I’ve had many opportunities to ponder and experience
what has been termed “the end of life.”
Being a person of picture words of perception,
it is a phrase I feel needs to change.
Why?
Because in so many ways, there is no end to life,
ever, really.
I have sat with many people as they are taking
their “last breath” and I experience it
in a completely different way.
And it is to this that I begin….
To birth life is the ability to hold open a space and place,
literally, inside of a mother’s body,
so two things can happen.
The first is to physically create a new body,
by giving selflessly of one’s own body,
everything it takes
for this mystery and miracle to happen.
The second is to welcome the energies of life.
Our physical bodies are profound
and filled with a living wisdom that recreates itself
over and over and over again.
The physical body offers an innate wisdom
to keep each of us alive.
The heart pumps, the blood and water circulate,
the lungs expand and contract in the process of breathing…
Yet, I know, I don’t pump the blood through my heart.
It creates its own rhythm.
I am not manually circulating the water in my body.
I carry a tributary within me,
of rivers and oceans that has its own flow.
The gesture of opening and closing is constantly at work
in this meticulous and miraculous thing we call a body.
Yet, we are not our bodies alone,
despite the race “to the finish.”
Bodies are like containers, like seeds,
that carry that essence of renewal.
Is a flower the seed?
Is the seed a flower?
Is a person a body?
Is a body a person?
The literal interpretation is that we are our bodies.
And, in today’s world,
we need to love ourselves and our life,
and our everything….
This is where I dissolve into another reality
of timelessness and beauty,
into the substance and essence of life itself.
When a physical human baby is born,
out of the interiors of the mother’s body,
a first breath is taken
and the body becomes embodied with
the substance and essence of life itself.
Are we the breath?
Are we the body?
Are you a you?
Or are you life itself in its true nature,
your true nature?
We have such a curious existence.
A body and a life, as one.
And what do we do?
We believe we own our bodies, we own the land
and we begin negotiating, what we want from it.
While all the while, this first breath that brought us to life
is igniting substance and filling us with the essence of living.
When we blow our breath into an instrument,
is it the instrument that makes the music or the breath?
We are a collage of incarnated existence
that creates a one-of-a-kind artistic piece of beauty
held and released within our kaleidoscope,
the royal container called the body
filled with colour, movements,
sounds, essences and substances
originating from that which is living all around us.
We can sense it.
We can see ourselves.
We can be and become ourselves
as we flow to the beat, rising and falling with the breath.
We can hear life.
Taste it.
But are we life?
Are we the body?
Or are we simply the awareness of it all
this symphony
this masterpiece.
Are we the consciousness that bears life?
Are we all simply instruments of that which is?
Are we all seeds, that go through the cycles and seasons?
Is our life to bear life, be life,
hold life, breathe life,
birth life, tend to life,
become aware of its beauty,
its lightness and darkness and colour arising between the two?
Is our life to hear its rhythms and beats
and create music, poeetry, art, textures… making sense of it all,
its expression in so many gestures and containers,
like dogs or cats, giraffes and elephants,
rose bushes, trees, rushing waters, the snow, the wind, the rain.
Are we not all of life,
with no separation?
Are we not bearing it all
within us, uniquely?
Are we not life itself, just being life? Being alive.
As a gesture and fragrance, a presence, a light.
So I turn my gaze, to the moment when life appears
as a created and held environment of being alive.
Coming in through the waters of life,
with expansions and contractions,
it begins with a quick in-breath,
upon arrival,
to begin a lifetime of breathing.
And then later,
after many moons and sunrises,
through a long sigh
and a long out-breath of thankfulness,
after all the cycles and seasons of being alive and aware
of the beauty and the presence of life,
within us, as us,
are coming to a close,
we simply release the held environment of embodiment
and flow back out into the oneness of existence,
the unendingness
and foreverness of this vastness, I call living wisdom.
A person is born,
goes through the years and seasons and rhythms of life,
and then releases back out
into the fields and meadows of the stars,
into the oceans and rivers and waters,
as a tribute to a life well lived,
and in reality, as an offering
to life itself,
an offering of love and thankfulness,
for this time of birth and embodied life,
an offering of giving it all back again,
filled with new lived substances and living essences
bringing creative renewal, nourishment and refreshment
to the whole.
How can this be called the last breath of life?
Is life not the essence of breath itself?
Are our bodies just the way in, to a place and space,
we hold open and care for?
Do we carry this light within and with us,
caring and tending and growing
this thing called life and living wisdom,
not for one’s self alone, as acquisition or special
or personal gain, but to become awake and aware
and conscious of this majestic essence of everything and nothing,
of oceans of existence and bright blue skies of being and belonging,
to illuminate birthing life over and over again.
Are we not the womb of worlds? A soul giving birth to love.
Coming in and going out.
So I just sit
and when I say goodbye to whomever has come for a time
and is now going
out of a human body of existence,
I feel happy for this creative renewal
that we are all part of
when we let go of a sense of acquisition
and dive into the flow of life everywhere,
in the gliding birds, the baby’s cry, the laughter of children,
the joy of sharing moments of time
and foreverness in this living wisdom as it moves through vastness
and arrives and leaves as a breath.
And I ponder,
does the water not return to the oceans and rivers of life itself?
does the air not return to the vast blue sky of awareness?
does our body not return to the earth as a living seed of being alive?
What an amazing circle of life.
What amazing devotion to notice and care.
What a gift to offer our life consciously as part of everything
here, there and everywhere.
I think the last breath is a misnomer because there is no last one or lastness in life.
Only vastness of being alive, being life itself, within it, as it.
And so when we go, I see a fleeting, yet brilliant image:
we are but a moment where life takes form,
out of which we can uniquely create
and express this substance and essence of life,
each in our own way.
We can radiate the love we were born out of.
We can radiate the light substance that fills us.
We can uphold the beauty we are and see and carry within us uniquely.
We can find peace in the connectedness and belonging to this
illuminated breath that carries life over and into thresholds
and environments of being human and becoming aware of each other.
We can create a new world culture of peace and friendship.
And so,
as the instrument is prepared
for life to appear here on Earth is released,
it is planted in the fertile soils of perpetual being and becoming.
And the unique life lived by each one of us is not only remembered
but alive in life itself always,
in this never-ending process of creative renewal.
And it is here that I truly behold and uphold
the question:
Isn’t the process, after release,
to not cling to what was, but to discover what still is,
not just the essence of life,
but the essence and substance of someone who truly lived this life.
To find that essential light and sparkle of someone
you knew or loved
in everything
or one thing,
in others, in places, moments, songs, laughter,
the twinkle of an eye, a fragrance of a cherry blossom,
silence, in the notice of gestures of hummingbirds,
a coined phrase,
or a visit from a quiet white owl.
Death is a only a thought construct that defines beginnings and endings.
Life is eternal, infinitum and always present.
Having been a gardener, a mother, and an artist,
it is clear to me, that as tears go by, they are but crystal lenses
through which we can see that death is a concept,
and life is the dancing energy out of which everything exists.
There is no separation
only the inner beauty, the illuminated light,
the presence of peace,
the love that renews and radiates,
the willingness to be be open,
and the living wisdom
called life….
And all we are ever asked to do is care for it, tend to it, love it, grow it,
know it, see it, cherish it, share it, remember it, be true to it,
and become aware of it
within ourselves and each other,
as the gift that life actually is.
All we are ever asked to do
is live this beautiful tapestry of life
with human dignity and kindness.
Writing and Photography by Jillian RoseMary LaBelle Sophie
