|
|
I had a friend when I was working at the VA in college who was Buddhist. Being the bureaucratic agency that it was, he and I had a lot of time on our hands for chatting. At some point, he really got into past-life regression and began going to a hypno-therapist to learn more about his previous lives. After each session, he’d come to work and share what he’d lived in the past with me. I was always a skeptic, could always find a way to explain the phenomenon scientifically, but he simply said, "Whatever mechanism is functioning, I feel better and that’s what counts." Couldn’t argue with that. He also said that he was no longer afraid of dying because through his regressions he had witnessed himself near death and learned that he had died many times before. The fear was gone.
Since he shared that with me I have always been interested in past-life regression. I often think that if I wasn’t afraid to die, if that one stressor was removed from my life, I would be free. I know that being afraid to die is central to everyone’s living, that it is the great denial. But I’m not in denial, I just wish desperately to be so.
My mother’s 50th birthday was Friday. I was completely unaware and was only reminded because my G-ma sent me an email telling me and then she recounted a memory she’d had of the two days in the hospital after my mother’s birth. She said that the nurse had left the window open in her room. The doctor came in and said my G-ma would catch pneumonia with the window open. My G-ma said, "Sure enough, I did."
So I let my mother’s birthday slide by un-remembered like I have for the last 15 years. I feel ashamed because it is like forgetting her. I have only been to her grave site maybe 3 times, and when I think about it I feel horrible because I think that she must be lonely, there, underneath that little plaque bearing her name, which is my name too.
And the thing that makes it ironic is that the very thing I have done is the very thing that I fear. I am afraid of being forgotten by others not only in my daily life, but after I’m dead. I don’t want to slip away on a breeze and become one of the billions who’ve existed with little or no record and whom no one remembers. My mother is not even a footnote in human history and within a generation or two, she will have been forgotten by humanity. That is true of nearly all of us I suppose, but it seems that we deserve more. She did not keep a journal, and I have very little with which to get to know her. My memories of her are from the perspective of a little girl and as an adult I’ve become curious in developing an adult relationship with her even though she is not able to contribute to the building of it. I ask people who knew her, whenever I can, to tell me about her. Surprisingly, I’ve had little success. My G-ma’s memories of her are vague. My mother’s sister never answered my queries, whether it was too painful for her or she just forgot. The information I do manage to get is told from the context of the personality recounting hers, and I find it difficult to know her. At any rate, it is too painful for me to keep asking and prying.
In my daily life, I recognize my need to be remembered by the way I linger around groups. I desire to be a cohesive, central figure in the circles I inhabit because I want people to feel that I am important in their lives - that I’m worth remembering. Given the choice to move forward or stay with the people who know me, I want to stay with my group. I guess most people feel that to a certain degree, but I think, in the end, most people choose to move forward. I will actually move backward to maintain the cohesiveness. More than once, everyone has moved on and I find myself alone, holding down an abandoned fort. It has been a long haul to recognize that about myself and to consciously make the effort to move forward even when every cell in me is begging to stay. For me, leaving the group means dropping from view and from memory; as soon as I’m out of sight, I’m out of everybody’s mind.
And that’s one thing that is so fearful about dying. Knowing that my mother died when she was thirty-three and recognizing that I’m fast approaching that ceiling, I can envision and feel the pain of dying so young and leaving all of those I love to continue on without me. I don’t want to be left behind. I don’t want to live the agony of facing an unknown and also visualizing the people in my life moving forward with other friends, lovers, daughters who are not me. I am selfish in that way. In the movies, the person dying always says they want their loved ones to move on and find happiness. I don’t think I could be so selfless, instead I'd be angry that I'm the one who has to die. Maybe on a deathbed your perspective changes and a solemn acceptance and peace moves in which allows you to become that better person. I’m hoping for that.
|
future
past
index
|