A Passing

Recently, my brother-in-law's beloved father, Tony, passed away. My heart is breaking for David and his family, because I know the pain and loss they are going through. Tony was a very kind person that I wish I could have gotten to know better. When something like this happens, especially to a parent or spouse, it's hard to make sense of it all. Everything seems to be on such shaky ground and all you want to do is find solace and remember things as they once were. At school, I was having a conversation with a buddhist monk from a monastery in India. It was funny, because I never thought that I would meet a Tibetan monk, but he was one of the most calm people that I have ever come across. As he smiled at me, I explained what happened to me and I told him that I really wasn't a great model for Buddhist detachment. He chuckled and told me that he was still learning to deal with that very thing. We talked a bit about loss. Maybe the monk I saw at the college today was right, "Impermanence is a fact of life, and sometimes we have to find acceptance in that." I just don't know if I can grasp that concept sometimes or even at all.

Tomorrow I will be nurturing someone who had the kind and generous heart to nurture me and my family when we needed to be comforted during a very difficult moment in life. I feel so sad and heartbroken for him and for his family. I still ask myself this question: "Why do we have to go through such deep pain and grief in life?" It's probably an age old question that will never be truly answered. You can surmise it with different philosophical angles, but you can't really answer it in the definite sense. We will all suffer and there is no way around it, and in some way we have to find peace with that. I'm not sure that I will ever be able to do that in this lifetime, no matter how much effort I put in to the process. I couldn't ask someone else to even try to do that. I just feel that we have to make sure that we love and care for the people that we surround ourselves with and just enjoy and cherish the time we have with them. Tony was blessed to have such a wonderful family and, hopefully, they will keep all of those loving memories of him in their hearts forever. That is definitely the most important parts to grasp onto, because they will always be yours no matter what.