing

    She passed away, the Irish friend I wrote about in the last post.  We were gone, back at our friend's cabin for a quick overnight, a chance to once again view the overly dark sky lit only by the ancestral light of distant stars, planets and the occasional passing satellite.  Sitting once again by a crackling outdoor fire, we glanced upward at the billions of stars (or so it seemed to our "citied" eyes, even if astronomers seem to agree that the average person can only view about 3000 stars at the most even on a dark and cloudless night).  Somewhere would be an even more distant speck of one of our outer planets, Uranus (a good page to keep up with what is happening each month in your night sky comes from the University of Manchester).  We couldn't see it, much less even try to pretend we could find our way around to navigate should we be drifting alone in space as our friend was likely doing now, perhaps not physically but in some other form.

    The time was about 8:30 PM when the dragonfly landed on my wife's shoe.  It's beauty and mystery were equally stunning, our vain attempts at capturing it with a camera dashed to pieces, its vibrant blues and silvers somehow lost into the night as if the sight was meant for our eyes alone to witness.  And what was a dragonfly doing out here anyway, especially at this late hour (most such bugs retire once darkness sets in lest they become become prey for larger creatures such as bats and lizards).  It sat there, not moving, not flexing its four wings or bothered by the heat of the fire or the occasional flash from our phone's cameras.  How weird is that, my wife asked?  Maybe it's our friend's spirit, I replied; maybe she's passed.  And our discussion began.  Could it be, do we move onward to some other form once we leave our physical body?  And if so can we appear symbolically and in fact choose whom we want to see us?  Yak, yak, yak, then after about fifteen minutes, our flashlights and cameras off, the dragonfly dashed off of my wife's shoe...into the fire.  It went into the fire, my wife screamed.  I pulled out my light and indeed, the dragonfly was curling up from the heat.  I noticed the wings of the insect and quickly pulled it out as best I could, but it was too late.  We all looked at one another...what was that about?

    We all have stories of such events happening, my own being at my aunt's small outdoor service when my brother, my cousin and I all made a brief eulogy to her in front of only about seven people.  It was a sad moment as such events are, but at the very end, a strong gust of wind came up and blew over her framed picture, sending it to the ground and scattering the glass covering into dozens of shards.  And that was it, the wind stopped and nothing else was toppled, only her photo as if (in my interpretation) she had approved of our remembrance and was now "able" to leave in contentment.  Another friend's outdoor service brought a similar experience with wind, this time a gust of wind felt by several dozen people who clutched dresses or pulled jackets a bit tighter.  Coincidence, imagination?  Perhaps, and perhaps not.  Religions throughout the world talk of "sending off" the spirit, even leading many of us to speak to someone close to us who might be dying, giving them "permission" to go as if our belief is that they are afraid of leaving those close to them or this earthly presence itself.  The truth is, we don't know, none of us know...the only certain thing being that whatever happens at that moment is something that we will all discover at the end of our own lives whether it is darkness or light, a new dimension or the end of a short visit on a distant and small planet.

    Looking back up at the night sky I thought of so many of the unexplained mysteries even in science, one of the closest being our giant planet Jupiter (at least as considered in our own small-sized solar system), the swirling storm in its visible red spot now being recorded as going continuously for nearly 150 years; on the surface the winds blow at 425 miles per hour...did I mention that this "storm" is larger than our earth itself?  Or that Smithsonian asked a few of its own questions (albeit this one related to its coverage of the first possible surgical head transplant): ...even memories could change.  Consider a pianist whose most cherished moments involve playing Chopin.  Those are embodied memories, residing partly within her hands, and they might vanish if she woke up with, say, an accountant's body.  The same goes for athletes: They rely heavily on what scientists call procedural memories (popularly known as "muscle memories), which enable the brain and body to work together with precise timing.  Having a new body would destroy that timing...Indeed, all of us might feel diminished like this.  Think of your most vivid memories--times of intense joy or shame or fear.  Often you feel those memories viscerally, as a stab or a pang or a swell of pride in your chest.  Should we move onward to a new "body" or a new spirit, would we retain some of our feelings and memories that we now have, or would that plunge in the fire or that gust of wind shattering glass be our farewell to all that we once knew or thought we knew?   I stared again at the now-withered body of the dragonfly, its body now just a shell despite its delicately laced wings still being intact and not burnt (hmm, how did that happen). 

    In the morning, we packed up ready to head home and get back in range of a cell signal.  Our friend had indeed passed, the polite term we all use despite one ER doctor on The Moth Radio Hour saying that they are taught to never say that, to simply tell the family member that their loved one is dead..."we did everything we could" being the proper language;  it was rather like the words "put to sleep" being reserved only for the animals we love, our friends and relatives jumping to a new vocabulary of simply "passing away peacefully" or "moving on."  But to where?  To be a dragonfly or a gust of wind?  I glanced upward, the sky now giving so much color and muted light that it looked like one of those paintings that you swear are fake...who uses colors like that?  Never seen it...or perhaps we just hadn't looked, or it wasn't our time.  The world was moving on as if nothing had happened, the brilliant colors gone in the few minutes it took my wife to grab her shorts and come rushing out into the chilly morning air.  I had taken a picture...perhaps it was the gift of a friend, or a dragonfly, or something unknowable, but my wife smiled as she saw it, and off we drove.